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Untitled Article
philosophy Was , at the peridd of Christ ' s advent , tnore extensively Cultivated than it had previously been , we remark that the public * mind Wad , to a considerable extent , imbued with the spirit of philosophic mysticism- The many , as was natural , imbibed the notions artd caught the spirit of the few ; and Jew , as well as Gentile , tras mare ready to entertain a system of mystery thai !
a systetn of common sense * Nothing could be more plain and practical than the Gospel , as taught by Christ and his Apostles ; and nothing was more improbable than that such a system should very long retain its purity , in passing through the minds and the pens of the majority of the early converts . Was it likely that those who had sat at the feet of Plato or Philo——who had received from these mystics 6 wings to their minds ' with Which they could soar into the invisible world —who
prided themselves on the sublimity of their fancied knowledge respecting the ideas of the divine mind , the nature of the soul , and the powers of the celestial hierarchies , could content themselves with the simple facts of the life , death , and resurrection of the man Christ Jesus ? * A clear and unpolluted fountain' - — we use the words of Dr . Jortin — * fed by secret channels with the dew of heaven , when it grows a large
river , and takes a long and winding course , receives a tincture from the various soils through which it passes . ' This sentence contains the leading fact observable in the history of the corruptions of Christianity respecting the person of our Lord . The spirit of mysticism which prevailed at , and for ages after , the promulgation of the Christian religion gave its own character to no few of the great truths of the Gospel , but to none so much as to
its teachings relative to the Creator and the Saviour . A mystical philosophy had ixiade men fond of abstruse reasonings and lofty speculations ; and this indisposed them to receive anything but fespiring and visionary illusions . It had bewildered men's minds , so that they could not see and desire unadorned truth , nor accurately judge of evidence , nor rest satisfied with the simplicity of
the Gospel . Even in the days of the Apostles the spirit of mystery was in active operation , and the most strenuous efforts were needed to keep it in check . On their demise , others undertook to withstand its encroachments on the primitive simplicity of the Gospel . At first , the friends of unadulterated truth contended not in vftin . But soon , alas ! the best of them became
infected ; artd While they in some things counteracted , in others they , perhaps unconsciously , favoured the progress of corruption . Even in the most simple , grave , and practical Writer after the Apostles , Clement , a Unitarian , we find , in the following story , It love of the wonderful , and a degree of credulity , which breathe altogether a different spirit from that of ' power and a sound mind , ' by which the sacred books are characterized . ' Let us consider that wonderful type of the resurrection , which is seen in
Untitled Article
Mite abd Prdgreto dfthe Doctrine of the Trinity ^ 111
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 111, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/39/
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