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Untitled Article
previous conceptions of those who have preceded him . Independent of authorities , he cares nothing for the commonlyreceived or conventional meaning of a passage . He is an imlearned Layman , —that is to say , he is unambitious of the title of scholar ; but he knows enough of Greek to look out for the meaning of words in his Hederic ; of Hebrew , to seize and comprehend the connexions , etymological and otherwise , of words in that language ; and he possesses shrewd acuteness and observation enough to enable him to detect and display the force and action of circumstances and events on the writer of the passage he discusses . Perceiving how important it is to consider written compositions as addressed to contemporaries , and not to posterity , he lays aside
* All saws of books , all forms and pressures past , and becomes , as it were , the associate of Christ and the apostles —the living witness of their lives and conversation . He fearlessly turns from history to prophecy ; compares narrative with epistolary allusion ; looks the mind of his authors in the face ; and , giving freely the result of his examination , he endeavours to
place his readers also in the predicament of contemporary observers . Thus he is , in fact , scarcely a controversialist : he delves a yard below the mines' of controversy , and scatters the theories of his predecessors by the quiet assurance and simple boldness of his inferences and statements .
The author , it appears ,, ranks himself among the Society of Friends , and his spirit is especially stirred within him , —not that the individuals composing that society should hold opinions which he deems absurd and unscriptural , but that , as a body , they should enforce on others , as necessary to salvation , the reception of any creeds , articles , or forms of belief ; and ., above all ,
he is justly indignant , that , having themselves arrived at certain conclusions , they should , at the extremity of their own intellectual range , plant their terminal stumbling-block , warning their disciples generally , and their young friends especially , against any such rash attempts to acquire information , as may make
them too well acquainted with doctrines which they , the * masters in Israel , ' choose to consider as heresy . For it is a melancholy fact , that the * people called quakers , '—the soi-disant followers of Penn and Barclay , —have latterly assumed a new phasis , have become as much attached to the comminatory authority of a * Quicunque vult' as any Athanasian who rejoices to hear the oraculous formulary of his humanly-prescribed faith * said or sung in the churches of the established sect . The state of Christian doctrine as commonly received , compared with the teaching of Christ and his apostles , is a wonder to many . We have , on the day of this present writing , listened to something relevant to this , from the lips of a most amiable minister of the gospel . 4 It is often asked , ' said he , * why has God not revealed his will to mankind , in such a manner that the
Untitled Article
The Trinitarian Investigator . 181
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 181, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/37/
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