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qy cornnientr will make all honest and unprejudiced readers Unitarians ? They have betrayed their want of confidence in the Bible to teach the doctrine of a Three in one . " They would stamp Trinitarian on its back as a talisman
against the omnipotence of truth . They dare not sejid jtt forth on the strength G ^ its ~ own-. merits ,-. 4 Chey-. are afraid to trust it alone ;—it will propagate the soul-destroying heresy , —• it will unteach all that has been taught by Athanasius and Calvin . That it has already produced some of these effects we may rest persuaded ; and
how should it not ? The Jjible is Unitarian throughout ; anti-trinitarian in the beginning , anti-trinitarian- in the middle , anti-trinitarian in the end . It knows as little of the doctrine as of the terms Trinity and Trinitarian , and that is nothing ; but it teaches that God is one person , an intelligent Being , the Creator and the Father of all . " This is life eternal , to know
thee , the only true God , and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent . " In all that was written by Moses and the prophets , ^ nd taught by Christ and his Apostles , we can discover nothing
of a Trinity , nothing of a Platonic , an Aristotelian , a Pythagorean , a Brahminical , a Runic , a Sabellian , or a Swedenborgian Trinity , nor any of the three-score and ten Trinities which have claimed in turn the belief
and imposed on the credulity of mankind . Christianity repudiates the very name of Trinity as a heathen abomination , —an insult to reason , a blasphemy against the most sublime truths of Revelation ; the Bible , I repeat , is essentially an Unitarian book ; if allowed to do its own work , and to go forth in its own simple majesty
without the deforming and distorting ' drapery in which priestcraft and bigotry would enfold it , it will Unitarianize the world . It has wrought , and it is working marvellous conversions . Unitarians have no misgivings of mind as to the result . They are willing to cast their bread upon the waters , assured-that , after many days *
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they shall find it ;—they are willing that the good seed of the word should be scattered , though by orthodox hands , for the Lord of the harvest will cause every seed , according to an invariabje law of his Providence , to produce after its kind ; and therefore
the crop must be Unitarian . It is from ~ ignorance-of-the-Bible , ™ or-from coming to its perusal with minds preoccupied by anti-biblical notions , from blind attachment to antiquated creeds and nursery catechisms , from blind veneration for state religion , and its forms established by human laws , that men are Trinitarians . Let them
dare to emancipate their minds from the inglorious vassalage , — -let them assume courage to read the sacred volume with their own eyes , to judge by their own understandings , and the religious world will at last become truly Christian , and worship the Father " in spirit and in truth . "' The resolution was seconded by Dr . Strattan .
The Rev . George Armstrong , a lately beneficed clergyman of the established church , proposed the following resolution : •—4 . ' That as all true religion must ally itself with the advancement of the general mind , it is the character of Unitarian Christianity to rejoice in the free extension of intellectual light and moral culture through society ; that the sectarianism which afflicts
this land may be gradually soothed by uniting in the school-room those who are divided in the church , * and that , with these convictions , we hail with satisfaction the project for national education which has recently been devised , and believe that , in thus
attempting to re-unite those social elements which intolerance has dissevered , the government of the country is wielding its secular power in true co-operation with the peaceful spirit of the Gospel . '
In recommending the resolution , he said : —i * From the earliest period at which I car * chargo my recollection witlv
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 1, 1832, page 77, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1813/page/13/
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