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Untitled Article
ever adhered to falsehood . Find a great Christian principle incorporated in & false religion , and you have an element on which to work . Deal with it as the cliettiist does when he would draw a substance out of one combination into another : he presents some substance with which it will combine more strongly . If the gospel be divine , its combination of principles must exist in a more perfect harmony than can any of those principles with the falsehoods with which superstition has bound them in a forced and unnatural union . They will be drawn , and the mind and heart of the believer along with them , towards their native and proper sphere . Thus did Paul make use of the Grecian poets and the Athenian altars . The motto of these Essays might be , * Whom , therefore ,
ye ignorantly worship , Him declare 1 unto you . ' The author unfolds to the Catholic the true universality , to the Mahometan the true predestination , and to the Jew the real supernaturalism . They combine in and characterize genuine Christianity . The following passage may serve as a specimen of the style in which the first and third of these Essays are written , and of the tone which pervades them . It is from the Introductory Address to Roman Catholics : —
* We know , brethren , that Our mode of belief appears to you under the greatest possible disadvantage , as beings even more than Protestant religion generally , divested of the claims and graces of antiquity . You regard our sect as newly Formed from the dispersed elements of other sects which have meltea away . You find no mention of our heresy in
the records of the middle ages , or only such hints of the doctrines now held by Unitarians as taught serve as suggestions of our present opinions ; and you therefore naturally conclude that the parts of our faith to which you object are but of yesterday , and consequently the impious inventions of men . IF it were so , our present address would indeed be indefensible ; our challenge to investigation would be ah
insult ; our appeal to the Scriptures would be blasphemy . But to shake your conviction of this assumed feet , to convince you , if possible , that the reverse is the fact , is the dbject of the exposition of our opinions which we now present to you , and of every effort to explain and defend our faith . It is because we believe our religion to be primitive Christianity that we are attached to it as other Christians arfe to theirs . It is because we feel that we can carry back our opinions
to a remoter antiquity than other Churches * that we prefer them ; and though they were completely hidden under the unauthorized institutions of the middle ages , we find no difficulty lit establishing their identity with those which wefe diffused by the messengers and under the sanction of God . rte who sees a stream gushing forth from the cave , and can trace it back no farther than the darkness whence it issues .
may reasonably concltide thai he stands near its source ; but there may be a wayfarer who by observation and experience knows and can attest that this is no subsidiary spring , but the reappearance of a hidden stream , whose source is hallowed and whose current is inexhaustible ; We only ask ydU to listen to our evidence of this , and to adftut it or not , as you shall be afterwards disposed .
Untitled Article
Mis * Marlineati * Prtze E&ays . 419
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1832, page 479, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1816/page/47/
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