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Untitled Article
they might be founded , yet there can be no real difficulty in admitting that they were themselves subject to the same prejudices , and ignorant of the true nature of the diseases thus described . On the contrary , to us who have no belief in such possessions , and who imagine ourselves to have more just and philosophical
views of the origin of the disorders in question , it will be evident , that those who appear , from their manner of speaking , to have been quite unacquainted with the true character of these disorders , and yet showed themselves able to remove them by a word ' s speaking , must have derived this power not from any knowledge or resources of their own , but from the power of God .
Here , also , as in so many other instances , what unspeakable advantage does the Unitarian expositor , in his explanations of what might . otherwise be found perplexing passages of Scripture , derive from his having disencumbered himself of the mysterious dogma of the divine nature of Christ ? Many Trinitarians are evidently reduced to great embarrassment in giving such a representation of this subject as shall be at once satisfactory to their
own minds , and consistent with those views which their system obliges them to take of the Saviour ' s character and dignity . Some , indeed , perhaps the majority , are contented to outrage all reason and probability by maintaining the literal interpretation of these narratives , and asserting that a variety of disorders which the symptoms , minutely and distinctly described by the evangelists , show to differ in no respect from such as are often observed at
present , and are now both ascribed to natural causes and cured by natural means , were in those days the result of demoniacal , or rather diabolical possessions . But the more rational and philosophical , who cannot persuade themselves that human nature was different then from what it is now , or that diseases which result from natural causes now , were formerly occasioned by a pseudo-miraculous interference , and who are consequently under the necessity of
allowing that the popular notions of possessions , and the current language founded upon them , were built upon erroneous and absurd prejudices , are much , at a loss how to account for the use which our Lord himself makes of such language , under circumstances which it appears scarcely possible to explain upon any other supposition than that he had himself the same belief on the subject which was prevalent among the generality of his countrymen . To say that he did not come to teach them philosophy , or to
reform their modes of speech , is not always a sufficient explanation ; not only because many cases ( such as that of the legion Bent into the herd of swine ) are too express , and enter into too many minute particulars to be easily disposed of upon this supposition , but also because , even though we were to grant that in public he was content to fall in with the popular formu of speech , we might reasonably have expected that in private , among his disciples * he would have taken some opportunity of disabusing them of such strange and unfounded notions *
Untitled Article
572 Scrip twe Criticism .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 572, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/68/
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