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Untitled Article
the tendency of actions may be ascertained by reflection and exhibited in experience . 4 I did not mean any harm / is a contemptible apology for having occasioned mischief which reflection might have anticipated and precaution might have prevented . We are responsible , not only for the goodness of our intentions , but for the use of all the means in our power by which those intentions may be made wise as well as good , and their useful
realization brought within the compass of a rational probability . Without such use , the plea is very pitiful , and the conduct very wrong . In most things connected with religion , what a tide of influence sets in to bear down individual sincerity ! What can be more hostile to it than that dogma , so generally held , so vehemently maintained , so vigorously enforced , of the condemnability of
opinion ? The wide-spread notion that belief is not merely intellectual but moral—not necessary but voluntary—seems at times to have darkly overclouded almost the whole horizon of human honesty . It strikes at the very root of sincerity , and excites man ' s fears , so as to make him palter with his mental convictions , and become unfaithful to his own conscience . To declare to an
inquirer , the reception of this doctrine will save your soul , —the rejection of that doctrine will consign you to damnation , —is a declaration of war against truthfulness . It is doing your utmost to make him a partial inquirer or a hypocritical professor . How many would be induced to doubt , deny , or be silent about the demonstrated propositions of Euclid , if a large and influential portion of society should uphold , that to affirm the whole to be greater
than a part , was indicative of vicious disposition , and worthy of future suffering . We often hear of the dishonesty of unbelievers in their attacks on Christianity . They have shown much disingenuousness in assailing it by insinuations and covertly . The blame is not all their own ; it must be shared by those Christians who make such opinions , however erroneous , a legal offence , a social proscription , the token of God ' s eternal reprobation . What
greater influence could be used to make them disingenuous r But in this respect the teacher has been as hardly tempted as the sceptic . How , in some churches , commences that priesthood which has for so important a part of its ministry , the inculcation of Christian sincerity and simplicity ? By professing a call from the Holy Spirit , which , to say the least , cannot be evidenced ; by subscribing a long and complicated creed when , to say the least ,
but little of it can have been investigated .. Carry this further ; connect temporal advantages , connect political advantages , connect bright prospects and hopes , connect large emoluments , connect the means of subsistence , with the profession of faith in certain dogmas , and the preference of certain forms and systems , and what but insincerity , to a great extent , can be the result ? If any intended to generate equivocation , the suppression of honest thought , a bias to outward acquiescence , without inward
Untitled Article
Subornation of Insincerity . ? 0 l
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1832, page 701, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1822/page/51/
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