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( 768 . >
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ORTHODOXY AND UNBELIEF * .
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On orthodoxy be the guilt of half the unbelief of an intelligent age . „ If vice has disposed men to renounce a religion of pure morals , not less frequently has common sense revolted at a system reputed to be full of mysteries and contradictions . Deliberately and confidently do we lay to the charge of reputed orthodoxy the origin of the greater part of the unbelief that prevails in Christendom . Instance upon instance continually attests the fact , that men of intellig ent and philosophic minds , who have seen Christianity only in its corruptions , have renounced the profession of it simply because they could not believe in the . dogmas of Trinitarian and Calvinistic creeds . That they do not
distinguish between the religion of the Church and that of the New Testament may be their misfortune in some cases , their fault in others . Much is it to be regretted that even the alternative should be presented to a thinking and candid mind of believing a trinity and incarnation , or of rejecting revelation ; and loud , indeed , is the call thus addressed to the believers of ' One God the Father , and One Lord Jesus Christ , ' to disabuse the world as to the identity of things essentially distinct , to separate
Christianity from its corruptions , and show the reasoning part of mankind that the Gospel may be held in its simplicity and its power without foregoing the exercise of their rational faculties ; and that the dogmas at which their understandings revolt , or their heart sickens , may be rejected without diminution of the practical scope and efficacy , and with great advantage to the evidences of revealed religion .
Yet it is a favourite topic of objection , not to say of railing and abuse , with the self-styled orthodox , against the professors of Unitarian Christianity , to represent the latter mode of faith as the * halfway-house to infidelity . We repel the accusation , and can substantiate it against the creed of those who have framed it against ours . We know , by fact , that multitudes have been saved from unbelief by timely acquaintance with Unitarian views of the Gospel , when orthodoxy was fast hurrying them into scepticism ;
and that multitudes , for want of knowing that the Gospel is separable from the mysteries and contradictions of Augustin and Calvin , have rejected the gold with the dross , and passed at once from superstition to unbelief . As to the figure of speech ,, in which the accusation is couched , we might reply that extremes meet in this as in other instances ; and that , when orthodoxy and infidelity have joined hands , the halfway-house is the remotest point of the circle . That orthodoxy is the fruitful parent of unbelief tnay be seen at a glance over the principal deistical books which have
ap-+ " The Human Origin of Christianity . " - London : John Brooks , Oxford Street .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 768, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/48/
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