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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
Understand the mediation to , have contemplated the / reconciling of man to God / and this doctrine of scriptural Unitaxianism stands unimpugned by reason and inaccessible to cavil . Because God needed not to be reconciled to man , He sent Christ to turn men to Him . In the words of Jesus , * God so loved the world ,
that He gave His only begotten Son / The unbeliever ' s objection is inapplicable to this scriptural doctrine , however hard it may press upon the orthodox view . How keen is the edge of Shaftesbury ' s irony if we could understand it as only aiming at severing the unholy union of Church and State , when he declares i his steady orthodoxy and entire submission to the truly Christian and Catholic doctrines of our Holy
Church , as by law established ; ' and that he faithfully embraces the * holy mysteries of our religion in the minutest particulars , notwithstanding their amazing depth ; and , when with argument as legitimate as the sneer may be malignant , he carries out this genuine high Church principle to an absurd consistency !
Woolston , when he allegorized the miracles of the Gospel histor y > in order to shake its credibility , boldly appealed to the ancient fathers of the Church for an orthodox precedent , and gravely avowed that c he wrote not for the service of infidelity , which had no place in his heart , but for the honour of the holy Jesus , and in defence of Christianity . '
And was it against Christianity , or against its corruptions and the absurd principles of its professors , that the powerful pen of Lord Bolingbroke was wielded ? He declares ( and may not the declaration be avowed with solemn earnestness ?) that 'it is as necessary to plead the cause of God against the divine as against
the atheist ; to assert His existence against the latter , to defend His attributes against the former , and to justify His providence against both . * Again , he says ,. ' Truth and falsehood—knowledge and ignorance—revelations of the Creator- —inventions of the ereatiire—~ dictates of reason-r-sallies of enthusiasm , have been
blended so long together in systems of theology , that it may be thought dangerous to separate them . ' That Lord Bolingbroke attempted seriously to separate them I will by no means assert ; but it was against the blended whole , if not at tKe ^ borrupt admixture only , that his undiscriminating objections were mainly levelled .
What but the orthodox doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures could give occasion for such an assertion as this , ^—* It is no less than blasphemy to assert the Jewish Scriptures to have been divinely inspired . Such inspiration as the Scriptures claim for themselves may be reasonably yielded ; and had no more or no other kind been ever claimed on their behalf , we should not
have heard of the objection from Lord Bolingbroke or any other . But Christians , thinking to honour , the Scriptures , have brought them into contempt ; and their cause must be pleaded first against the diving , and ' then against the doubter . And is it the Unitarian ,
Untitled Article
7 W Orthodoxy and Unbelief *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 770, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/50/
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