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Untitled Article
closer examination of the historical relations , on which the credit of those individuals who originally reported it to be a revelation from , heaven , is stated to rest . ' —( p . Xx . ) . Other doctrines of reputed orthodoxy , besides that of eternal torments , have confessedly supplied the author with presumptions against the Gospel . In his * Statement of the Question' he gives ( p . 2 ) a definition of what he takes to be Christianity .
* Amongall the facts recorded in these narratives ( the New Testament Scriptures ) , which are those that at present peculiarly bear the name of the Christian religion ? belief in which is denominated faith ? constitutes the believer a Christian 1 They are the doctrines of the Trinity ; the incarnation of Jesus ; his atonement for the sins of mankind by death on the cross ; his resurrection from the dead , and ascension into Heaven . These are the facts to which our faith fe
peculiarly demanded , unfeigned faith in which is the highest virtue , as disbelief of them is the greatest crime our nature is capable of ; a faith , finally , which is essential to every one ' s eternal salvation / Nothing could well be more loose and confused than this statement , which , being designed as a definition of the thing
under discussion , ought to have been clear beyond possible misapprehension . What can be meant by saying that the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the facts recorded in the narratives ? And how strangely has the author forgotten himself , and the history of his own unbelief , in omitting from this statement of essential Christian doctrines that of eternal
torments , which he before described as ' the grand doctrine Which Christianity holds out to bind the conduct of man ? ' Self-consistency and precisipn we are entitled to demand from every one who pretends to discuss any subject philosophically : but this is , it must be confessed , one of many instances in which the book before us is deficient in both . We have commended the general candour of the writer , but must not the less charge him with
vagueness and contrariety of statement . His integrity impresses us in spite of all this , and we are sure he was seriously convinced by his own bad reasonings . Let this admission be made once for all . But into his confused and self-contradictory statement of the question , how thoroughly does orthodoxy enter ! The Trinity , the incarnation , the atonement , and the necessity of faith in these for salvation 1 On the virtue of believing , and the sin of unbelief , as taught by the orthodox in general , the querulous
introduction to his book is also founded ; and if we could suppose it anything more than a rhetorical argumentum ad misericordiam * we should , from our hearts , pity the mart who had produced this book at the dictate of conscious sincerity , and yet laboured under the impression that , * to believe in the human origin of Christianity may be a Bin which will bring after it an appalling visitation of evil through the everlasting ages of eternity . Ihe author might have found Christians who would not deem it a Christian duty thus to anathematize the sincere rejector of the Gospel ,
Untitled Article
Orthodoxy and Unbelief . . 775
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 775, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/55/
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