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Untitled Article
doxy his book would not have appeared . Orthodoxy supplies its data from which he concludes the superior credibility , the greater reasonableness , humanity , piety of natural religion without added revelation . What other result can they anticipate for their labours who perseveringiy represent Christianity as a system of repugnant and mysterious doctrines , and recommend blind enthusiastic
credulity ( under the misnomer of faith ) to intelligent inquirers into religious opinions ; one of whose most doughty , if not most gifted , champions of the present day—speaking of one of former days , whom mature reflection had made almost , if not altogether an Unitarian , observes , * His error was a passion for refining upon the testimonies of revelation , endeavouring to simplify the inexplicable , and to unite the irreconcileable?—( See * Hamilton ' s
Animadversions on Hutton ' s Unitarian Christianity Vindicated / p . 21 ) . He is speaking of Watts ' s alleged renunciation of orthodoxy . What a confession for any Christian to make , —that there are things not only inexplicable , but irreconcileable , in what he believes to be a revelation ! When did unbelief allege more than a Christian here is willing to allow , that revealed things are left inexplicable , and irreconcileable things are to be believed f Only
let it be understood , that this is true of the Trinitarian system , and not of Christianity in the broad sense ; and then pure scriptural truth may have the advantage of the admission , instead of its contributing , so much as it has done , to the spread of unbelief . In laying , as we have done , to the charge of orthodoxy , as it calls itself , most of the unbelief of an intelligent age , we would not be understood to make excuses for unbelievers at large . There
are those who disbelieve through indolence , through corrupt moral principle , for fashion ' s sake , or in affectation of superior sagacity or wit . We have spoken only of the intelligent and reasoning unbeliever , whose arguments have been directed mainly against orthodox views , or weighted by his rational objections to such views . Of the writers from whom we have quoted , more , perhaps , may ^ be suspected to have merely taken occasion , by the absurdities of
human creeds , to wound the credit of the Scriptures , than can be thought to have seriously mistaken the corruptions of the Gospel for the Gospel itself . Orthodoxy is equally the ally of unbelief in both cases , and the effect is the same on the minds of readers : but the case of the writer differs materially . We do not willingly intimate a doubt whether the author before us has seriously and
honestly considered Christianity as identical with Calvinistic Trinitarianism , as he might have done if he had lived where Unitarians were unknown , and had read the Scriptures without losing his original impression of their Trinitarian contents ; but his own book forces the suggestion , that he might have known better , that he did know of the existence of Unitarianism in the Christian church , and that he has , notwithstanding , chosen the orthodox exposition for the sake of his argument . Why should he grate-
Untitled Article
Orthodoxy and Unbelief . 777
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 777, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/57/
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