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Untitled Article
landing in violent opposition to Jewish prejudices , maintained a per- ! feet accordance with the religious feelings of the nation ; and that , i « fact , he wad from the first a favourite with the great body of the Jewish people ; the priesthood alone which he attacked being his enemies \ that in this , prior reverence and religious excitement which his doctrines and personal qualities produced , there was a sufficient foundation
for a general belief , not only in his divine mission , but also For the actual occurrence of certain extraordinary cures which appeared to th e * people in the li ^ ht of miracles ; that , accordingly this power was believed to exist m him by others , and by himself , and that , in such circumstances , subsequent exaggeration and subsequent fabrication of miraculous events are nothing but what experience has shown might be expected on the part of sincere , devout , and even virtuous believers ; that , in short , the whole of the Christian miracles are
resolvable into real delusion , exaggeration , and fraud on the part of the first disciples of Jesus . ' That this hypothesis furnishes the true solution of the origin of the Gospels , the following pages are devoted to show / He then cites Dr . Whately ' s Logic , as stating the onus probandi which rests on the unbeliever : —
* The religion exists—that is , the phenomenon ; those who will not allow it to have come from God , are bound to solve the phenomenon on some other hypothesis less open to objections ; they are not , indeed , called on to prove that it actually did arise in this or that way , but to
suggest ( consistently with acknowledged facts ) some probable way in which it may have arisen , reconcileable with all the circumstances of the case / That the way suggested in the above abstract of the author ' s theory is improbable , and irreconcileable with some of the circumstances of the case , I now endeavour to show . But first , I must
observe that his assertion is incorrect , as to the fallacy stated to run through the argument of all divines . It is not true , that those who have written on the subject have made the question to consist only of one alternative ^ that of honesty or imposture : a second alternative is invariably considered—viz . that of competent knowledge and judgment , or liability to delusion on the part of the writers . 1 might refer to Paley , Clarke , Simpson , Belsham ( only that the latter two were not orthodox , nor the first two of eminent
orthodoxy ) and other writers on the evidences of Christianity , m proof . But the author himself confronts his own assertion by extracts from Dr . Chalmers ' s Bvidences , given on his 10 th and 11 th pages : — We shall borrow / he says , * Dr . Chalmers ' s statement of the argument in favour of the sincerity of the writer ' s
belief in all and every part of his narrative , and the impossibility of his being deceived . * The italics are his own ! What can the bold and sweeping assertion in the preface , that divines have all forgotten the second alternative , mean ? Dr . Chalmers undertakes to prove , first , sincerity , and then competent judgment . I do not wish to charge our author with wilful misrepresentation ;
Untitled Article
Orthodoxy and Unbelief . 779
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 779, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/59/
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