On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    tianity 4 wi | Ji P&il ^ t ^ ty ? d&e empire of reason &e authority of faith : snq , uppj } &m mu $ \ pripsioie of conaidering Christianity as a system $ f doctrip ? 9 whwh }* J # PS believed as the appointed Bae # ns gf sajvation /^ t fee r thaji as a statement of facts , proved to £ e authentic , from wfifch eyery one is at liberty to draw whatever inferences appear Jp hiqa fairly deducible from them—it is not

    possible , we think , to eyade the epnclusiveness of his reasonings . Jteinhard jyas $ t least consistent with himself—hpnest and faithful in the application of his principles ; and , were his reputed orthodoxy more widely at variance i ^ ith our reputed heresy than , perhaps , it really is , > ve should not the less reverence the intrepidity and single-minded ness with which he held on in the cpurse dictated to him by conscience in an age of intolerant liberalism : —

    ' In my search after truth ( he remarks )* , I could not but perceive that , in order to have a consistent system of religious belief , we must adhere exclusively either to reason or to Scripture ; and that there are no consequential reasoners but the Deist and the partisan of revelation * Witji tlie fprmer , it is reason which decides everything ; what reason cannot comprehend or acjmit cannot form any part of his belief ; in his system everything is connected and homogeneous : —he , on the other

    hand , whp believes in revelation is not less consistent with himself nor less faithful to his fundamental principle . In matters of faith and religion , Scripture is to him what reason is to the other : the office of reason is solely to explain and investigate the meaning of the former . If

    reason finds in Scripture doctrines unknown before , which it could never have discovered , and for which it can furnish no proofs , it does not on that account feel itself authorized to reject them , provided they have nothin g in themselves contradictory : it recognizes in them the voice of Qod , and submits to his authority /

    There is nothing in these principles to which any Christian can object ; but they still leave a question undetermined , which has been the grand source of all the disputes of Protestantism , — how the true sense of Scripture is to be ascertained , and what must be the universal principle of Scriptural interpretation ? The truths of Revelation come to us through a human medium , and were adapted in their original delivery to the existing state of manners and opinions in Judea . Reinhard himself admits this

    in his programm : * Utrum et quando possint oratores divini , in administrando munere sup , demittere- se ad vanas hominum opiniones ? * which he decides in the affirmative . Now once acknowledge this principle , and if we go beyond the facts of the Scripture history , it is not very easy to decide in all instances how far it should be carried ; and the vagueness and uncertainty with which the line is fixed between what is strictly divine and what is merely human , in the minds of different interpreters , is one chief cause of the interminable disputed of theology .

    Untitled Article

    wfrh 0 / JfV Vt $ emfar& S 0 S

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1832, page 803, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1826/page/11/