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Untitled Article
from the reason of the thing , and now from the custom of the language . Quern penes arbitrium est , tt jus , tl nonua * loguejidu My worthy friend and our Arian brethren in general , dispute our exclusive claim to this distinction * and I have often been
disposed to smile to see how dexterously they elude the argu * meats of their opponents by raising a cloud of dust about averb-al question which has no connection with the main point in dispute . In the present stage of the controversy it is incumbent tipon the learned Arians to shew that the doctrine of a created
Logos occupying the pi ace of a human soul in the body of Christ had any existence before the fourth century : or to explain how the universal church for three complete centuries could remain in total'ignorance of the person of its founder . Instead of which , till my friend ' s book appeared , we have heard nothino * from the Arians for the last twenty years but loud
exclamations against the Unitarians for appropriating to themselves that honourable name . And I have myself been pretty much schooled upon the subject , as if I had invented and propagated an invidious distinction , though I have done nothing more than taken up the word as I found it , and used it uniformly in the sense which appeared to me the most proper , leaving to others the option of usins ; it in whatever sense they think fit . I
admire the policy of our Arian brethren , and to do them justice I must own that thev have in some measure succeeded amongst persons who attend more to sound than sense , in brinoincr a
tiegree of odium upon a cause which they could not easily refute . I rejoice however that Unitarianism is become an honourable distinction ,- and I sincerely wish that our Arian brethren might become Unitarians , not in name and in word only , but in deed and in truth . In the mean time I will take leave to state the
grounds upon which I think that the assertors of the proper humanity of Jesus Christ are exclusively entitled to the distinction of Unitarians . ¦ The era of the reformation produced many Anti-trinitarians who were in general branded with the title of AHuii ^ though it appears horn the brief memoirs which have born nv . n . ^ nUcd of their opunonsand suflerings , that a considerable , proportion , and probably , the imnoritv of them denied the prc existence of Chn >; t . The advocates of this doctrine who were afu iv aoU distinguished f > v the name of Socinians , became very auniercus in lux / land at the close of the seventeenth centurv . At
* Sec Mr . LInchcy ' s Historical View of the state of the Uniiarian doctriw * jUil worshio .
Untitled Article
Ids Mr . Belshctm ' s Strictures on Carpenters Lectures .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1807, page 198, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2379/page/30/
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