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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
MR- BELSHAM ' S STRICTURES UPON MR . B . CARPENTERS DEFENCE OF A&IANiSM IN HIS LECTURES . LETTER V * To the Editor of the Monthly Repository .
Sir , In my worthy friend ' s Lecture upon Metaphysics ^ he introduces a note ( p * 54 ,, ) in defence of the existence of a Devil which is too curious to be passed over without notice . * ' It is / ' says he , " one of the discoveries of the present age , that there is no such being as the Devil : and to believe in his existence is esteemed a mark of superstition . This belief is called an evanescent prejudice , which is now a discredit to a man of understanding . " I confess , Sir , that to this opinion 1 feel myself pretty strongly Inclined ; and that in my judgment it is much to the credit both of the
discernment and of the information of the present age _ , that there is a growing tendency to discard the absurd Manicheau hypothesis of an evil spirit , and to revert to what appears to have been the original doctrine hoth of reason and revelation—that there is in the universe but one governing will—that there is otie Being whose sole prerogative it is / "to form light and to create darkness , to make peace and to create evil * .
My friend , however , thinks differently . The opinion which he espouses is , he says , " very ancient . In the most remote and purest ages of antiquity of which we have any account , it was believed that there is one supreme God , the Author of all good : that inferior to him is another being the immediate author of evil ; and also a divine person called the conductor or mediator , whose office it is to
rectify the evil produced by the latter , " As my friend here " adopts very strong and positive language , ' * and as it ought not to be supposed that he is one ot those who are " most bold when they are most blind / ' it is to be presua ^ ed ^ that he has crood reason for his confidence . It would
therefore have been kind in him to have informed his less learned reader , where this ancient and authentic document is to be found , which makes the devil , in a manner , the second person of the trinity , and represents this notioa as the
uui-* Is a xlv . 7 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1807, page 304, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2381/page/16/
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