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Untitled Article
guished from all the hunnan race , who are without exception and in greater or less degrees imperfect and unholy , on which ground alone they stand in need of divine forgiveness and of course of the gospel . Now if Christ were of the same nature
m every respect with mankind , how shall we account for this woYiderful dissimilarity of character , considering especially that the human character is formed by education , in infancy and youth , before reason is matured and before there can be any habitual moral consideration ? It would seem almost to be necessary on the hypothesis of Christ being wholly undefiled
and yet a man , like other men , that his parents , brethren , neighbours and all who influenced his infant mind should have been perfect also . Unitarians will not say , I imagine , that Christ was preserved holy and made virtuous by divine influence , because virtue and holiness cannot be imparted , and if they could would cease to be subjects of praise , with regard to their possessor : besides that if Christ ' s moral excellence . were . owing directly or indirectly to divine assistance it would as much cease to be an
example to ordinary men who have no such assistance , as on the supposition of his being God and -his ., perfection being an attribute of his nature . But perhaps the Essayist and the advocates of the Unitarian doctrine suppose Christ to have
possessed greater powers of mind than ever fell to the lot of any other man ; ( for the effect must have a cause ,, our Lord ' vast superiority musthave been occasioned by something , and as to moral advantages merely * good ins truction , virtuous example , and the like- he was not . more favoured . than the rest of hift
countrymen , certainly not more than his apostles ) ; if they suppose this , and I know not what else can be supposed , do they not substitute one difficulty for another ? , . For the difference of powers between a sinless being and 3 , sinner must be so vast ag to amount nearly to a difference of nature- With these widely
distant powers , J csus and men in common are not onequal terms , and therefore he is not , in the Unitarian idea , a proper example to them . Could one of the enlightened and virtuous worshippers of Essex-Street-Chapel or the Gravel-Pit-Meeting be a . suitablc morad exemplar to a South-Sea-Islander J And yet the dis pro portion between the refined Unitarian and the savage is nothing to that between asinful and , a sinless man . It is of some
importance in the discussion of this subject , to know whether Mr . W . and such as think with him , admit that Christians , say Unitarian Christians of the present day and of this country , can come up fully to the perfect example of Christ , so as to be entiwly without ain . If they caji > aud do , the superiority ° ^
Untitled Article
47 O Dimculties on the Unitarian Hypothesis .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1807, page 470, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2384/page/18/
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