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Untitled Article
truth of their narratives , notwithstanding we do not attempt to silence all remarks by the assumption of inspiration *" Ci The report of miracles , ' * says this writer * " is liable to the same remark . " Were then the
witnesses of the miracles liable to forget or to misrepresent them ? Could they not tell , or w ^ re they liable to forget ^ whether they had seen the blind restored to sight
without the application of any probable means , or not ? Did they not know whether or not a corpse which had been buried , and had begun to putrefy was raised again to life ? Or what inducement
could they have to publish such accounts if they were not true ? % / Or what probable motive could prevail with those who lived in the next age to forge such relations ? Or how could they ever have
persuaded the people that such occurrences had been published long before * when the contrary must have been universally known ? The second irrational u point of doctrine' * maintained bv
Unitarians is , that human actions are all under the law of necessity , and yet that they subject men hereafter to punishment . " The unreasonableness of this doctrine , the author contends , is not diminished by the most favourable statement of it that can be eiven .
But let it be admitted for a moment that the Supreme Being might intend the human species for an immortal duration , and that , in order to qualify them for
the enjoyment of the greatest happiness ., of which they were susceptible , the acquisiton of virtuous habits and dispositions was indispensably necessary— = —Is it
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probable that they could by &tty other meads h&ve freen made so deeply sensible of the importance of virtue and the mischiefs result * ing from vice * &s by an actual experience of their opposite ten * dencies and effects ? What
stability could the virtue of tho ^ e beings have possessed who were to--tally ignorant , at least so far as their own experience was coni cerned , of the natural and neces * sary consequences of vice ? Had mankind therefore been placed ixi a state of complete enjoyment
at their first creation , is there not reason to apprehendthat , from their inexperience of . good and evil , they would soon have dis- ; turbed the general felicity hy si conduct , of the tendency of which they Were not aware ? Docs it not therefore seem far
more eligible that they should first pass through a preparatory state , in which they might acquire such an experimental knowledge of the different effects and consequences of virtue and vice , as might confirm them in the exercise of that
conduct and that disposition which were best calculated to promote both individual and general welfare ? And to effect this end does it not appear to have been necessary that they should have been exposed to such various anel powerful temptations as would infcviU
abty produce a considerable dc * gree of vice with its attendant consequences ? Yet when vice has thus answered the design of its introduction , what absurdity is therein concluding that it will be completely destroyed ? Indeed , has it not an evident tendency to
accomplish its own destruction ? What vicious man who is sensible
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4241 Mr . Alhhins Answer to the €% urcjif 7 idft
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1808, page 424, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2395/page/24/
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