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•• There is one great disadvantage to which the opponents of this new spiritual power are exposed . —Its members having assumed and appropriated to themselves the exclusive title of gospel preachers and Evangelical ministers ,
whoever attempts to reprobate or expose the falsehood and evil tendency of their doctrines , is instantly denounced as an -enemy to the gospel , and one -who cannot bear the system of Evangelical truth : thus they roundly insist upon and take for granted , the very fact you deny ; which is that their doctrines are neither
derived from the one , nor consistent with the other ; and they forthwith proceed to revile you as a reprobate and an unbeliever . This was exactly the sophistry employed by the Jesuits ;—they assumed to be exclusively the followers of Jesus ; and when at length , their doctrines were drawn into discussion , and their proceedings excited alarm ,
they then did as their imitators do in the present day , they pleaded their title without proving it , and proceeded to argue down their opponents with such logic as the following : the Jesuits are the disciples of Jesus ; whosoever opposes the disciples of Jesus , opposes Jesus ; the enemies of the Jesuits therefore are the enemies of Christ and his
gospel . The multitude who did not perceive the fallacy that lurked in the premises , thought the conclusion irresistible . But experience at length discovered to them , that this argument
¦ was unsound , and their senses by degrees reversed the error of their understanding . The power of the Jesuits declined , and their imposing : title grew at last into a pioverbial epithet , expressive of all that is equivocating , and all that is base . " ( pp . io , 11 . )
II . The doctrines of the Evaii - gclical party are again discussed by the Barri » ter , who seems to declare him&elf ( pp . 73 , 74 . ) an Anti-Trinitarian , hut without explaining whether he adopts the Arian or strict Unitarian hypothe-» i . s or whether he be a church of England of a dissenting Unitarian . From the ' * First Part" of the
•* Mints , * ' we guessed that the author was an A r mini an churchmail | and we remonstrated ( p .
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223 . ) with the Evangelical Ma * gazine for reviling him as an ac * k-uowledged Socinian . The coiu ductors of that work may now congratulate themselves upon their sagacity ; and though we contend that Socinianism ( to give our
Evangelical philologists their fe « vorite appellation , ) is not in the least implicated in the Barrister ' s cause , yet as we wish not to be defective in charity , we will here * after cheerfully allow every wri * ter against the " Hints" to brand the author with the odious name
Socinian , whenever he finds himself unable to repel his charges of refute his arguments . On the subject of good works , the Barrister points out a gross perversion of a passage in the prophet Isaiah , common to the
calvmistic writers and preachers of the present day , which no reflecting , judicious Christian can witness without disgust . The pro * pbet ( ch . Ixiv . v . 6 . ) confessing the iniquities of his countrymen and acknowledging the equity of
the divine judgments , says " all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags , " or as Bishop Lowth renders the passage , " like a rejected garment are all our righteous deeds "—unaccepted of God
because worthless , insincere and therefore not righteous . On this fragment of scripture , wrenched from its proper place and true connection , is founded chiefly the Evangelical doctrine of the inefficacy of good works ; a doctrine which is so repugnant to the scriptures , so abhorrent to common
sense and so threatening to society , that the majority of those that hold it are happily the firs * to contradict it , as well by their other doctrines as by their exaui-
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502 Review .- — Hints on Evangelical Preaching .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1808, page 502, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2396/page/46/
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