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CHRISTIANITY A SYSTEM OF POLYTHEISM .
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To the Editor of the Monthly Repository .
sin , Diss ^ QthMay , 1808 . Having lately found at a friend's house , and read with much pleasure several numbers of your Repository , I determined to attempt being admitted into the number
of your correspondents ; my first difficulty " was to discover in what manner letters should be addressed —of other periodical publications , the covers usually supply the requisite information .
My second difficulty was to find a topic likely to interest your readers , as well as myself ; for although a number of speculative questions respecting the scriptures , are continually pressing on my mind , I have observed that the doubts and
solicitudes of one person are seldom those of another , and that , what to me is dark , in my neighbour ' s eye , shines , as if it were clear .
Christianity , I mean scriptural Christianity , is surely a system of polytheism . I do not say it teach , es a plurality of supreme beings , that would be a solecism ; but that it authorizes and encourages a subordinate worship of various
other intelligent natures , such as angels , prophets , saints , holy spirits , gloriiied ghosts ; and especially that it authorizes the worshi p , as Socinus has convincingly shown , of Jesus Christ our Lord . Some sort of social reverence
for the fathers of the" country , for the prophets of religion , for the worthies of antiquity , some approach to a hero-worship , analogous to the hagiolatry of the catholics , appears to have been
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already usual in the temple of Jerusalem , before the time of Christ . Thus we find in the Ecclesiasticus , ( xliv . 15 . ) that the congregation shewed forth the
praise of famous men : and hymns follow which the people are invited to sing in honour of Enoch , of Noah , of Abraham , of Moses , and of other venerated benefac *
tors of the people . Cenotaphs ornamented with sculpture must have been erected to these holy persons ; for Herodotus , speaking of the temple of Jerusalem , says , that images of the high priests were put up within it . These images , from which the catholics
traditionally borrow their saint-worship , are no where objected to in the New Testament . ..... . On the contrary , the worship of angels to whom Paul was repeatedly indebted , ( Acts , v . 19 . ) is expressly forbidden to be disused ; and
is represented as attended , like voluntary humility , with a reward , ( Colossians , ii . 18 ); ^ and the elect angels are peculiarizod ( 1 . Timothy , v . 21 . ) as partaking the omniscient , or all-seeing fa * culties of God and of Jesus Christ .
Some one q £ these inspired and prophetic spirits was to visit the earth , and to hear what went forward on it , and to foretel future events , ( John , xvi . 13 . ); probably in the form , or persson of Paul .
Nor . only Enoch , Elias , and other men , who were never suf ^ fired to see the corruption of death , are according to scripture * still living : but Moses who ap #
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( 541 > ? ... ..
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VOL . HI , 4 C
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1808, page 541`, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2397/page/17/
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