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    Untitled Article

    &riidles ,, @f which it may safely be * aid that they are numerous and intricate , and for several of which we discern no evidence in the Scriptures . The fact is clear in the present state , of almost every Protestant Society ; and it is a fact which , perhaps more than any other , demonstrates the incompleteness of the Reformation , and the existence of an Anti-Christian principle and power . Ac _ cording to the New Testament , the Messiahs hip of Jesus , is or should be the whole of a Christian ' s creed . Supposing human articles of religion to be specifically scriptural , they are unnecessary : and if they be contrary to scripture , they are fraught with

    danger . It has been pleaded that < c as the Founder of Christianity neither established nor recommended any particular form of ecclesiastical jurisdiction , he has left the nature and the mode of it to be

    determined by human wisdom . " But even if , for the purpose of the argument , I made this concession , I would still remark that the spirit , the genius , the simplicity of the gospel ought to be strictly

    kept in view , when we are framing terms of religious communion . To go beyond the conditions insisted on by the author and the original publishers of our faiih , is to blend the ordinances of men

    with the commands of Heaven . c ' Protestant churches" it has also been affirmed , ' < are voluntary societies , which have the right of laying down their own

    terms of admission into them , pro . vid ^ d they require nothing manifestly inconsistent with the law of Christ . " What , however , is the k * Ct £ ^ Are they all volunta ry so-

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    Essay on the Defects of the Reformation * 507

    Untitled Article

    cieties ? Are none of them fortified by temporal rewards , by temporal penalties and disabilities ? And if these be their guards , with with what justice do you allege that they are voluntary associations , or even describe them ^ s beine ; Protestant and Christian ?

    The Reformation would have been less defective had it condemned the faUe and mischievous doctrine that religious opinions may be arraigned at the tribunal of the magistrate .

    In not a few instances they were actually so arraigned : and we know that , with scarcely any excerption , such was the sentiment of the Reformers , asserted both in their discourses and their writings ; they avowed the principle , even

    though they occasionally qualified and limited its application . As the consequence , the spirit of in . tolerance and persecution , has not yet ceased to disgrace the comparatively enlightened age in which we live ;

    Such , generally were the defects of the Reformation . Among those of its instruments I shall first mention an irrational fear of incurring the auilt of schism .

    By schism , or division , I mean a causeless separation from a religious society or church . And the schismatic is not only he who lightly cuts himself off from such

    an association , but he , moreover , who , by exercising spiritual tyranny and imposing unscriptural terms of fellowship , forces others to withdraw from it , and to form

    a distinct communion . At the period of the Reformation , this doctrine , so commonly acknowledged in the present day , was not easily admitted . Men had b ^ ea so long enslaved by an

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1813, page 507, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2431/page/19/