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Untitled Article
torney-General in taking cognizance of all our offences , I deliver them over to his eastigation , that they may learn not to blaspheme . He has advanced
his accusation , I suppose , knowing that he can prove it ; or at any rate knowing that he and the Old Unitarians are secure from its being retorted upon them .
It may not be amiss to remind your Correspondent of the fact , that Mr . Smith ' s bill originated in the Committee of the Unitarian Fund . They are , I suppose , New Unitarians , and therefore not entitled to either
candour or gratitude . And yet surely he might bestow on them the crumbs whieli fall from the table , on which so plentiful a feast of those dishes is set out for the Government and the Bishops .
The New Unitarians , we are next told , are " not at all averse to manifest that degree and measure of intolerance which they have it in their power to exercise . " I would not stoop to the degradation of implying , by a defence , that there was some
plausibility in such an accusation , were it not that this unfounded charge is propped up by an unfounded assertion . He stntes as a general fact , what I verily believe is not true of a single individual , that the New Unitarians " are disposed to contend that
the only morality and piety deserving regard is inseparably connected with their own views of religious truth . " I challenge him to produce a single writer , amongst the whole body that he has arraigned , who denies to his
opponents such morality and piety as will not merely deserve regard , but ensure salvation ! I defy him to produce a single preacher by whom the position has been advanced which he ascribes to the whole party . There is none such but in the writer ' s
imagination . And on the deposition of this phantom-witness , which none but he can hear , we are all to be convicted of «< the most intolerable species of intolerance !" Some young minister , it appears , to
whom rather an equivocal compliment is paid , has offended by asserting that ** unless Christianity be professed under some particular form , it is in itself but a name . " If the minister alluded to be < a reader of the Repository , he will probably animadvert
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upon this passage himself . I must be permitted , however , to observe that , in my opinion , the Old Unitarian is not quite regular in this attack upon an individual who , if the obnoxious assertion was made in the
pulpit or in public , will of course be recognized by many of his hearers , and thus , perhaps , without being aware of it , become personally charged with the follies and vices ascribed to the New Unitarians ; with a love of persecuting and being persecuted ;
with inculcating a lax and false morality , and being careless abdut the character of his associatesj with fondness for convivial meetings , and disaffection to the Government . Now , though a whole party may laugh at these imputations , vet to an
individual they may be of serious consequence , and should not have been advanced by an anonymous writer . If the military practice be imitated in controversy , of aiming at officers from behind bushes , let it be remembered that riflemen have been judged not entitled to quarter .
The proposition itself is not very clearly or happily expressed ; but , if I understand it , is much nearer the truth than your Correspondent is willing to admit . By calling himself a Christian , a man does not inform
me whether he worships the Father only , or two other divine persons in addition to him , or some hundreds of saints and angels in addition to this Trinity ; -whether the moral government of the world be for the good of a whole , a part , or none of its
inhabitants ; whether the terms on which sinners may be reconciled to God are repentance and reformation only , or faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ , or whether it be not independent of
any terms ; whether the redemption that is in Jesus Christ be his purchase of our salvation by his merits and suffering , the procurement of the influences of the Holy Ghost for believers , a change of our relation to
God by moral means , or a confirmation of our immortality ; whether a resurrection from the dead be a revival of existence , or merely its continuation in another mode ; or , whether
future retribution be reward and punishment for our own offences and obedience , or punishment for the sin of Adam , and reward for the merits
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Mr . Fox in Reply to An Old Unitarian . 335
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1817, page 335, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2465/page/15/
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