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to their just and legitimate consequences . Christianity is not a regular , digested code of laws and institutions ; opinions and doctrines are not taught systematically or arranged logically ; but it is the spirit of all law entering into our minds and controlling their
secret operations , raising us from the death of sin to the life of righteousness , and leading us from things seen and temporal to those which are unseen and eternal . It places before
our eyes certain great leading principles and maxims , which , amidst the dark and conflicting opinions of mankind , are to be to us as " the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night . " It exalts the human mind to an eminence
where there is a more extensive field of vision and brighter prospects of contemplation . It enlarges the power of its ken , and enables it at once to take a wider survey and a closer inspection . Why not use , then , the power and the privilege with which we are invested ? Whv be toiling at the base when we should be
labouring on the summit ? Why not mount the bright ascent and open our eyes to the wide range of glorious objects that is stretched out before us ? Does Cantabrigiensis mean to confine our views of God and man , of heaven and eternity , simply and entirely to what is literally and directly taught in the
Scriptures ? If so , he will rob us of many comforts and hopes dear to our hearts and delightful to our fancies . Or , does he mean to say that no opinion ought to be decidedly formed where it can be obtained only by inductive reasoning ? That the greatest care is requisite in such a process , lest we substitute our own crude notions
for the truths of God , 1 admit ; but guided by piety t humility and honesty , an opinion fairly deducibie from Scripture , is with me of almost equal authority with its express declaration . To weaken the force of my argument
from inference , Cantabrigiensis attempts to parallel it with the argument for the doctrine of the Trinity . * ' That , " says he , 'Mike your system of final restitution , is bottomed on
mere inferential reasonings" but an inference may be true or false , reasonable or absurd , justly or unjustly drawn , consistent with the premises or inconsistent . Let it be shewn that the doctrine of the Trinity is really
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inferable from the language of Scripture , the constant , uniform language of Scripture , and , whilst I retain my faith in Christianity , I am bound to believe it . 1 do not reject the dbctrine of the Trinity merely because * it is built on the ground of inference
but I reject it because it cannot be fairly inferred from the language of Scripture ; nay , because it is in direct and glaring opposition to its general language , to the uniform declarations of Christ and his apostles . Whereas I contend , that the doctrine of final
restitution is to be inferred nofmdrfel ^ from a few detached passages , but from the general strain of holy writ 3 that it is necessary to explain the plans of Providence , —necessary to give consistency and harmony to his attributes , —necessary to vindicate the ways'of God to man ; in a word , that it is a doctrine founded on nature and
on reason , delivered to us by the voice of God speaking in " the" things that are seen , " and the voice of God speaking in our own hearts . Produce a tittle of this evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity and I bow to it directly .
2 . It is objected to me , that I carry on the argument as if there were no alternative but endless misery or everlasting happiness . Right . With me there is no alternative but the one or the other of these schemes . Of all
the absurdities ever attempted to be palmed upon the mind of man under the semblance of truth , that of the resurrection and subsequent annihilation of the wicked is , in my apprehension , the greatest . Compared with
this moral absurdity , the metaphysical absurdity of the Trinity is as the straining at a gnat to the swallowing of a camel . Reason staggers and reels at the very statement of the proposition , that the vast majority of God ' s rational creatures are to foe
rescued from the dominion of death , to be again made subject to its power . If this does not look like mere vengeance , I know not what does . To believe this , I must have damning
proofs indeed , and not such as arise from the use of the words destruction , corruption , and the like , which in all ages and languages have been used so laxly as frequently to imply nothing more than a temporary loss or deprivation , and not a final and total one . If the proposition were more limited ,
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Mr ; Madge's Reply to Cantabrigiensis on " Final Restitution" f % i
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1818, page 741, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2483/page/13/
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