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did the great Head of the Church empower them to deny Christian communion to any man , who seriously professes faith in Jesus as the Christ , the Son of God ? Much more , to denounce , with every epithet which the copious vocabulary o € polemic wrath contains , —as men deserving t he scorn , and contempt , and
aversion , and abhorrence of all the world —as blasphemers and Atheists — tfiose whose only proved crime is , that they differ from the majority of Christians in understanding the records of their Master ' s will , the terms of salvation there propounded , and the history of their Saviour ' s life therein contained ?
" Seriously to set about refuting such charges as the above , would , I trust , be considered quite unnecessary by the majority of this audience . But , be that as it may , I beg that it may be understood by all , that we plead * not guilty' to
them ; that , upon the calmest reflection , we believe ourselves as undeserving of them as any other denomination of professing Christians ; and , appealing from the fallible denunciations of our erring brethren , we most gladly commit the vindication of our character ' unto Him
who jtidgeth righteously . * Still we cannot help feeling , and feeling deeply too , such unmerited attacks upon all « that is valuable to us as Christians , as men and as
Britons . ' We are all of us , ' ( says an eminent writer , ) made to shun disgrace , as we are made to shrink from pain , and poverty and disease . It is an instinct ; and , under the direction of reason , instinct is always in the right . '
" How much were it to be wished thatcertain defenders of orthodoxy would be less sparing of their anathemas , and deal more in arguments ! Could my feeble voice be heard , I would earnestly solicit them to imitate—not this or that polemic of great fame , whose intention was to crush where he could not persuade , to defame where he found refutation
impracticable—but the great Apostle of the ( ientiles ; who , when speaking of the * enemies of the cross of Christ , wielded the all-powerful eloquence of a bleednig heart ; who disdained to employ threats
and mvective , or to call to his aid the thunders and lightnings of Mount Sinai , but rather used the mild and persuasive language of tears and expostulations and beuevolent prayers . Besides , it might not be tin useful were they to reflect , that ,
by bending the bow too far , it may break ; that by representing a denomination of professed Christians as a hideous compound of all that in vile and base , as even worse than the very worst ' antireligious' sect ; as men irreversibly sealed to everlasting perdition— < tou , hts as to the
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truth of such representations may pog sibly be raised in the minds of some who might otherwise have gone on contentedly , in an unwaveripg and implicit assent to whatever they hear from their spiritual guides . Surely , their conviction of the truth of their own cause cannot be so tottering , as to lead them to
suppose that the awful and magnificent edifice , reared by prophets and apostles , * Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone , ' can require the puny buttresses of human censures , of
misrepresentation and calumny , of haughty disdain and bitter invective . Can the anathemas of councils and the damnatory clauses of creeds give stability to . the foundation ; or can the lightnings of excommunication reflect glorv on the
hallowed walls of the Temple of eternal Truth ? Vain thought \ It stands , like the cerulian arch we see , Majestic in its own simplicity . " Pp . 13—16 . Having cleared his way to the subject , the preacher proceeds to describe the right dispositions of a seeker of Christian truth , and to detail some of the arguments for the doctrines of the
unity and essential mercifulness of the Supreme Being-, and the delegated and ministerial authority and . work of Jesus Christ . In this course he is led to answer popular objections . Throughout , he avails himself of the works of well-known Unitarian writers .
In a note , p . 55 , Mr . Fripp , who appears to be conversant with the German language , remarks that our Lord ' s uhrase . " I and the Father are
one , " ( Iv fcr / x £ j / , ) is literally , " are one tiling , " and is thus correctly rendered in Luther ' s German translation , "Ich und der Vater sind cins , " i . e . " I and the Father are of one in bid , or
unanimous . " He adds , further , in the Slppcjuli . r , " I take this opportunity of noticing the circumstance , ( which to some uf my readers may possibly be new , ) that Luther ' s translation is , in sumo other important cases , closer to the original than our public versio / j . JKor instance , in that
very interesting passage , ( Exod . Ill - J 4 J where Moses asks by what name be is to describe the <; kj ; at Ejteknal to his country men , * rGod said unto Moses , I am that I am / ' JViwt it is tran . 8 tJa t ^ d in our comjuon version . Luther ' s is , jnore correctly , as foliowh : ' I will be what I will be . ' ( Ich wenle . soyii tier ich seyn vyerde . ) i . e « The Eternal , Immutable . It so h '* V ~ pous , however , that qur translators have
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238 Review . ' ' A —Fripps Unitarian Christians pology
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1822, page 238, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2511/page/46/
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