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Critical Synopsis Of the Monthly Repository . By an American . 553
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such article to every number of the Repository . If he is now young , ( and thsre is at any rate a juvenile purity and elasticity in the spring of some of his thoughts , ) how much promise does he hold forth !
Mr . Rutt ' s Remarks on anonymous signatures is very sensible and welltimed .
Correspondence between a Unitarian and a CalvinUt * No . II . The style of this Unitarian is of a very high order . It displays rather a rare combination of power and e&se . Sometimes Iiis shafts are too cruelly
pointed . But how can we heljpfergiving him when he is ready the next moment to confess , and ask pardon for his error ? Besides , a little sarcasm , if ever , may be indulged to ^ he opponent of a man , who seems inspired with a kind of morbid and horrible
delight in taking the gloomiest views possible of the purposes of heaven . Is there a darker or ueeper expression of sublime despair in any metaphysical romance of the Godwin school , than this— " I expect , that if I do
not most faithfully and unreservedly make the confession [ that God might justly condemn him for ever ] , God will oblige me to do so by making me feel the deprecated evil" ? This is , indeed , the concentrated essence of
Calvinism . > Mr . Freud ' s suggestions in reply to Mr . Wallace are generally just . In one of his remarks I do not entirely agree . He says , ** I cannot apply the word superstition to any thing which our Saviour thought worthy to adopt /*
If the expression adopt were here exchanged for originate , I could join in the sentiment . But it appears to me quite compatible with the object of our Saviour ' s mission , that he should adopt forms of speech , of which the origin had been superstitious . We
find that he made no attempts to alter the received phraseology respecting demoniacal possessions . In fact , the settlement of the right meaning- of terms was too insignificant an object for him to dwell upon . All his instructions seemed to bear upon the
most important and essential principles of ethics and religion . Other questions he left to the decision of critics and philosophers , since the natural reason of man is sufficient for
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such purposes . On these accounts , I can easily conceive him falling in witK the customary mode of designajing the Supreme Being , in the country where he was himself born and
educated , even though that mode might have been traced to a superstitious origin . If I may judge from my present impressions vvith regard to his errand and character , the prescription of new forms of speech would hot a little have lowered his dignity , and thrdwn a shade or two of dbubt on the divi- ;
nity of his mission . ¦ HH& business was with things , not words . He came rather to remind tis of sucfh principles as these , that anger and ltfet are , at times when we little suspect it ,
equivalent to murder and adultery , —that the character of God is a iiornbination of infinite rbdral perfections ,- —that the Jevys ^ were radically mistaken in their conceptions of the true Messiah , —and the like . .
Mr . Sturch in Reply to Mr . Cogart appears to me to adduce some objections which are rather popular and superficial than profound . * The controversy between these gentlemen I
believe might be shewii to be principally of a verbal character ^ and I have no doubt that the interchange of a few good-natured arguments will bring them both to one goal . ;
I firmly believe , with Mr . Cogan , that modern Deists owe much of their boasted light to revelation ; not entirely to Christianity , however . The Unity o £ < 3 odr I am persuaded , was revealed in some mode or other to
the . oriental world . It is a conclusion to which mere Reason could never demonstratively arrive . I would rather allow that the belief of the doctrine is instinctive , or accidentally conjectural ^ than that it can be inferred from any premises within reach of our
experience and reason . Paley ' s argument from unity of design has always struck me as deficient . It would go to prove that a whole city was built by one architect . A diversity of design is quite as apparent in the operations of
nature and providence , as unity . Ov the other hand , I cannot allow to Mr , Sturch that Cicero possessed a conception of the Deity at all corresponding with the vast , and all-embracing idea of him which is taught us by Jesus Christ and his religion . Those
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vol . xrx . 4 b
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1824, page 553, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2528/page/41/
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