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680 Mr . Belsham ' s Defence of Dr . Priestley against Dr . E . Channing .
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a believer in the omnipotence of truth , ^ d I bteeause \ & was persuaded that $ ftk # i ^* ess © t pure Chrtstiaimty was impeded rather than promoted . by tfie officious interference of the civil
power . * TJiat he was Upon amicable terms with the Kettch « h ^ fnists , is tfue ) toec&iike lie ^ a& ai rderitly engaged in the s&me jphilo ^ pM He knew they were Unbelievers ; and they > td ^ their great astouislitnent , discovered that he wa ^ a real and jealous
believer in the ^ piristiaii revelation : but tfiis dteedveiry did not interrupt their philosophical harniony , libr pirodittte any civil discord between thetxi ; * < Dr . Channing charges Dr . Priestley with ilicorpprating with Bis Unitarianism what he calls the chilling
doctrines of th £ materialism of the souly of the mechanical necessity of human actions ; ^ nd oFthe suspension 6 f consciousness for ages after death . As tcT the doctrine of Materialism , it is
plain that Dr . Chanmng does not understand what Dr . P . meant by it . I will only say , that Dr . Priestley no inore believed that solid , inert matter had the power of thinking , than Dr . C . himself .
- With respect to the doctrine of Necessity , surely it is ho proof that Dr . Priestley was a man of a cold moral constitution to profess his belief of it , when the celebrated President Edwards has written what Dr . P . always represented as the most able and unanswerable defence of it that ever was
penned . And if any persons think that Mr . Edwards was a chilling writer , let them read what he has written Upon the eternity of heill-tornients . It would better become Dr . C . to answer the argument for Necessity , than to abuse the doctrine and its advocates .
Dr . Priestley , like his friend Dr . Price , together with many thousands of sincere believers in Christianity in England and elsewhere , believed in the suspension of thought between death and the resurrection : and if Dr .
Channing does not believe it , let him explain what St . Paul means when he affirms , that if there be no resurrection of the dead , all who have fallen asleep in Christ are perished , It was no chilling tenet of an earth-born philosophy , i > ut a regard to the plain language of inspired scripture , which induced Dr . Priestley and many others
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to maintain * that the i ^ # ard of the righteous will be a # ^^ period -when ; alt w ^ graves shall heaF the Voice -pi the Sorif of God , and shill / ctimefbrth *'
I shall notice only ohe ituwrfc allegation against ther fcharac ^ veherated friend , and tljat is c ^ ^ lifch , K&d he been now living , wcrtflil Have e ! x ^| ted his highest iridighatidti , as a diriebt bontradictioti : to the wKofe tenor
of his life and writiilgs . I vriii twirisbribe it in the word § of tlie ^ ac ^ aser himself : *^ - ¦ ¦;" * y I think too that his literary
eonnexidrus , his habits of : / pliy ^ icai research , and ; the spirit of tlie age ^ led him to believei that Christianity ^ irdWd be made inore credible tfy excluding from it the supernatural as iiaucli ^ as possible p % n opiiiibn which J > robabljr swayed iidt a / little his yi <^ vs of his fiivourite doctrines . "
• ' That any persons ishould have the assurance to call themsdres Christians wliile they deny every thing supernatural in the Christiain revelation , is tnily astonishing ; ' Revblation is itself supernatural communication , or it is nothing . Jesus Chfist rose'from
the dead , or he is ail impostor They who deny these facts , are Unbelievers ; they are fib Christians ; they have no right to call themselves Christians . To assume the name is base hypocrisy ; it is downright falsehood . I do not deny that Unbelievers m ^ y be
£ ood moral men : I am far from judging of their final state : I believe that in some countries they may have powerful reasons for assuming * the name and profession of Christians , when , in fact , they are not such . An Anti-supgrnaturalist * is , ipso facto ; an Unbeliever in the Christian revelation . He
must regard the resurrection of Chnst as a falsehood , and the miracles of the gospel as fables . To assert that Dr . Priestley was an Anti-supernatvralist , re a palpable contradiction to all his
professions , to all his writings , to the whole scope and tenor of his character ; arid if he were now living * , he would regard it as the greatest personal insult that could be offered him .
What Dr . Channing means by asserting that €€ Dr . P . framed and propagated a system in mafiy respects open to the charge of being cold and uninteresting / ' he best knows . Let me tell lam , that D *\ prie&tley framed
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1824, page 680, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2530/page/40/
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