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own part of the United Kingdom , at least , the theological and the learned world are nearly unanimous in F 6 je € t ~ ing * the doctrine of Transubstantiatioa . Yet Tran&ubstantkition has more direct evidence in its favour than either the Atlianasfctn ar any other system of the Trinity . From the wards , " This 9
is my body / ami from masny expressions in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel , the Romanist may derive arguments for the conversion of the elements in the eueharist , that are faT more plausible thiat any which the Trinitarian employs for his characteristic tenet . Transubstantiation is
not ? like the Trinity , a matter of tnference : nor is it placed merely on the ground of church-authority . Its advocates declare that it is taught literally and expressly z and they err in
their interpretation , solely because they will not expound Scripture by itself ; because they will not distinguish between the declaration of a fact and the statement of a
resemblance . Trinitarianism possesses not even those specious attestations whicfe Transubstantiation finds in genuine Scripture , when judged of Gxellisivety by its appearance and its sound , by
detached sentences , and by single clauses . What is it then which upholds the belief and the profession of Trinitarianism ? The principal eupport of the doctrine will be seen in the services and forms of the
Established Church : with these it is thoroughly incorporated ; and to defend the Trinity , is therefore , in the opinion of most men , the same thing as to defend the ecclesiastical constitution .
We may repeatedly enter even those houses of Protestant Dissenting- worship , in which reputed Orthodoxy is strenuously inculcated , and yet may not hear such invocations of < f Three
Persons / ' separately and jointly , as occur in the Litany of the Church of England . Human nature remaining what it is , a vast body of individuals have an interest in maintaining the truth of the articles to which they have subscribed , and the purity of the worship that they statedly conduct .
As we glance at the theologipal controversies ia this country , from the Revolution down to the present times , we shall be persuaded that the great questions concerning " the person and pre-existence of Christ , > y have
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be ^ n more agitated towards the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the i&ireteenth century than in any former division of the period of which we speak . The subject was not
altogether forgotten dujing the reign of William and Mary : it is remarkable , nevertheless , that the discussion which then arose respecting it , was chiefly between a celebrated real and a no less
celebrated modal Trinitarian ; between Dr . William Sherlock and Dr . Robert South . * An sera at which penal laws are enacted against the supposed oppugners of religious truth , is not , in general , likely to be the aera of argument and investigation : and neither civil nor ecclesiastical liberty was so well understood or exercised even at
the Revolution , and for many years afterwards , as not to receive dreadful wounds from those who professed to be tjje assertors and the friends of freedom . While Anne swayed the British sceptre , the disputes between the
theologians of the day , were rather on schism—on conformity and occasional conformity—than on points of doctrine . One very memorable exception there , undoubtedly , wets , in the case af " honest Will . Whiston / ' whose
expulsion from the Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics , in the University of Cambridge , on the ground of his Antitrinitariarf heresy , took place on October 30 , 1710 , and who , in the following year , was , on the same account , embroiled with the convocation . In the subsequent reign , this learned and excellent man
engaged in a controversy with the Earl of Nottingham , f * ' concerning the eternity of the Son of God , and of the Holy Ghost . " Contemporary with Whiston was the Rev . Thomas Einlyn , who suffered imprisonment for his assertion of the Supreme Deity of God the Father , and was a most able
champion of that primary tenet of natural and of revealed religion . In the year 1719-20 , which , in other respects , was a conspicuous though no honourable period in British history , violent disputes about the doctrine of the Trinity arose in the metropolis , and in the West of England ^ these convulsed
* Mou . Repos . XX . 39 . f Whiston ' s Memoirs , pp . 248 , 249 , and the Cafal . of H . and N , Authors , artiole , Daniel Finch , &c .
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220 Review . L - ~ WeUi > d 0 ve # t etters to Archdeacon Wrangtem *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1825, page 220, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2535/page/28/
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