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of your very serious and judicious readers have thought the piece signed W . intended for a burlesque upon Schiller , and not a serious allusion to the facts of the Old Testament : and ,
in my turn , I ana labouring under the suspicion , that your correspondent I . is some infidel in disguise , who has thrown out a bait to catch another , by provoking him to farther remarks , when it is not in his power to call out the more able Schiller himself into
the field . For it surely is now too late to use such language seriously , as your correspondent has employed on the subject of the historical parts of the Old Testament . What can he mean by these words , " I am at a loss to understand how those who call
themselves Christians can justify such sceptical sentiments , " &c . ; and again , " inconsistent scepticism" ? This is the common cant of ignorance—every thing is sceptical which is without the " exiguum curriculum" of our creed .
I did not expect to see such a sentence in the Repository of General Literature . He must be dreaming when he talks of 4 € striking at the very root of Christianity itself , and denying the divine authority of Moses and the
prophets . " In every step upwards , from the bare acknowledgment of Jesus as an extraordinary personage , to the belief in him as the everlasting God , the feeble child of dust talks of * the scepticism" of him who is moving one step below him , and c * he cannot understand how he can call himself a
Christian . " I pity him from my heart Serious as he may be , he will doubtless join in the exclamation of the witty author of the Sentimental Journey , " How I love the man , who will give up the reins into his author ' s hands , be pleased he knows not why , and cares not wherefore ! I "
While it is not my design " to explain away all that appears miraculous / ' I have been taught by the example of Joseph Priestley , Henry Moore , and some other bold minds , who made their way of reading the Bible known to the world first in the
Theological Repository , and afterwards in sundry works , to feel an anxiety to give an air of probability to all those ancient writings which , for various reasons , I hold in great esteem , and not the less so because there is an important relation acknow-
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ledged between them and the books of the New Testament ; which , in point of fact , are of infinitely greater value than they , and which might stand their ground , although the writings of Moses and the prophets had been trampled in the dust .
I fain would know whether your correspondent I ., or whether any Unitarian Christian , is prepared to avow , that all the events of the Old Testament which are related in language that implies miracle , were really supernatural events ? If he does , let
him read Josephus ' s History of the Jews , and he will find that an orthodox Jew shews the natural agent that brought many of them about , and has not the most distant reference to miracle in them ; nay , the Scriptures themselves , which in one place describe a transaction as the immediate work of God , in another describe the
instrument to be a man of one of the powers of nature . 3 should fear affronting your biblical readers did I attempt to point them out .
And if I am disposed to assign natural causes for some other of those events which Christians have been pleased to regard as miraculous , am I to be called a sceptic and be bespattered with obloquy , and pointed at as an infidel and no Christian ?
The bigoted Catholic for that—who reproaches the man of < 6 little faith /* because he gives a false turn to the declaration of his Lord , " This is my body . '' The honest Trinitarian does the same , who denies the character of Christian to him who cannot believe
in the personal divinity of the Son aim the Spirit . And , if you please ^ the half-way Arian , who is angry with his younger brother , because he has taken one step beyond him , and denied the pre-existence of his Master .
On the ground of this " scepticism , which requires from your correspondent some farther explanation , " let me refer I . to Bellamy ' Bible , where I think he may be both amused and instructed , though he may not go all lengths with that erudite and ingenious writer . It is well known that the
manner in which facts are spoken of in the Old Testament , has turnished a handle against the entire history of the Hebrews as a divine interference , and surely he cannot be a foe to divine truth who will remove the difficulties
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Mosaic Mission . . 539
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1825, page 539, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2540/page/25/
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