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and some English traveller in the United States will treat them next year with a Correspondence in the Repository respecting Elias liickes , and his persecutions , and household style of living . Dr . Smith asks if Mr . Bakewell
** is ignorant that the very word salvation . means deliverance ' from sin . " This is coming round sweepingly to Arminianism and liberal interpretation , and lowering the old terrific images with which Calvinism has so long and often essayed to move the world .
And how the doctrine of Final Perseverance is frittered away by this accommodating writer ! It amounts then to a mere truism . Unitarians ,, and all other men of good sense , I should presume , must admit in the main the representations of it here made .
There is a poor catch m the reasoning on p . 674 , beginning- with cc He that believeth on me , " &c . These expressions contain not a promise of perseverance to those who believe , but a promise of everlasting life to those whoperseveringly believe . The doctrine of final perseverance , I imagine , has nothing to do with theuu
All that about < c the salt of the land" in Edinburgh and other Calvinistic cities , is still purely a begging of the question . It takes for granted the very fact that Mr . Bakewell disputes . Bat Calvinists are so fond of applying to themselves the scriptural iC
expression Salt of the earth , " that , I dare say , Mr . Smith ' s argument with himself , instead of being pointless , passes for self-evident . Mr . BeUham on Dr . Channing s Attempt to delineate Dr . Priestley ' s Character .
I am not disposed to defend the entire breadth of Dr . Channing ' s remarks on Dr . Priestley ; but the present writer ' generous jealousy causes him , I think , to magnify the wound inflicted on the reputation of his departed friend .
Although Dr . Priestley might have regarded innovation as improvement , yet so do all innovators , and this is a weak defence against the charge of Dr . Channing . As to the French theory of chemistry , it was opposite to his own ; and may not this have been the cause of his reluctance to adopt
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it ? The next charge is not very h ^ avv and is a mere matter of critical opil nion ; and the next is very feebly replied to . ^ As regards the allegation of a deficiency in moral enthusiasm in Priestley , I apprehend Dr . Channimr w j ^
be well borne out . Undoubtedly , Dr Priestley had a certain kind of enthul siasm , which prompted him to pursue the truth fearlessly , * and to suffer for it manfully . But , surely , his best friends must allow , that in the capacity of religious teacher , or leader of
a party , he possessed no vivid enthusiasm . He was rigidly didactic and demonstrative in all his writing and preaching , but there was little , if any , warmth in his exhortations , and no high tone of sensibility in his reflec * tions . This was probably all that Dr . Channing could mean . American
Unitarians can easily inform Mr . Belsham , that if Dr . Priestley , in his first sermons at Philadelphia , had displayed more " moral enthusiasm , " and less of the mere uncompromising ardour of the contoversialist , there would have been an earlier , broader , and more central basis laid for
Unitarianism in America . In closely examining Dr . C / s remarks on Priestley ' s anti-supernaturalism , I find no positive charge , but every thing tenderly , sparingly and dubiously said . The amount of it only is , that Priestley was liable to be " swayed" in his speculations by
the scrupulous spirit of his age , and knowing that there is something infinitely valuable in Christianity , he was inclined to hope that it would be rendered " more credible ; " not by sweeping- away its miraculous character , surely , but by excluding from it the supernatural " as much as possible ;" that is , as much as the truth could
bear . I think it not worth while to touch upon several other points in the body of this communication , since they rather involve some matters of
metaphysical theology and biblical criticism , than a direct impeachment of Dr . Priestley ' Christian and moral temperament , or any misapprehension of Dr . CVs terms on the part of his
critic . Mr . Belsham does not appear to me to have considered with proper
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656 Critical Si / yiopsis of the Monthly Repository for November , 1824 .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1825, page 656, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2542/page/16/
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