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OCCASIONA L CORRESPONDENCE,
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Untitled Article
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Occasiona L Correspondence,
OCCASIONA L CORRESPONDENCE ,
Untitled Article
On the Necessity of Discrimination in Opposing the Voctrines of the Established Church .
To the Editor . Sir , Dec . 13 , 1827 . As it is not my design to occupy your pages with any controversy respecting points of theology on which we shall in vain expect coincidence of sentiment , I shall be brief in the remarks which I
liave to offer in reply to your correspondent R . A . M . I will merely premise that he is evidently not aware that if his observation with respect to the harmlessness of advancing arguments against doctrines in their exaggerated
form be just , calumnies and libelsr might be vindicated on the same ground . Supposing the latter to be destitute of foundation , then since shadows only have created alarm , they can give rise to no injury , and consequently ought to excite no indignation !
The purport of the paper inserted in your number for September , which your correspondent hafc honoured with his notice , amounts to this ; that it is extremely unfair to represent all members of the Established Church' as believing
what only a part Of then ! do , and to make the whole body responsible for the extent to which many , and it may be the majority , carry its leading doctrines ' . In my apprehension , it is the dutyof our opponents to specify the precise opinions to which their * accusations are intended
to be applied , arid therefore the use of general terms is not sufficient Where they are known to comprehend different significations . Though it is tnie , With Very rare exceptions ; that every member of the Anglican Church professes to be a Trinitarian , it is not true that every orie of them embraces ; for example , the opinions of Sherlock . Those only ,
therefore , who adopt the interpre ' tation of the inflexible deandre botlnd tb atfswer the objections alleged against it . Thtfs also in the case of the Atonement , a certain number may believe in the explication given of that tenet by the diaciples of Calvirf , but it would be palpably unjust to place those chtrrfchriieri who entertained different sentiments in- the
Untitled Article
same class with these evangelical divines , as they term themselves , though both parties may be equally strenuous in maintaining the truth of the Atonement . Again , several eminent writers of the Ghurch of England have maintained , what in the present day has been advocated by Mr . Wilberforce , that the human heart was rendered so radically
depraved by the transgression of our first parents , as to be utterly incapable of any virtuous inclination and of making the slightest effort towards actual improvement . A larger portion of the clergy have contended that this corruption , though universal in its extent , has not destroyed the moral powers of man , nor prevented his attainment of
excellence by the proper exertion of his faculties : While others , like Archbishop King and Bishop Bull , make original sin consist in the evils resulting to mankind from God ' s withdrawing his extraordinary favour , as well as the gift of immortality which he had conferred upon Adam in his state of innocence , though these privileges did not in reality belong to his nature . *
From this statement it is evident that tlje charges adduced against the preceding doctrines may be true of some of their advocates , and false with respect to others '; and hence the necessity of particularizing the precise explanation which is' meant' to be opposed in all controversies' respecting these points . Your
correspondent It . A . M ., however , observes that there can be no need of this specification , when he can at once , without any trouble , appeal to the Athanasian Creed , the Articles , the ptany , and the Catechism , for the truth of his assertions . To this I have only to reply , that these articles and formularies of the
church are received by many whose sentiments materially differ from each other , and are adopted by the followers of Wallis , South , Burnet , Jortin , and Powell , not less than by those of Bull , Sberldck , Waterlartd ^ and tforsley . " Toua * ' Sde Archbishop King ' s Sermon on the ' Fall of Man at the end of ' his Origin of # vil , atid Bishop Bull ' s Discourse on the First Covenant . &c .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1828, page 127, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2557/page/55/
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