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r We return from what is hardly a digression * In reading the lives of those in our own times who have felt and written like philosophers and Christians , we cannot but observe with what an earnest gaze their attention has been turned to America . The recollection of what has interested them most deeply in the progress of human improvement , necessarily awakens all our hopes and solicitudes for our native land . Its fate becomes blended with their history .
Robinson was , as we have said , a thoroughly catholic Christian ; and this fact alone implies that he had just notions of what is essential in religion ; and attached no extravagant importance to any of those false doctrines , the reception of which others have made the necessary condition of escaping everlasting misery . Educated as a Calvinist , under such preachers as Gill and Whitfield , his belief was through life gradually changing , and becoming clear and rational . Upon the occasion , however , of Mr . Lindsey ' s publishing his celebrated Apology for Resigning the Vicarage of Catterick , he came forward as a defender of the proposition , that " Jesus Christ is
truly and properly God , " in a work , entitled " A Plea for the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ . " In what sense he maintained this proposition , the reader of his Plea may probably think that he himself would have found some difficulty in distinctly explaining . He writes with great candour , and with much respect for the integrity of his opponent . His work was thought
very able by those who ought to be best qualified to judge of its merit ; and his services were very thankfully acknowledged , not merely by Dissenters , but by Dignitaries of the Establishment . Proposals were made to him to accept a situation in the church , but of course were rejected . "Do the Dissenters know the worth of the man ? " asked Dr . Ogden . " The man , said Robinson , " knows the worth of the Dissenters . "
On many topics of controversial theology his opinions seem , during much of his life , to have been loose and unsettled . In discussing them with his brother ministers , he sometimes treated such subjects with what seemed to them levity and sinful indifference . On one occasion he said , for instance , " Brother , I have delivered my present sentiments ; but I am going to feed the swans at the bottom of my garden ; on my return , perhaps I shall think differently . " He had a habit very provoking in addressing another who was
possessed with a solemn sense of the orthodoxy and importance of his opinions . He would gravely ask such a one to give a clear account of hia belief . " Brother , " he would say , " explain the matter ; when I understand the subject I will preach about it . " His own orthodoxy respecting the Trinity , which , at the time when he wrote his Plea , would not have stood
any severe test , gradually melted away . In a letter written in 1788 , two years before his death , he thus expressed himself : " As to personality in God , a Trinity of persons , I think it the most absurd of all absurdities ; and , in my opinion , a man who hath brought himself to believe the popular doctrine of the Trinity , hath done all his work ; for after that there can be nothing hard , nothing inevident ; the more unintelligible , the more credible . " It is remarkable that one commencing : life as Robinson did , should have died
as a guest of Dr . Priestley , from an interview with whom he had expected much gratification ; and that the first honours to his memory should have been paid in a funeral sermon by that eminent man . Besides the works of Robinson which have been mentioned , his translation of Claude ' s Essay on the Composition of a Sermon is well known . There are others which attracted much attention ai the time of their publication , and passed through repeated editions . They may be read at the
Untitled Article
Memoir of Robert Robinson * ' 519
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1828, page 519, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2563/page/7/
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