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has in reference to precepts , in the application of the principle of rejecting notions that were " absurd , " or " inconsistent , " or contrary to " ' common sense "—notions not , as they think , found in the Scriptures , but in human creeds . And eyen though such notions w ^ ere , as they are not , found in the Bible , still it would be our duty to reject them ; for , with the intelligent , nothing that is absurd can by any possibility gain authority . The Bible
itself could not establish an absurdity ; but absurdities might and would destroy the authority of the Bible . To our present purpose is the following quotation from Dr . Whitby , in which he mentions a circumstance which led him to relinquish the doctrines of Calvinism : " After some years' study I met with one who seemed to be a Deist , and
telling himr that there were arguments sufficient to prove the truth of Christian faith and of the Holy Scriptures 9 he scornfully replied , Yes ; and you will prove your doctrine of the imputation of original sin from the same Scripture ; intimating that he thought that doctrine , if contained in it , sufficient to invalidate the truth and the authority of the Scripture . And by a little reflection , I found the strength of his argument ran thus ; that the
truth of Holy Scripture could no otherwise be proved to any man that doubted of it , but by reducing it to some absurdity or the denial of some avowed principle of reason . Now this imputation of Adam ' s sin to his posterity so as to render them obnoxious to God ' s wrath and to eternal damnation , seemed to him as contradictory to the common reason of mankind as any thing could be , and so contained as strong an argument against the truth of Scripture , if that doctrine was contained in it , as any that could be offered fork . "
From the difficulty so well stated by Dr . Whitby , the advocates of popular error are wont to take shelter in the temple of mystery . But Dr . Whately cuts off their retreat : the passage contains nothing new in fact , though it may something in illustration . However , it is of value as coming from one of influence in the church and of unimpeached , we do not' say unimpeachable , orthodoxy .
" The sense of the term mystery as employed by the sacred writers is very commonly mistaken : and the mistake has been a source of much error . The ancient heathen had certain sacred rites in which were disclosed to those ' initiated * certain secrets which were carefully to be kept concealed from the uninitiated , ( oc ^ i ^ to * the great mass of the professors of the religion . St . Paul naturally makes allusion to these by the use of the word * mystery , ' to denote those designs of God ' s providence and those doctrinal truths which had been kept concealed from mankind till c the fulness of time' was come , ' but now were made manifest to believers . And he frequently adverts to one important circumstance in the Christian mysteries which distinguishes
them from those of Paganism , vi ^ . that while these last were revealed only to a chosen few , tli-e gospel mysteries on the contrary were made known to all who would listen to and obey the truth , whether Jew or Gentile , bond or free , barbarian or Greek . All Christians were initiated , (< rvfA . fAv $ -oti , as one of the ancient fathers calls them , ) and those only remained in darkness who wilfully shut their eyes : * if our gospel be hid , it is hid to them that are lost , whom the prince of this world hath blinded . "'
Now our ordinary use of the word mystery conveys the notion of something that we cannot understand at all , and which it is fruitless to inquire into . Both we and the sacred writers , indeed , understand by the word something hidden from one party and known to another , ( for we suppose all mysteries to be known to God , ) but there is this difference ; that we use the word in reference to them from whom the knowledge is withheld : St . Paul
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Prhafetys Essays on the Writings of St . Paul . 617
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vol . in . 2 u
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1829, page 617, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2576/page/17/
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