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( Continued from p . 539 . ) \\ The opponents of Calvinism have ofteii been charged with misrepresenting its doctrines . Misrepresented they may be , but made more horrible than they really are , they cannot . The genuine doctrines of Calvinism are little known
in our day ; at least the knowledge of them , and the feeling of their awful power , are to a great extent confined to the more uneducated classes of the community . Amongst them we know they continue in somewhat of their primitive deformity , and exert a most injurious and distressing influence . To know what Calvinism is , reference must be made to the works of Calvin himself , and in them we have found the system in all the fulness of its horror . By those who have not access to the works of the Genevese Reformer , the
Assembly ' s Catechism may be read ; and no unperverted mind can peruse either of these , without withdrawing in wonder from a system so abhorrent to all the teachings of nature , and all the emotions of the heart . From such dogmas , wherever we found them , we should , for ourselves , turn to the dictates of our own heart , and pronounce the assertions made of the utter depravity of man , false and calumnious ; we would turn to the constitution of society , to the rich streams of benignity that pass through its frame , to the beneficent
arrangements and splendid array of the heavenly bodies , to the earth loaded with the riches of the Divine love , to its hills and its valleys , its sunshine and shade ; we would turn to the irrational creatures , notice the infinitude of their number , the fulness of their jays , the boundless diversity of their pursuits ; we would call on each and all the works of God to confute the doctrine , and ta proclaim with universal exultation and universal gratitude , " The Creator is good—his tender mercy is over
all his works . " No ! we must change our being , we must lose all our experience , we must go into a world where man is not roan , and where universal love 3 miles not around , ere we could believe the frightful dogmas of Calvin . If they are true ,, happy the beasts that , browse the herbage , unconscious of a dreadful destiny—happy the birds that carol their Maker's praises , unknowing that vengeance and not benignity presides over the creation—happy , a thousand times happier , all the irrational creation than .
man , for he alone of all the universe is fitted to be greatly blessed , and he alone with perfect consciousness of his destiny is fated to be greatly and inexpressibly miserable . Of the ignorance of uncivilized nations we speak much and with deep regret . But rather , if this doctrine be true , their lot is enviable , for they live in happy ignorance of the terrible doom which , even if Christianity were proclaimed in their ears , the majority of them would have to undergo . For the refutation of such doctrines , we trust by no means in the least degree to the natural sentiments of the heart . Human
nature may , indeed , be so perverted that for a time it may yield to their oppressive sway ; but it is not for long . The native feeliqgs of the soul are too powerful to endure a weight so crushing . You may call them orthodoxy , and thus britpe men to their avowal , but they must perish . The heart will struggle against the bondage—tlie bosom will heave to reject the load . For a time modifications will suffice , the most revolting features will be softened down ; but eventually , human nature , the divinity that stirs within us , will cast away the wild imagination that man is a demon , and the Deity a Moloch . The terms we have used are not too strong—to our mind they are the only words that answer to the terrible descriptions that
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whately ' s essays on the writings of st . paue ,.
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1829, page 607, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2576/page/7/
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