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with the ministry of reconciliation . " The minister of ChriBt , hesays , has " to prepare for the gospel by teaching the guilt and condemnation of man , his accountableness to Almighty God , his obligations to obedience , the holiness and goodness of the law which he has broken , his fallen and corrupt state , his blindness of
understanding y his perverseness and disor . der of will , his interior and deeply-seated enmity against God * ' In this language , with much of a like nature , it is probable that the preacher , with many others of the same school , has confounded the state of corrupted human nature with human nature itself . The latter is pure a » d holy , as it comes out of the hands
of its Maker , and to revile this is to rerile God . The gospel is well defined by the preacher in the words of an Evangelist , " God so loved the world , that he gave his only-begotten Son , that whosoever believeth in him should not perish , but have everlasting life . " Is this the language of Calvinism ?
Does this imply the deity of Christ ? To be a son of God is the privilege of all Christians . And as to the term " onlybegotten Son , ' * truth compelled even the orthodox Parkhurst to declare ( see his Greek Lexicon ) , that he apprehended it strictly and properly belonged to Christ ' s humanity . Yet the preacher , in the same page , speaks of the incarnation of " God the Son . " Where does he find that
phrase in ! the Bible ? This is not all . He speaks also of the efficacious grace of " God the Holy Ghost . " " The grace of God , " we frequently read of in our Bible ; "the gratfe of the Lord Jesus Christ , " we would treasure up iii our
minds ; the grace of the Holy Ghost , or Holy Spirit , we believe is uot a scriptural expression ; but the grace of God the Holy Ghost is language which we may safely say would have been condemned by Jesus Christ and the apostles . Paul , at the dose of his second letter to the
Corinthians , expresses a devout wish for his brethren , that they might enjoy the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ , the love of God , and the communion of the Holy Spirit . This would read , in our preacher ' s language , the communion of God the Holy Ghost ! Would this have been intelligible to Paul ? But it was the
religion of Crtinmer . It was the form of the Christian religion agreed to by the archbishops and bishops of both provinces * and of the Convocation , holden at London , in the year 15 f * 2 . Therefore all candidates for situations in the Church of England , must even now , in the year 1830 , declare thetr unfeigned assent and
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consent to this Athanasian heresy . Is . this state of things always to continue amongst ?? s ? Shall then the lapse of almost three centuries introduce no reformation into God's worship ? And cannot we see more clearly than the men who were nursed , in Popery , and who confessedly received their first impressions of Christianity , not from the Bible , but from the Church of Rome ?
Preachers of the same stamp with Mr . Wilson are the miuority , but probably an increasing body in the church ; yet all have subscribed the same creed , however opposite their belief may have been—the Parrs and the Simpsons , the Richmond * and the Paleys , the Hawkers and the Laws , —and this is done " to avoid diversities of opinions" !
But there was a greater uniformity in the first ages of our Protestant church . This is well put by the preacher himself : " Did he not" ( viz . the departed Vicar of Christ Church ) " cordially , and from the bottom of his heart , enter into the Articles , Homilies , and Liturgy of the . Churcli of which he was a minister ?
Did he not preach the same doctrines in his day which Ci ; anmer , and Ridley , and Latimer , Noel , and Hooker , and Sandys , did in the age of the Reformation ; and which Hull , and Davenant , and Pearson , and Reveridge , and Hopkins , and Leighton , did in the century which succeeded it ? " We dare say the zealous preacher is correct in his implication , and . that his hearers , so far as they can be supposed to
be acquainted with these fathers of the Church of England would answer Yes . But there is a much more pertinent question to ask , and it is this : Were the doctrines of these great men identical with the religion of the New Testamewi ? Is this the question to which the chief attention is paid by the clergymen of the Establishment ? We think it cannot be , while the articles of Cranmer are to > be
subscribed . We blame not those who preach faithfully , and we doubt not that this is true of the author of the Sernoon before us « He is faithful according to his knowledge , and his knowledge happens to be that of the sixteenth century . The late Dr . Edmund Law was also , we believe , faithful in the doctrine which
he preached , and his " Considerations on the Theory of Religion , " display au acute no ss of judgment , an extent of scriptural knowledge , a piety of spirit , and a reasonableness of belief , which will hear comparison with the Latimersi or with any other of the tights of the En&Iiah Church . Yet Bishop Law believed Unitariantam to be the religion of the Bible .
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122 Critical Notices . — Theological .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 122, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/50/
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