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haa Paley- * -was a Dissenter , that Kippis and Watts , Price and Priestley , were Dissenters ; " *—let thrtn think of the fact , that out of a list of eminent Dissenters , adduced by their own party , consisting of nine persons , seven are Unitarian *; let them also remember that , when they have to speak of writers on the evidences of CJ 'bristiamtv . Farts constrain them to antaprize writers on the evidences of ChristianityFacts constrain them to eulogize
, Unitarians , and to declare that M the Christian church has every reason to enrol such writers as Locke , Lardner , Paley . ** f Strange is it that charge * of such a nature should be brought against * uen who have declared their attachment to the truth and to the Scriptures in the most explicit termsagainst Milton , who thus speaks in his beautiful address to " aM the churches
of Christ , " prefixed to his " Treatise on Christian Doctrine : "— " Since God hath opened to every man the way to eternal salvation only through his own belief , and since he requires that he who would be saved should stand upon his own faith , I resolved , in matters of religion , to rest on the faith and judgment of no man ; bst having drawn my belief from Divine Revelation alone , nothing being neglected which depended on my own industry , I determined to search out and settle each point of my religious belief by the
most careful perusal and meditation of the Scriptures of God themselves . " Again , " If this be heresy , of a truth I confess with Paul , Acts xxiv . 14 , and I add all things that are contained in the books of the New Testament ;" against Locke , who thus spoke of the testimony of revelation— " There is one sort of propositions that challenge the highest degree of assent upon bare testimony , whether the thing proposed agree or disagree with common experience ; this is called by a peculiar name Revelation , and our assent to it faith , which is nothing else but assent founded on the highest reason ; " J and thus of his method of studying Christian truth ; " I have thought it my duty to employ myself this winter in drawing , with great and diligent thought , from the fountains of truth , the Scriptures themselves , abstaining from all systems of men , both heretical and orthodox , the great principles of the Christian faith ; " § and who ordered words expressive of his entire and exclusive devotement to truth ( tit veritati unice litaret ) to be engraven on his tomb : against Newton , to whom eveln the orthodox Chalmers rendered the following eloquent testimony : " X cannot forbear to do honour to the unpretending greatness of Newton , than whom I know not , if ever there lighted on the face of our world one in the character of whose admirable genius so
much force and so much humility were more attractively blended . " ** We see in the theology ( afterward explained into * attachment * to the Bible ) of Newton the very spirit and principle which gave all its stability and ail its sureness to the philosophy of Newton : " || against a host of most diligent students of the Scripture and servants of the Lord Jesus , who have given up in some instances all , in others nearly all , to follow Christ , and to avow the
truth ; who have been led to the sentiments which they hold by studying no other book but the Scriptures ; who , by the force of scriptural truth , have been induced to abandon orice-cherished sentiments , to tear from their bosoms educational prejudices , and to leave father and mother and kindred that they might speak the truth and hold the truth in the love of it . Witness Lardner , who declared , that without being acquainted with the Unitarian writers who preceded him , he formed his sentiments on the Scriptures
ex-• Congregational Magazine for June , p . 2 . t Library of Ecclesiastical Knowledge , No . I . p . 6 . t On the Understanding , book iv . c . xvii . § Letter to Limborch . tl Discourses on A&tronomy , p . $ 0 . o 2
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Miiton , JVeictdn , and Locke , the Unitarian Triumvirate . 179
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1830, page 179, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2582/page/35/
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