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and put in the clearest and strongest light the difficulty which he was about to demolish . The firm grasp which he had of the subjects on which he wrote would have enabled and disposed him to do this , even had he merely struggled as a , disputant for victory , and apart from his candour and his paramount love of truth . To collect materials for thought and decision with diligence ; to appreciate them with accuracy ; and to select from them with admirable discrimination , were faculties so essential to his mental
constitution , that he exercised them on that side of a question which he opposed , as well as on that which he adopted ; and notwithstanding occasional ebullitions of controversial ardour , few writers have ever dealt so fully and so fairly with disputed points in theology . Nor could any man ever feel less self-reproach in offering the well-known
petition in the collect ; for what he read he marked , and what he marked he learned , and what he learned he inwardly digested . His mind possessed , to a very extraordinary degree , the faculty of assimilation . The thoughts which he derived from other men he made thoroughly his own . They became converted into intellectual nutriment ; they ministered to an
intellectual vigour which has seldom been sustained so well or so long . This is the outline of a mind of great force , but not of the highest order . That would imply two kinds of power of which Mr . Belsham was com par actively destitute . He did his work by the sole agency of the understanding-. He could accomplish little or nothing by means of the imagination , or of the affections . Dr . Channing ' s sermons were not to his taste ; nor could he have had any such sympathy with the most splendid of Burke ' s orations ,
or the most pathetic and impassioned pleadings of Erskine , as with the logical eloquence of Fox . He could not have commented upon the parables of Christ so excellently as he did upon the Epistles of Paul . We mean no disparagement of his eminent talents ; our object is simply to shew what they were ; which implies the pointing out of what they were not In his own sphere he has probably never been surpassed ; in those beyond it , he had many superiors ; but the combination of his and their qualities is amongst the rarest of all rare occurrences .
Mr . Belsham was peculiarly fitted for the period in which he lived . The worth of his services to the Unitarian cause is enhanced by the time and the circumstances under which they were rendered . The continued controversial efforts of such a man were needed . The work of Priestley and Lindsey required a Belsham to carry it forward to its completion . Unitarianism was yet , to the public mind , a novelty . It was regarded as something undefined , unfixed , inconsistent : one of the " bubble speculations" of that era
of intellectual enterprise which succeeded the French Revolution . There was as little disposition to understand as to tolerate it . It was needful to familiarize its principles by incessant repetition ; to carry them out into all their consequences , and trace them in all their bearings , immediate and remote ; to shew how far it coincided with , and where it diverged from , received systems of doctrine ; to ascertain by the results of repeated discussions where its restorers had been too cautious , where too precipitate ; and to indicate to the Christian world the whole extent of what was to be
renounced as error and corruption , and where the basis roust be laid of that temple of the Lord in which all hearts may worship God through * Jesus Christ . And this was what Mr . Belsham did ; pursuing bis work through evil . report and good report ; often with little indeed to Encourage his efforts save the testimony of a good conscience ; bat never growing weary nor
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On the Character and Writings of the Rev . T . BeUJtum . 249
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VOL . IV . T
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1830, page 249, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2583/page/33/
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