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Untitled Article
should not desist , they must be cashiered . But it is evident that this rule must be conditional , since in forms of faith which are the work of men error is unavoidable , especially in such as were made at the lowest age or in the infancy of scripture-exposition . If the rule be made absolute , we shall have , not an evangelical and divine , but a Lutheran and human church . When , at the diet of the empire , Charles V . laid before the divines the
entangling question , whether their confession contained all the alterations which they intended to make , the delegated leaders replied in the negative ; and guarded to themselves the liberty to draw yet more out of the Holy Scrip tures , and to carry onward the work of reformation . " •« But it is said the teacher must acknowledge that doctrine to be divine which by the laws of just interpretation he shall find in the Holy Scriptures ; and he must not
presume to exclude doctrine after doctrine , or to represent the facts narrated , the miracles and resurrection of Jesus , otherwise than as they are narrated in the Scriptures . " The attack is here directed against the centre of rationalism ; the following extract is a specimen of the manner in which the author has attempted to sustain it : *« The judgments of reason upon the facts and doctrines contained in the books of revelation have been made in
every age of the church , and by its best members , the apostles , the reformers , and the most esteemed theologians ; and they have been made because in fact they were plainly unavoidable . The apostles who acknowledged the law of Moses to be a divine law , selected out of the commandments three which should be binding upon the Gentile converts , and that , not in consequence of any new revelation granted to themselves , but on the ground of reason , because the holy spirit was also given without the law of Moses ,
and because that law was a burthen heavy to the Jews , and insupportable by the Gentiles . Paul exhorts the believers to examine and to judge , and will be not a master of their faith , but a helper of their joys . 1 Cor . x . 15 ; 1 Thess . v . 19—21 . The fathers of the church , especially those of the Greek Alexandrian school , affirmed that the literal meaning of the Holy Scriptures sometimes contained what was not conformable to or worthy of a
divine revelation , and in such cases they presumed to give the words another meaning . Origen speaks with contempt of literal interpretation . Luther says of the Epistle to the Hebrews , that with gold and p recious stones were mixed wood , hay , stubble ; that the apocalypse of John was neither apostolic nor prophetic ( Bretschneider ' s Luther an unsere Zeit . S . 186 , ff ) . The Augsburgh Confession names the command of the Apostle Paul , 1 Cor . ii . 5 , and the apostolic resolution Acts xv . 20 , local and
temporary prescriptions , which require no longer to be observed . These are all judgments of reason upon revelation , and consequently the same use of reason which seems at the first view of it to be eminently intemperate and presumptuous . " It is evident that these authorities are not applicable to the case in question . It is one thing to interpret the words of a writer , and ascertain his intention , and a very different thing to find his history fabulous . To expound a passage , or limit its application , and to explode a fact , are not
the same thing . The Oppositionsschrift for Philosophy and Theology , as was to he expected from the names of Fries Schmid , Paulus , and Crusius , which stand on the title page , not contented with the defensive , springs out fearlessly against the assailant . According to it , " the present aggression is a prelude to a combat involving in its issue the highest interests of man , rational religious conviction , freedom of thought , learning , science , all upon which our intellectual and moral structure is now raised . The purpose of the fanatics can be no longer doubtful . Now they wish to limit freedom of
Untitled Article
588 State of Religious Opinion in Germany .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1830, page 588, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2588/page/4/
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