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niatiort at a small charge . If the plan so far well executed on the whole is completed , it will afford a proof of the good condition of the Dissenting interest as compared with that of the Church , for a similar design lately formed and made public on the part of the Establishment , proved , notwithstanding the boasted learning and the known opulence of the hierarchy , abortive after the publication of two or three numbers .
We find in these tracts many indications of improvement among the body from which they proceed . As an instance , we quote the ensuing passage from the second piece on the life of Luther : < c From the reformers also their posterity have inherited the love of creeds . They appealed , indeed , to scripture , and this was well ; it was infinitely
important . But they allowed themselves at the same time to invent a standard of appeal in religion in the form of articles of faith , which it is easy to perceive may always become what they have so often since proved , instruments of political government or of religious persecution ;
weapons at once for the factious and the intolerant . In reality , a creed , however well constructed and however in its general principles accordant with scripture , disparages the authority of scripture as the exclusive foundation of religion , and introduces another ground of appeal in this momentous concern . Its obvious
and deplorable tendency is to destroy in the mind one of those principles which is most essential to the purity and therefore to the progress of true religion , the personal nature of it . Misconception on this point has favoured a thousand delusions , and obscured the glory of Christianity . " Exactly what Unitarians have always maintained , and what they have recently struggled so maufully for in Ireland against the intolerance of
orthodoxy . The last number which has appeared , is entitled " On the present State of Religion in England . " As might be expected , Unitarianism comes in for its full share of reprobation . Its progress on the Continent is thus admitted : " The faith once delivered to the saints has , in many parts of the Continent , been almost
obliterated , and a marked and specious infidelity as an abomination that maketh desolate" ( kind creature this writer ) " has stood in the holy place c where it ought mot / " «« Among us , on the contrary , the leading doctrines of the Reformation , opposed as they are to all the pride and carnality of our fallen nature , have still been cherished ; " " the great bulk
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have happily retained a certain reverence at least for the truths of scripture . " Yes , men often stickle for orthodoxy who are devoid of Christianity , because to be orthodox is to be in good repute , and a person had better break all the ten commandments than question one established dogma . " The only
exception , constituting happily but a small fraction of the whole , consists of those who cannot be regarded in any other light than as a schism from all who are called Christians , since they deny almost every thing which stamps on Christianity a peculiar character while they appropriate the name . Our readers will perceive that we allude to the followers of
Socinus" { such persons are a * small fraction' indeed ) " who may properly be denominated a sect of philosophers who have vainly endeavoured to incorporate Christianity with Deism , by mutilating its stature on the Procustes' bed of human reason . It is needless to insist
that , under this treatment , the spirit of Christianity has departed and left behind nothing else tbau cold and lifeless clay . *' And yet the writer seems to be making some progress towards this wicked system . At least his orthodoxy is not of the first water . cc He who denies that there is some triplicity in the Godhead , which is made known to us under the
distinctions of Father , Son , and Spirit , " &c . If we amputate said orthodoxy , the author emasculates the Trinity , for we find " which ' instead of who applied to his Trinity , which Trinity is a ' * triplicity ?* Admirable ! and his " persons" are " distinctions" ! In the
Litany , then , there must be put instead of ' « O ! most holy and glorious Trinity , three persons and one God . O ! most holy and glorious ' Triplicity , * three ' distinctions' and one Godhead . ' Of this triplicity , even he is not quite certain . The qualifying some precedes itc some triplicity . " So true is it that the scantiest orthodoxy gives a man a
disposition to castigate the unfortunate heretic . Well , we would rather bear reproach than stultify our understandings or veil our scriptural convictions under the current forms of language , though these forms were reduced to the shadowy orthodoxy of a triplicity of disi
tinctons . The spirit of orthodoxy must , we think , in some quarters , be u nigh unto death , " since its outward shape and symbols are so attenuated . «• Some triplicity" of * ' distinctions" ! Shade of Athanaaius , ait thou not indignant that this man ranks himself with thee ; this man who has frittered away your
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Critical Notice * . —Ideological . 703
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1830, page 703, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2589/page/47/
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