On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    other men , " and that his prophetic office , miracles , and resurrection * do not necessarily imply his superiority of nature , it follows , that in this inquiry the whole burden of proof lies upon those who assert the pre-existence , the original dignity , and the divinity of Jesus Christ . " The Unitarian finds nothing more in the Scriptures than what all acknowledge to be thereothers imagine that much more is to be found—it is their business to bring forward their proofs : we establish our own doctrine , if we only shew those alleged proofs to be insufficient .

    " In this controversy , therefore / ' continues Mr . B ., " the proper province of the Arian and Trinitarian is to propose the evidence of their respective hypotheses ; that is , to state those passages of Scripture which they conceive to be conclusive in favour of their doctrines . The sole concern of the Unitarian is , to shew that these arguments are inconclusive "—( Calm Inquiry , p . 2 . ) It would hardly seem possible to extract from these words any other

    meaning than that the Unitarian , himself fully convinced that his own is the doctrine of Scripture , will have done every thing required for convincing his opponents when he has shewn the inconclusiveness of the texts brought forward by them , since by general confession what remains , after the peculiar evidence for reputed orthodoxy is taken away , is Unitarianism . Yet upon this observation , perfectly just as a logical position , and , one might have thought , altogether inoffensive in its mode of expression , Dr . Smith has the following remarks :

    " This might be proper , if controvertists had no love to truth , nor sense of its value ; if they were theological prize-fighters , who cared for nothing * but victory or the semblance of victory . But ill do such expressions comport with the mind and motives of a sincere and serious and * calm inquirer * after an object so momentous as sacred and eternal truth . To obtain that object ought to be the sole concern of Unitarians , and of all other men ; and it solemnly behoves those who are pleased with this consequential flippancy of assertion , to examine well the state of their own hearts before him who will not be mocked /' It is a strange misapprehension of Mr . B . ' s meaning , which has given occasion to this vituperative language . We need not point out the dispositions to which the error may be traced . Another very important caution of Mr . B ., which has also excited Dr . Smith's wrath , is the following :

    " Impartial and sincere inquirers after truth must be particularly upon their guard against what is called the natural signification of words and phrases . The connexion between words and ideas is perfectly arbitrary : so that the natural sense of any word to any person means nothing * more than the sense in which he has been accustomed to understand it . But it is very possible that men who lived two thousand years ago might annex very different ideas to the same words and phrases ; so that the sense which appears most foreign to us might be most natural to them . " * ' If , " says Dr . S ., " the Calm Inquirer means only to assert that the interpretation of a language must proceed on an enlightened acquaintance with

    its idioms , he has said no more than a school-boy knows and practises every day . But it is doing no service to the improvement of reason or the investigation of truth to represent the phrases * natural signification , ' and ' natural sense , ' as if they were properly or usually applied to the bald and blundering methods of translation , which betray those who use them to be ignorant of the principles of language . I am greatly mistaken if the established use of those expressions , with correct speakers ,, is not to denote that sense of a word

    Untitled Article

    Dr . •/ . P . Smith ' s Scripture Testimony to the Messiah . 15

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1831, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2593/page/15/