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Untitled Article
Ebion Adamson . I mean that we have stood too much on the defensive in " all our controversies . The revivers of Unitarianism rightly judged that their business was to strip the gospel of the corruptions which had grown round it ; and with this they , for the most part , contented themselves . We rightly judge that much of the same sort of labour remains to be achieved by us ; but there is also work of a higher and far more important kind .
Philo . In demolishing the superstitions which have been erected on passages of Scripture evidently and grossly misunderstood , we have done little in comparison with what we have to do in placing right interpretations beyond the reach of cavil and question . Caleb .
And these researches , important as they are , are valuable only as they afford a basis for sound doctrine , devoid of mystery , and consistent with itself .
Ebion Adamson . And this sound doctrine , being itself a means to the attainment of spiritual ends , may not be conveyed negatively , or left to be a matter of inference from the nature and direction of our controversial attacks and defences . We are negligent if we leave those who look up to us to find out what the
gospel is from our shewing of what it is not . The last is only a temporary , the first an eternal consideration ; and as time rolls on , I begin to be anxious that our teachings should assume a nobler and more permanent character than was at first possible . I should like to see a fuller and more frequent statement of principles , a more , explicit deduction of doctrine , and a more vigorous prosecution of it to its results .
Caleb . Yet you have as great a dread of system as any unfettered inquirer need have . Ebion Adamson . Of making a system , but not of ascertaining one which I know to exist and to be divinely framed . Feeling , as I do , that we have reached the
second stage of the inductive process in theological science , I am impatient till we all betake ourselves to the extensive display and strenuous application of our principles . We may leave the theological Nominalists and Realists to fight their dark battles , while we may bring over a" multitude of converts from their ranks , by shewing what we can achieve through the Wovum Organum which our Priestleys and our Belshams had the honour of presenting to the world .
Caleb . Men who removed baser idols , and far more of them , than Bacon , without obtaining a tithe of the honour which has been deservedly showered on him .
Untitled Article
664 Ebion Adamson and his Friends .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 664, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/12/
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