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Untitled Article
• irritating phraseology * used on the subject of the Trinity , which , as you say , has confirmed so many in error . But , repu # atirig the touchstone of the many , you adduce a criterion of your own ; and , while you cannot go all the length of the unco-orthodox , keep close enough to popular error , not indeed to escape the suspicion PiJi §^ Yj _ bu ^ certainly , in your own estimation , to thrust out the
poor Unitarians from the Christian pale . Now TOO ~ rryo ~ biiTrd-a s not to see that all these human tests are sheer human inventions , bred of self-esteem or vulgar prejudice ? While you adhered to received standards , there was a show of reason in your favour , but the moment you disallow them and set up one on your own account , even the show vanished and the reader is reminded that all this pretension to infallibility is but a play of words . If , there ^ fore , you seriously believe that Unitarians are not Christians , you
must adduce something better than the spurious test of your own fond notions ; you must appeal to the word and the testimony ; there is no alternative ; desert antiquity , desert the many , desert the councils and the fathers , and in place of them set up your own dictum , and you reduce the matter at once , and obviously , to the arbitration of individual judgments ; your test is simply the test of Thomas Arnold , and for value Will not be better than the decision of any well-educated Unitarian * I use these
considerations only as an argumentum ad koftmriem , for I most seriously believe that , after all , tests of discipleship can be nothing more than the opinions of individuals , seeing that even the tests supplie 4 by scripture may be , and are variously interpreted . If there b 6 truth in this , what folly for any one to assume a right to judge another's faith so as to deny his discipleship ! Let the matter be
viewed as it may , it will prove at last in every case , and however disguised , an assumption of an error which Protestants have exploded in words , but which it is ofthe very essence of orthodoxy to retain in fact , «^ -an assumption , I mean , of infallibility . It is strange , no little strange , that a mind so well disciplined as Dr . Arnold ' s should not have seen that in the matter at issue the
very first principles of disputation are not settled , since no definition has been given and allowed of what constitutes a Christian ; and therefore , till this is done , assert as we may , and struggle as we may , we can be doing nothing more than raise a dust to blind our own vision and disturb our neighbour ' s quiet . But what , let us ask , is this newly-discovered test ; a test which convicts Athanasius of error , and reproaches him with bigotry ,
yet still excludes the ever-to-be-reprobated Unitarian ? It is the worship of Christ , * The addressing of Christ in the language of prayer and praise , is an essential part of Christian worship . ' In this there is a vagueness by no means consistent with the accuracy and definiteness of a test , which makes me uncertain how to think or speak of it , Does it mean that the adoration of Christ as the very God is essential ? If so the test will imchristianfoe many
Untitled Article
102 Y THE TRUTH TELLER . ss ^ ¦ .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1833, page 102, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2611/page/6/
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