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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.
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Untitled Article
very meet , right , and our bounden duty , that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee , O Lord , Holy Father , Almighty Everlasting God . ' But this caution is subjoined in an official note , These words , ' * Holy Father" must be omitted on
Trinity Sunday * There can be no reason for this extraordinary caution , except an unusual care on Trinity Sunday , not to put * one person afore or after another . ' After this ill-omened day is past , the good old form is adopted , and blessings are implored of God through Jesus Christ .
But all this caution is of no avail . We have got into the region of mystery , and we find ourselves entangled in the mazes of inconsistency and contradiction . The Litany commences with separate addresses from these ' miserable sinners , ' to all the persons , Father , Son , and Holy Ghost ; then to the Trinity as one God . Luckily this prae-position is unavoidable , for it would not be
seemly to put the Son before the rather , nor the Holy Ghost , who proceeds from both , before either of the others . Well then , the Trinity ' good Lord is invoked by * the mystery of its incarnation , by its agony and bloody sweat , ' &c . ; things that could belong only to a body of flesh , that pertain not to an uncreated spirit ; and thus we find ourselves praying to a God who is flesh
and blood , who has suffered and died , who , though everywhere present , has been buried and is risen and ascended . Now this is a most entire confounding of the persons , and while this confusion remains—worse than Stygian darkness—what instruction can such language give ? The mind that will submit to use such a form as this must be penetrating indeed , if it can discern one ray of comfort , truth , and light . All this arises from fixing a form in days
of comparative ignorance , a form of human composition , and retaining it with religious scrupulosity in a period when men ' s eyes are opened to see its weakness and absurdity . Dissenters unfettered by such trammels , though still professing to believe this strange doctrine , yet shape their prayers more in accordance with scripture . The service of the Church of England puts all that is mysterious conspicuously forward , and by using technical and
unscriptural language , and by misapplying much of the scriptures which it does quote , it is ill adapted for the purposes of piety , anil would be best applied as a running commentary on that absurdest of all creeds—the Athanasian Creed , which is the grossest imposition on the human understanding , and the veriest libel upon the scriptures , which the folly and impudence of man ever put forth .
Another striking feature of this religious service we shall now notice , and then our thankless and unwilling task is done . The whole is fur more Jewish than Christian ; more constructed upon the prevailing notions of the Mosaic code , than upon the pure and spiritual law of Christ . Our outward estate' is too uniformly represented aa an indication of our inward frame . Events are placed in
Untitled Article
The Liturgy . 308
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 303, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/15/
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