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Untitled Article
other way than in keeping my commandments ? Doubtless it is very possible , and the case has actually occurred in every period of the Christian church , for men of warm imaginations and strong passions to delude themselves into the vain notion that they are zealous disciples and ardent lovers of Christ , if they give themselves up to holy raptures and fervent expressions of a highly exci ted-state-oMeelm ^^
nectecl with genuine religion or upright conduct , and are too often found to degenerate into downright fanaticism , or even to be pleaded as an excuse for gross immorality , as a substitute for righteousness and purity of heart and life . It . was to men of this character that our Lord declared he would reply when they appealed to him , saying , ' Lord / Lord , have we not cast out demons in thy name ? ' I never knew ye ; depart from me , ye that work iniquity . ' But Mr . Belsham carries this so far as to
maintain that we at this distance of time can have no personal ' love to Christ ; that * the only sentiment which the blessings of the gospel can excite in our minds is that of great thankfulness to God for the gift of his Son to be the Saviour of the world . ' ' Any thing beyond this , ' says he , ^ appears to be incomprehensible , irrational , and unscriptural . ' Here we feel it impossible to go along with him . Are we to understand that it is in all cases necessary that
^ e should hav : e . seen a person , or have enjoyed his personal intercourse , in order that we should love him ? If so , what is meant by the love which we are exhorted to cherish towards God himself ? God is a spirit ^ we have never seen him with our outward senses ; his existence and gracious providence exercised towards us are reasonablv inferred from the works of nature , from the
adaptation of our circumstances to our own moral and religious improvement , from the happiness we here enjoy , from the tendency of our present state to prepare us for another , in which we are encouraged to expect greater happiness hereafter ; but he is not the direct object of our senses , nor can we be said to have
enjoyed personal inters with . Christ . But Mr . Belsham , it is presumed , will not go so far as to maintain on this ground that the sentiment of love to God is unscriptural and irrational . And what is meant , I would fain know , by the assertion that we have received no personal benefits from Christ ? I can make no sense of it consistent with reason or
experience , except on the supposition that some new and arbitrary meaning is imposed on the epithet i personal . * It would not be the first time that by such means a plain and simple truism has been converted into a revolting paradox . But can we indeed receive personal benefits from none except from those whom we have seen and conversed with ? This seems too extravagant to be supposed . If , however , this be not what is meant , from whom , I would ask , have we , each of us , received more important and essential services than from the blessed Jesus ? Through whose
Untitled Article
ON LOVE TO CHRIST ON UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES , 301
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 1, 1833, page 301, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2623/page/13/
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