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Untitled Article
with the divinity of the religion contained in them , and he never inquires whether the Bible itself asserts its own inspiration , as he has been taught . Preoccupied by the dogmas of the English church he sees Christianity only through its medium . Several years after , when confirmed in these notions by his connexions with those who professed them , and by the habit of drawing spii : ituaUife ^ fr-om-them
ferent communions , in order to find , as he said , the happy mean . But it was too late then for an impartial examination , and he remained a Calvinist . Nothing can be more natural than this . It will be always so to those who , when reading their Bibles , do not try to ascertain the meaning attached by the sacred penmen to the terms they employed , and have acquired no ideas respecting the history of doctrine since the establishment of the Christian church . We have heard religious men allege in favour of their creed , that
they acquired it by reading the Scriptures , but they forgot the effect of the established faith in which they grew up , and which , having been fora long tirrie . disregarded , yet had not ceased to keep up their prejudices y they took no account of the impulse communicated by the books , persons , and circumstances , which had disposed them to return to religion ; they neglected to estimate the tendency of their character , the events through which they had" passed ,, all things of n ^ mentojjis influence in the human mind .
In every concern which calls for intellectual effort , ( and a religious system is one of these , ) man can only make a free choice when he retires into himself for the purpose of calm reflection , for clearing up different points , and weighing the for and against . It is the voluntary and orderly activity of the mind which alone can work out a belief deserving to be called our own , otherwise we receive it ready made . Evidently , this was Newton ' s case . Setting aside the influence of the doctrines in which hewas brought up , and which was afterwards confirmed by his reading , we con *
ceive that his lively , and as he himself says , roman t ^^ agin ^ ti ^ the disorders wH his cKa ^ acter lor several years , the unexpected events wh'ich often fixed his fate , during his different voyages , the terrors which recalled him to his God in the midsi ; of the storm , all Avould dispose him to a severity of doctrine , strongly characterised by the view of the corruption of man , and his weakness contrasted with divine power . These ideas , which were alreadyjn his n ^ m ^ jr ^ gajngd ^ tfee . away-. pyj 9 icb . iisi-ispidt and he ga ? e Himself entirely up to them .
As to the means he employed for the acquisition of faith , he has told us these with much simplicity . Earing quitted th ^ African coast on his way back to England , a violent storm kept him for several days under the momentary expectation of death \ then , struck by the vanity of human efforts to obtain relief , and by the overpowering strength of nature , the feeling of that infinite .
Untitled Article
THE LATE REV . JOHN ttEWTON . 291 ?
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 1, 1833, page 295, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2623/page/7/
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