On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    which might have had a very different basis than the following € fabric of a vision : '—* Eras , the son of Armenias , by descent a Pamphylian , happening on a time to die in battle , when the dead were on the tenth day carried off

    already corrupted , was taken up sound ; and being carried home , as he was about to be buried on the twelfth day , when laid on the funeral pile , revived ; and being revived , told what he saw in the other state , and said : That after his soul left the body , he went with many others , and that they came to a certain dsemoniacal place , where there were two chasms in the earth near to each other , and two other openings in the

    heavens opposite to them , and that the judges sat between these . That when they gave judgment , they commanded the just to go to the right hand and upwards , through the heaven , fixing before them the accounts of the judgment pronounced ; but the unjust they commanded to the left , and downwards , and these , likewise , had behind them the accounts of all they had done . ' *

    I have drawn your attention to a few instances , out of many , of the mode in which Wesley and Plato worked upon the imagination , certainly with no intention of vindicating their practice of confounding what is false with what is true . On the contrary , I will not pass forward from these illustrations without quoting two remarkable passages , in which these great founders of schools and sects have distinctly admitted the evils which , sooner or later , must arise from false appeals to the imagination .

    * Truly when I saw , says Wesley , ' what God had done among his people , between forty and fifty years ago , when I saw them warm in their first love , magnifying the Lord , and rejoicing in God their Saviour , I could expect nothing less than that all these would have lived like angels here below ; that they would have walked as continually seeing Him that is invisible , having constant communion with the Father and the Son , living in eternity , and walking in eternity . I looked to see a chosen generation , a royal priesthood , a holy nation , a peculiar people ;

    in the whole tenour of their conversation showing forth His praise who had called them into his marvellous light . But , instead of this , it brought forth error in ten thousand shapes . It brought forth enthusiasm , imaginary inspiration , ascribing to the all-wise God all the wild , absurd , self-inconsistent dreams of a heated imagination . It brought forth pride . It brought forth prejudice , evil surmising , censoriousne 88 , f judging and condemning one another . '—Southey s Wesley , vol . ii . p . 526 .

    The words of Plato are even still more decisive against the employment of pious frauds . The passage in which the philo-* See Taylor ' s Translation of Plato ' s Works , vol . i . p . 466 . f My own experience supplies me from the records of a single family , and that not alien from me , with instances of parent divided from child , wife from husband ,

    and sister from brother , by fanatical feelings and bigoted opinions ; and I have also and sister from brother , b y fanatical feelings and bigoted opinions ; and I have also seen sound principles undermined , and fair hopes of usefulness blasted , by falsifications of truth . The penetralia of these mysteries require to be reverently but widely thrown open , and not merely to be swept and garnished , lest wickeder spirits bhould again enter in , and the last state become worst than the first . The next quotation , from Plato , fills up Wesley ' s p icture of bigotry and fanaticism , and exhibits religious errors superseded by scepticism and its worst attendants .

    Untitled Article

    12 The Diffusion of Knowledge amongst the People .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/12/