Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

in the civilized world, and makes pretensions to decorum of character, should think himself authorized to lavish such unqualified abuse upon persons who are as sincere in their profession of the christian religion as himself, and whose characters will not shrink from a comparison with the most virtuous of his own party, and to charge them with pride, conceit, presumption, and infidelity, because they think differently from himself upon certain abstruse and unintelligible doctrines, and interpret certain obscure texts in a different way. Is it possible that a man, who is not wholly immured in the precincts of a college, can be so totally ignorant of what is passing in the world, as to imagine that his cause will be benefited by such a mode of defence? or that he does not degrade himself and his works in the estimation of every reader of sound understanding, by such unprovoked and unfounded abuse? When will these gentlemen learn that they live in an age in which hard words will not supply the place of sound argument?

As to the main charge, that Unitarians argue from insulated texts, in opposition to the general tenor of scripture, the learned Lecturer, according to his usual custom, has very judiciously abstained from producing proof. And I will venture to say that proof is impossible: for the re

verse of the charge is the plain, palpable, uncontrovertible truth. The Unitarians, forsooth, "array

66

a few selected and mutilated passages against the general and harmonious evidence of the whole "gospel!"-Yes, Dr. Moysey, they do select, and they do array, the whole gospel of Matthew, and the whole gospel of Mark, and the whole gospel of Luke, and the whole history of the Acts, and the whole of the two epistles to the Corinthians, and the whole epistle to the Galatians, and the whole epistle to the Ephesians, and the two epistles to the Thessalonians, and the two epistles to Timothy, (notwithstanding the spurious reading of "God "manifest in the flesh,") and the whole epistle to Titus and to Philemon, and the whole epistle of James, and the two epistles of Peter, and the whole of the three epistles of John, (notwithstanding the notorious and abominable interpolation of the heavenly witnesses,) and finally, the whole epistle of Jude;--these insulated and detached books the Unitarians do select and do array: and they challenge their Trinitarian brethren to produce a single passage, from beginning to end, in any one of them, which contains any thing like the doctrine of a trinity of persons in a unity of essence. And against what do they select and array these sacred writings?--Against the rest of the books of the New Testament? No, no! very, very far from it. They

select and array them against the misconception and misinterpretation of a few passages in the gospel of John, who is a very mystical and figurative writer; against a difficult passage or two in the epistle to the Romans; against the obscurity of some rhetorical passages in the epistles to the Philippians and Colossians; against the fanciful and misunderstood analogies of the unknown writer to the Hebrews; and against the difficulties occurring in the prophetic language of the Apocalypse. But of each of these books by far the greater portion speaks the purest Unitarianism. The doctrine of the Trinity derives no countenance from a single sentence through the whole New Testament; and that of the deity of Christ derives its support from a small number of mistaken and misinterpreted texts; while that of the proper unity of God, in person as well as in essence, and that of the simple humanity of Jesus Christ, shine forth with a resplendence that he who runs may read. So much for the learned Lecturer's charge, "that Unitarians argue only from a few selected " and mutilated passages, against the general and "harmonious evidence of the whole gospel."

I am, &c.

!

DEAR SIR,

LETTER VI.

THE title of the Bampton Lecturer's sixth Sermon is, "On the Inspiration of the Scripture." But had the title been "On the Humility and Cha

rity" of the Lecturer himself, it would perhaps have been more appropriate; as he only introduces a few superficial observations at the beginning concerning his professed subject, while the tenor of the discourse from beginning to end is a remarkable exemplification of the latter. In truth, the whole of this extraordinary composition is one uninterrupted strain of declamatory invective and low abuse of the Unitarians in general, and particularly of the Editors of the Improved Version, wantonly loading them with the most scandalous charges, without giving himself the trouble to advance the shadow of a proof to sustain his gross accusations. It is hard to explain how a person who has the least regard to character should have been betrayed into so disgraceful a conduct.

If what this pious ecclesiastic asserts is true, the Editors of the Improved Version are the most impious and shameless impostors who ever under

took to deceive the public; and their folly is equal to their fraud. For, according to this gentleman, having first formed a system of their own, which they call Christianity, but which they know is not such, they resolve to bend the Scriptures to their own purpose. To this end, having selected a text with which few readers were acquainted, the text of Griesbach, and a Version, of which few copies were in circulation, the Version of archbishop Newcome, they published what they were pleased to call an Improved Version of their own, in which they have most falsely and fraudulently corrupted and perverted the text both of Griesbach and of Newcome, for the sole and express purpose of adapting the language of the New Testament to their own antichristian and blasphemous doctrines;-publishing the whole as the genuine text both of Griesbach and Newcome, and designedly omitting to notice the alterations which they have made in many important passages, though they set out with a distinct profession that every deviation from the text of their originals shall be noticed in the margin.

Such is the accusation which the Rev. C. A. Moysey, D.D., rector of Walcot, and so forth, has preferred at the bar of an impartial and enlightened public against the Editors of the Improved Version. And this charge, thus publicly

« AnteriorContinuar »