strongest mutual hostility, combined to support a fabrication; that they have not violated this combination; that the numerous writers on both sides of the question have not suffered the slightest hint of this mysterious compact to escape them; and that, though the Jews are galled incessantly by the triumphant tone of the Christian appeals to their own prophecies, they have never been tempted to let out a secret which would have brought the argument of the Christians into disgrace, and shewn the world how falsehood and forgery mingled with their pretensions."* In the second place we have to boast, in favour of the authority and credit due to the prophetical books, the separate testimony of the Jews of Palestine and those of Alexandria, as exhibited in the writings of Josephus and the books of the New Testament, on the one hand, and in the works of Philo and the Septuagint Version, on the other. This too is a material point in the question before us, since it proves that we are in possession of all the testimony which it was possible for the writings of those times to furnish. In the third and last place, the books of the prophets were acknowledged and appealed to by the Jews in times closely bordering upon those in which they are said to have been written; a circumstance for which it is quite impossible to account on the supposition that they were forgeries. If, then, any faith is to be placed in human testimony, we are bound to admit the authenticity of these books. The credibility of the predictions contained in them will form the subject of some future communication. W. Birmingham. THE SCEPTIC AND THE CHRISTIAN. Toss'D on the world's wide sea of storms, No ardent faith the region warms, The course is rough-the way is dark! y! See, where the Christian bends his way Which points where safety's port is found. H. H. Chalmers's Evidence and Authority of the Christian Religion, chap. vi. p. 185. Fifth Ed. REVIEW. ART. I.-AEUTEρaι povтides. Second Thoughts on the Person of Christ, on Human Sin, and on the Atonement; containing Reasons for the Author's Secession from the Unitarian Communion, and his Adherence to that of the Established Church. By Charles A. Elton, &c. Bristol, 1827. Unitarianism Abandoned; or Reasons assigned for ceasing to be connected with that description of Religious Professors who designate themselves Unitarians. By James Gilchrist. London, 1827. (Concluded from p. 583.) IF Mr. Elton, now a deserter from the Unitarian camp, be to be credited as a competent and faithful reporter, the Unitarians are ignorant, crafty, and dishonest men, who are either incapable of understanding the original languages, and comprehending the obvious sense, of the Scriptures, or else deterred by no reverence for the truth, by no sense of shame, by no regard to religious or moral principle, from wilfully perverting their meaning, and publicly professing opinions which they know to be in opposition to their genuine declarations. In his present judgment of them, they are ever ready to resort to the basest artifices to serve their own ends; they scruple not to reject any doctrine which, from whatever cause, they may be disinclined to admit, and to embrace tenets which they believe to be false, merely because they wish them to be true; they have in no case any higher aim than to defend the system which it suits them to adopt, with an utter disregard of the moral character of the means, that, for this purpose, they may find it necessary to employ; they are, in short, if his estimate of them be correct, men who stick at nothing provided only they can succeed in their object, and bring over proselytes to their cause. We will yield to no provocation to question Mr. Elton's motives in submitting to the change that has taken place in his religious sentiments; but we are utterly at a loss to comprehend by what intellectual or moral discipline he has brought his mind to conceive and his pen to record such "Thoughts" of a body of religious professors, with whose principles and conduct he cannot be unacquainted, and whom, he ought to know, he grossly calumniates. When did this new light break in upon his understanding, and disclose to his astonished vision the dark and foul recesses of the Unitarian character, with all its disgusting appendages of craft, and fraud, and hypocricy? Had it but just flashed upon his eyes from the portals of heaven, when he sat down to proclaim the important revelation? Or, had he this knowledge when his "intimacy of some standing with Unitarians," as an associate and a brother, might have taught him what they were? And does his conscience now, for the first time, accuse him of having partaken their turpitude and merited their condemnation ? In the very first page of his "Second Thoughts," Mr. Elton betrays his anxiety to commence hostilities against the Unitarians. Because, in their controversies with Trinitarians, they have argued that the Athanasian scheme, as held by Dr. Sherlock and others, which alone they recognize as proper Trinitarianism, maintains in effect three objects of worship, they are accused (p. 9) with "a hundred times preferring," with "unwearied perti nacity," an "imputation a hundred times steadily denied ;" and, therefore, pursuing a course of argument illustrating rather the zeal of proselytism than the virtue of candour." What is the plain import of this charge, but that Unitarians, for a mere party purpose, continue, against their better knowledge of facts, wilfully to misrepresent their religious opponents? Mr. Elton must give us leave to ask, whether, as he seems to intimate, a sinister motive be, in all cases, to be assigned to those who charge Trinitarians with having three distinct objects of worship? In such case, he will perhaps explain with what views the following passages were written, in books now before us, acknowledged to be the productions of his own pen. "To Catholic polytheism has succeeded what may be called the polytheism of Protestants, who worship the Son of God, and the attribute of God's Spirit, as equally perfect Gods.” * "As to the nature of the Trinity, notwithstanding the dogmas and anathemas of councils, Trinitarians themselves differ; some, with Dr. Sherlock, holding that the three persons are three distinct infinite minds or intelligences; others, with Dr. South, that there is only one infinite mind, with three modes or attributes; or offices, manifested under the three different states or relations of Father, Son, and Spirit. The former scheme retains the Trinity but loses the Unity, as it makes distinctly three Gods, which, indeed, the Catechism of the Church EXPRESSLY AFFIRMS."+ "A plurality means more than one. More than one, in one godhead, are several persons, who all partake of the same divinity, and are therefore several distinct Gods. They are no more one God, because they are combined in one Godhead, than the judges of the Areopagus were one judge, because they formed one tribunal." "By persons, then, we are to understand intelligent agents; an intelligent agent is, in common parlance and acceptation, a proper being; three persons are then three beings, and three beings, each by himself God, are three Gods."§ The writer of these passages unequivocally asserts, that proper Trinitarians have three distinct objects of worship. We leave it to himself to answer, whether the man who could publish these statements as the result of his deliberate reasonings upon the subject, was pursuing a course of argument illustrating rather the zeal of proselytism than the virtue of candour." 66 From the frequency with which they are advanced, Mr. Elton would seem to take peculiar pleasure in preferring accusations against Unitarians for "tampering" with the Scriptures, and wilfully mangling and perverting them to prop up their cause. They are said (p. 10) "to pare down the Bible itself to the very narrowest dimensions of Christian faith." Of a particular interpretation of a controverted text, it is alleged, (p. 13,) that it "must be the right one, because it squared with the Socinian hypothesis." Speaking again of the meaning assigned by Unitarian writers to a passage in the Gospel of John, the writer thus eloquently and loftily expresses his indignation (p. 15): After this portentous display of sciolism and of sophistication in the history of theology, and in the philosophy of grammar, nothing, which can hereafter be done in the way of tampering with texts, will be likely to excite surprise."—" It is true," the author again writes, (p. 22,) "that ardent Unitarians, taking some of the early 'reputed' (qr. convicted?) Appeal, as above, pp. 3, 4. + Idem, p. 18. Unitarianism Unassailable, &c., 1818, p. 8. VOL. I. 2 x heretics for their models and authorities, have been busy with exscinding and italicizing of entire inconvenient chapters, and the wholesale condemnation of entire epistles." In the recital of these passages we are almost tempted to put it to the author, in his own temperate and polite language, whether such flimsy efforts to fix upon Unitarians an odious and criminal accusation, "be calculated to impose even on a savage"! Mr. Elton has himself been an Unitarian, and an Unitarian critic and apologist. We appeal to him whether, whilst he sustained those characters, it was his practice to "pare down," and to "tamper" with, the sacred writings, and to fix the sense of passages by the sole consideration that "they squared with the Socinian hypothesis"? Would he not have repelled such an insinuation, if directed against himself, with unmingled disdain? Nay, has he not applied the scourge to a false accuser who had anticipated him in this ungenerous and reprehensible mode of attack? We will quote his words; he may, if he so please, transfer the just castigation to others whom it will equally suit. "With this comparative method of Unitarian criticism staring you in the face, and after thus riveting your eyes on the letter of a single text, and refusing to look an inch beyond it, you modestly observe that it is 'one part of the Unitarian system not to take the whole sense of Scripture as it stands, and to believe it (I suppose without examination) reconcileable with itself in every part, but to take only a portion, and make the rest give way to it and you say, we have also a strong objection to that syllogistic faith which builds itself up upon single texts of Scripture. The Christian should feel that the whole Bible is his creed: whether obscure or clear, mysterious or simple, his faith should comprise all: he should be able to lay his hand upon the book and say, 'I believe in this: and he should see the peculiarities of Christianity not merely gasping for existence in single texts, but living, burning, breathing throughout. Nothing short of this approaches either to the full assurance of faith,' or the full assurance of understanding! What you exactly mean by the latter clause I do not pretend to guess." "But I would observe, on the general statement, that you need not fear (perhaps I should say, you will be disappointed in the hope), that the Unitarians will withhold their concurrence with these postulates, since they have uniformly asserted them and acted upon them for themselves; with this proviso, that the Bible on which they are to lay their hands is THE BIBLE ITSELF; not a favoured translation only, but the BIBLE ITSELF, UNSOPHISTICATED, UNINTERPOLATED, and PURE. Whether the disciples of the Trinitarian or those of the Unitarian school of Christianity be more notorious for taking portions of Scripture, and making the rest bend to them, for that syllogistic faith' (an odd expression in the mouth of an Athanasian) which builds itself on single texts,' or for supposing the peculiar truths of faith to 'gasp for existence in those single texts,' let the tenor and texture of their respective writings determine." "The Unitarian replaces these single texts in the context from whence they are torn live-asunder,' and he collates that context itself with other corresponding parts of Scripture: he permits Jesus and the evangelists and apostles to be their own interpreters." To this passage the following note is appended: "It is somewhat venturously observed by Dr. C. A. Moysey, Archdeacon of Bath, in a Bampton Lecture, that against the general and harmonious evidence of the whole gospel, the Unitarian arrays a few selected and mutilated passages, which, if taken singly, may bear a sound which shall seem to concur with his favourite opinions; and he rests his whole system on them, without taking into account the tenor of our Saviour's doctrine in general, as delivered by himself and his apostles.' If the word Trinitarian were substituted for Unitarian, would not the cap fit as well? I would ask the Rev. Archdeacon, who has laid aside the cater aut comesis mira te his disposition, in order to pin his fara on the authors of the moqué es tors of facts and sophisticators of curcations. Bang More mut ne deme I would ask him whether he means a descrive the price of Jess & the Father, the only true God," Jon ri §; the prave of Pere aut com and the believers, Acts xiv. 24: the sermon if Bag in de tour of Pemerus, Acts ii. 14; the sermon of Peter in Salman's Porn, Am i 18 the onetion of Peter for the Apostles before the Hin-Port Actor 25: the ser of Peter to Cornelius, Acts x 34: the sermon of Paul a blue, bou zvi 22; and the collective Apostle dezenges, al of VIR VEIDE 3 ancie redeeming exception, are systematicar ex-huset from the inergy of the Church of England,—I wond ass vieler le meats 1 tocin tese a 'mutilated passages' which bear a SUEDE" and "ware & seeming ? Ta ture (how perverse!) are simply and abgether Unnurin” Before we dismiss this class of Mr. Enoe's charges we must advert to a canon which he states to be adopted by Lunariats at anyone of the trines received by the Church as those perilar is Curistante,” He arranges this canon under for beads, br the statement is 100 long to be transcribed. It is, however, in its spent and tendency, among the mos reprehensible portions of the book, as a face and a US S tation. The fourth division is expressed as follows: Tut the WTCHES most opposed to Unitarian amplasty, are enter, PÍAD «, 7 that it would be better if they were ." P. 15. To set at ar we shall not deign a reply beyond what the wrner may hud in us own language on another occasion. "A man who has general fixed principles, whether they be the true s habit and education, or of a CT and refer ons daturally expect that the book on which he believes these principes to be produced, should concur, when appealed to, with tós previous TIEWE rally see passages in a different light from a mat whose preostavi net wi are different: but there is no want of carbour or doláry in time; a sistent with perfect sincerity, and an kvazat doare to kamer the truck. Noting can be conceived more puérile, superical, and cavtom, s you wou such a man of purposely cang such prints as wide for me gje, d refusing his assent to those that oppose it.” "It is mere vulgar and ignorant sophistry to satis aunting or rejecting Scripture, according as it favours a system; it wasting or retai sense ascribed to Scripture, according as that particular wense appeare, is the judgment of the individual, consistent with, or contradictory to, evidence of the Scriptures at large." "The heat of controversy, like the fumes of wine, often surprisce a into an unintended betrayal of his own weaknesses; and we generally bungee others of what we are secretly conscious of being prone to ouratives. ready inference, that in their textual interpretation Unitarians are guided by the measure of congruity or discordance in a particular text, could only have occurred to a man accustomed, himself to look on isolated texts as complete and oracular authorities. We do not, Sir, regard a text here or a text there as deciding the nature of Christian doctrine; but perhaps you are acquainted with those who do."+ Mr. Elton has graced his work with a few other controversial embellishments, which, like some already quoted, are not recommended by their novelty or originality, any more than by their candour and truth. Our readers will have seen that he has revived the designation "SOCINIAN," Plea for the Unitarians, pp. 61, et seq. + Plea, &c., as above, pp. 52-54. |