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justice, benevolence, &c. Expose your mind repeatedly and perseveringly to the influence of these impressions, and the affections themselves will gradually rise, and insensibly improve, &c. All that is required is judgment, resolution, and perseverance." "How far," says an excellent writer, "this salutary advice and direction would operate to the reformation of the sinner, they who may have been reclaimed from vicious courses by such means, can best say. But one thing deserves particularly to be remarked; that while the mind of the sinner is directed to contemplate the excellency of virtue, to excite its own energies, to expose itself to impressions, and the like, not one word escapes him of the propriety of prayer; on the contrary, all supplications for Divine assistance, seem to be expressly excluded, and indeed evidently must be so, on Mr. Belsham's principles. For if goodness be the necessary result of impressions and circumstances, the mechanical effect of particular traces on the brain, derived from the general operation of established and unalterable laws of our constitution, there is no room, in the particular case, for Divine interference. We may, according to Mr. B.'s principles, indulge in sentiments of complacency to that First Cause, the beneficial effects of whose original arrangement we feel, in the individual instance; but prayer addressed to the Divine Being can have no rational object. Prayer accordingly forms no part of this writer's system-in no one line of his work does he recognise it as a Christian's duty-indeed the mention of it has not once escaped him."*

Mr. Belsham denies that Christianity has appointed a

• Dr. Magee's Appendix, p. p. 390, 391.

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day for the purpose of divine worship. He even affirms that it abolishes every such distinction of days, and that under the Christian dispensation, every day is alike; no one more holy than another; that whatever employment or amusement is lawful or expedient upon any one day, is lawful and expedient on any other day. The laws which enforce the observance of the sabbath, are, he says, unreasonable and unjust ;* that upon the whole, the observance of that day is highly injurious to the cause of virtue, and to this institution he attributes the decrease of national morality, and rejoices that the proposition for enforcing. a stricter observance of the Lord's day was wisely resisted by the Legislature.† It cannot however be denied, that many followers of Mr. B.'s system with respect to the sabbath, who have ended their lives at the fatal tree, have ascribed to their neglect of that sacred institution, their progress in wickedness, and the inveteracy of their vicious habits; and, in their own case, they were certainly better qualified to judge, than Mr. B. is to judge for them.

Let us sum up, in few words, the doctrines and duties of Christianity which the Unitarians deny. They deny the Divinity of Christ, and represent the worship presented to him by the Trinitarians, as idolatry, and such it certainly is, upon their principles. This circumstance shows the impossibility of any intercommunity of worship between Trinitarians and Anti-trinitarians. Upon the principles of the former, the latter refuse to honour the Son of God with that worship to which his Divine nature, and his works entitle him, as the Creator, Go

Mr. Belsham's Review, &c. p. p. 140, 141.

↑ Ditto p.

203.

vernor, and Redeemer of the World; and it is the declaration of the Scripture, that he who refuses this honour to the Son, denies it to the Father. Upon the principles of the latter, the former are chargeable with idolatry, and idolaters are numbered with those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God.† Let no man argue that therefore they are necessarily placed in a state of mutual hatred; for every man is bound, whatever his religious principles are, to love all men and to do them every act of service in his power. Neither the one party nor the other could, consistently with their profession of Christianity, worship the idols of Paganism; but both are bound to cultivate benevolence, as well as to practise beneficence, to Pagans. Those who claim the name of Unitarians, reject the doctrine of the Atonement, as well as the doctrine of Divine Influence, to sanctify the souls of men. The Divinity and Personality of the Holy Ghost, they altogether deny. The general inspiration of the Scriptures, they also reject; and admit it only in those instances where the Writers expressly claim it. Not only whole chapters, but whole books, that seem particularly hostile to their sentiments, they expunge from the sacred canon. The doctrine of Original Sin, they not only deny, but ridicule. Miraculous Conception, the subject of Old Testament prophecy, and of Evangelical history, they explode; and represent our Saviour as the Son of Joseph and Mary. The immortality of the soul they deny, and upon their own principle of its materiality, its death must be the necessary consequence. They all deny that in the

The

⚫ John, v. 23.

† 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10.

intermediate state, between death and the resurrection, it retains any consciousness. The existence of evil Spirits they resolutely deny; though their being and operations are asserted in the most positive manner in Scripture, and though the existence of wicked men in this world, which we know to be a fact, renders it a thing at least extremely probable, that there are evil beings in some other world, with whom we may have some connexion. Nor is the influence of evil spirits represented in Scripture as irresistible; but as of precisely the same kind with that of wicked men. The duties of humility, confession, and prayer for spiritual blessings, are, upon their principles, entirely set aside. The doctrine of eternal punishment, the most awful restraint that God can impose upon the corrupt propensities of turbulent and wicked men, and the best security that society can find against the invasions of the licentious and unprincipled, they entirely remove; and give full scope to their passions and appetites, in every case which the laws of their country cannot reach. The future happiness of the wicked, they represent as equally certain and necessary as that of the righteous. "We shall all meet finally we only require different degrees of discipline, suited to our different tempers, to prepare us for final happiness."* This is, no doubt, good news to every hardened sinner. By the doctrine of philosophical necessity, which they have, almost universally, embraced, they reduce man to a mere piece of mechanism; so that a clock may as well be tried for its irregular motion, at the tribunal of God, as a man for his

• Memoirs of Dr. Priestley, Vol. 1, p. 217.

actions. Finally, they deny the morality of the sabbath, and represent it not only as an unwise, but as a demoralizing institution. Compared with such doctrines and principles, even popery, were it divested of its persecuting spirit, might be pronounced a safe and salutary religion.

There is no reason to wonder at the progress, which its votaries assure us, it is now making in this country. If the observation of Mr. Belsham be just, that "men who are most indifferent to the practice of religion, and whose minds, therefore, are least attached to any set of principles, will ever be the first to see the absurdity of popular superstition, and to embrace a rational system of faith" there are among us, so many men weary of the practice of religion, that we need not be surprised if numbers embrace any form of religion that promises them an exemption from the restraints of practical piety.—It is, however, with pleasure, that every friend of religious liberty, will mark the late repeal of the penal laws against them. The only successful opposition to their efforts, for the spread of their destructive tenets, must come from the Ministers of an opposite religion. Let the Ministers of the Gospel be as earnest and unwearied, in their endeavours to establish men in the truths of Christianity, as the Unitarians are to draw them away from them, and, though their success may not be universal, it will yet be great.

It would be difficult, perhaps, to collect from the whole body of professed Christians, so many expressions of marked disrespect to the sacred volume, as it were easy to produce from a very few writers of Unitarian senti

VOL. I.

⚫ Sermon on the Importance of Truth, p. 32

2 P

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