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ferred by the Reviewer against the Unitarians; one extract will shew how well-prepared Servetus is to meet them.

"Our preaching is political. This reproach does really exceed all that I could have conceived of the powers of face. You happen to light on a sermon of a political cast by Mr. Madge, of Norwich, (a young minister singularly distinguished by the spiritual fervour of his general pulpit eloquence,) and you observe, This is what we must look for from Unitarians. When we find contro

versy substituted for religion, [Paul's disputing at Athens was, it seems, no religion,] we may naturally expect faction for politics. Meaning by faction, as appears from the rest of your quotation, a disapprobation of what are called Holy Alliances. Perhaps, Sir, you will inform me what occasion of political preaching has ever been let slip by the ministers of your schism? What address or petition to the King or the National Council has ever been agitated without

Your pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

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Being beat with fist instead of a stick? Is it not a fact as palpable as the sun is visible at noon-day,' that you have absolutely thinned your churches, and disgusted both the rich and the poor of your congregations, who, when hungering after the bread of life,' have been dieted on the froth of your whipt loyalty and the cream of your time-serving adulation? The hustings of Westminster,' indeed! Do you know how many fathers of families have stayed at home, and read Secker or Paley to their children, that they might escape the Sibylline furor of your party spirit, sucked from the leaves of the Courier newspaper? The hypocrisy of your charge is only equalled by its diverting simplicity. You have no dislike to political preaching in itself; but the politics must be of your own dictation. It consists with the duties of a preacher to palliate and uphold the art and mystery of governing by a systematic violation of the laws of the constitution, or to brand Dissenters (whom, though you court them with a fawning show of liberality to serve a purpose of persecution, you yet both fear and hate) as turbulent schismatics and sowers of sedition; but he must not say a word of those great cardinal maxims of civil and religious freedom, which speak unto us from the ashes of English martyrs, or the 'gory bed' of patriots who died for liberty. The former is to inculcate the fearing God and honouring the King;' the latter is to preach faction.

"The secret is, that the preachers of

your school have adopted with approba

tion as an axiom the inference of Rousseau, which so many other infidels have echoed, and which, perhaps, has been, and still is, a principal cause of their being infidels, that the spirit of the gospel is favourable to tyrants, and that true Christians are formed for slaves." How utterly repugnant such a notion is to the genius of that religion of which the earliest promulgators were distinguished by their boldness,' is satisfactorily shewn by Dr. Leechman, in his Discourse on the Excellency of the spirit of Christianity." As a Presbyterian he had, indeed, some fond notions of liberty, incompatible with the notions it to be a mistake that God, by the proof a true Episcopalian; and his alleging pitiation through Christ, was rendered merciful and placable when he was otherwise before, for that it is so far from being the cause of the divine mercy that it is the effect of it,' will not recommend his authority to you in other matters; but, as he comes within the pale of your 'general church,' which differs on these 'all-important points,' and is yet a true church, though the Nazareans, so differing, stand convicted of being a false church, I shall press on your consideration an extract from the above discourse: Whenever this superiority to the fear of man and the fear of temporal evils. and dangers flows from the principles of the gospel, it is accompanied with a noble freedom and independence of soul that can never dwell with mean and slavish principles.'"-Pp. 85-90.

into the character and merits of BiThe Reviewer has provoked inquiry shop Horsley.

"It may seem extraordinary that you, Sir, who seldom speak of the actual church without a hint at slumbering prelacy, or at spiritual wickedness in high places,' should bestow such pompous eulogies on the high-church bishop, the great Goliath of Gath, Dr. Horsley. I can easily perceive why you do this. He is held up (partly from error, partly policy) as the champion of the Church of England. Any defence of any Trinity was thought to call for gratitude. But the Athanasianism of the Bishop is directly opposed to the Oxford decree, as it is to the private opinions of the regular church, which fluctuate between this decree and the Scripture doctrine' of Samuel Clarke. Again, Dr. Horsley's damnatory dogma, that the MORAL GOOD of Unitarians is SIN,' stands contradicted by all the sound divines of the Establishment, living or dead; by all, in short, (and they are still many,) who hold with the Apostle John,

Review.-A Plea for the Nazarenes.

that he who DOETH righteousness is righteous. This creed-and-article theologian combats, therefore, under false colours: he is, in fact, your proper leader. You are fighting your own cause, while contending under his shield; and, at the same time, you gain credit for your fealty to the church.

"After being introduced to the real learning and rational piety of the old church-divines; (whose doctrinal creed neither constituted their whole of religion, nor narrowed the expansiveness of their Christian affection)-after witnessing their profound and practical knowledge of the human heart-their milk of human kindness-their zeal for things pertaining to salvation, not for strifes of words and oppositions of science-their language and their thoughts alike tinc tured with the study of their Bibles, we seem dropping from the pure empyrean' to a region of fen and fog, when we light on this supercilious Doctor of school-divinity (tout hérissé de Grec, tout bouffi d'arrogance'); this proud, secular, intolerant, and intermeddling priest; this minion of a court and theologian of a college.

Every thing in Bishop Horsley is bigoted and pedantic: he is no less wanting in comprehension of mind than in enlargement of heart. His proficiency in the mathematics is unquestioned; but, generally speaking, his knowledge, compounded of academical erudition and ecclesiastical theology, with a strong infusion of the reveries of the schoolmen and the abstractions of Platonism, was of that kind which puffeth up,' rather than that which is made available to the elucidation of truth. His posthumous work on the Psalms is a continued burlesque on the sacred oracles."-Pp. 91-95. We are tempted to give a specimen of Servetus's critical acumen.

“ I shall add only one more example of your docility to the simple teachings of Scripture,' which is furnished me by the established version and orthodox interpretation of 1 Tim. vi. 15- Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords: who only hath immortality; dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see : to whom be honour and power everlasting.'

"Though you are children of light,' Sir, you are, at the same time, wise in your generation.' You have the sagacity to see that BY THIS SINgle text mUST

109

STAND OR FALL THE ATHANASIAN TRINITY; for if the Father be intended by the blessed and only Potentate, and if the Father alone hath immortality, then Jesus, the Son of God, is not God supreme. Disregarding, therefore, the exclusion of THE FATHER from blessedness, supremacy and immortality, which must follow if Christ be the agent (and it must be confessed the Father is that person of the Trinity whom, as you could most easily dispense with, you treat with least ceremony); and finding that Christ having, in Revelations, the title of the Word of God, which dwelled in him, has also the title of the King of kings and Lord of lords, whose ambassador and representative he was (though he is, therefore, no more the Supreme Being than the faithful servant, on whom he promises to write the name of HIS GOD,' would therefore be God); seeing and reasoning thus, you do not read the words as even in their present position they would be most naturally read, which he, who is the blessed and only Potentate, will shew;' but you make who refer to Jesus Christ, who is thus identified at once with the only Potentate;' and though, in Revelations, he describes himself as he that liveth and was dead,' is declared alone to have immortality :' and though John proclaims him to the disciples as having been 'seen with their eyes,' as the medium of the word of life, is asserted' never to have been seen, and to be incapable of being seen by any man; and yet he is to appear, or to shew his own appearing, and all eyes shall see him.' Of all these contradictions the Scripture is guiltless.

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superficial scholar, that in this passage there is no mention of he who at all; for, though the article frequently expresses this pronoun, it is here simply an article; and, in order to use it as a pro-nonn, the translators are obliged to disjoin it from the noun to which it is prefixed, and to supply the verb is, in order to complete the sense. The translation would run literally thus:

"Till the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, in his own times, THE BLESSED AND ONLY POTENTATE WILL SHEW; the King of kings and Lord of lords, alone having immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable; whom none of men hath beheld, nor is able to behold; to whom be honour and power everlasting.

"What, Sir, are we to think of all this? And with what grave modesty or consistency do you and your party stand forward to accuse us of setting Scripture on the rack, and forcing it to give a testimony! What becomes of your boast of pressing us home with Bible-truths, and hooking us on a text? Remember, Sir, it is dreadful when men take the gospel of God into their own hands, and modify and mitigate it ACCORDING TO THEIR FANCIES.-British Review, p. 209." -Pp. 130-133.

Servetus concludes his letter with the following spirited passage, relating to one of the common-places of orthodox invective:

"I reserve for the last what you appear to think the grand demonstration of our being a false church: namely, the alleged frigidity of our spirit of proselytism, and the confined scale of our missionary operations. And here again you forget our dwindled and dwindling numbers, and our utter insignificance and obscurity as a religious society. But, Sir, may I be allowed to question the purity of that disinterested zeal for the souls of men, which you blazon in miraculous pulpit-narratives and Bible-society orations; and, creeping into houses, make captive easy women,' whom you flatter by comparing with the Marys and the Magdalenes that followed the steps of Jesus? You act, Sir, upon Heathens, upon gross and half-intellectual savages, who embrace your faith, and who accept, as the bread from heaven, the Calvinistic gospel. But your brethren have, properly, an instinctive horror both of a Jew and a Mahometan. It is only equalled by their horror of a Unitarian. The very mention of the latter, in connexion : with a Mahometan, is thought of sufficient point to save a page of reasoning;

and this with your party is, at least, something. You seem equally ignorant with the lowest of the vulgar, that the imposture of the Koran is ingrafted on the Mosaic and Christian Scriptures. The Hindoo, who worships a shapeless stone as his household deity, is the constant object of your almost weeping concern. The dupe of the false prophet, who notwithstanding, abhors an idol, and who maintains there is no other god but God,' is shunned as if he were a wild beast, rather than one of those whom the common Father of all has made of one blood to dwell on the face of the whole earth.' Though at one time you reproach us with our apathy in the work of proselytism, at another you make merry with our zeal. The fact is, we do not please you in selecting our subjects. The desire to convert the Mahometans, which our people have sometimes manifested, is called having a warm side towards them.' The insinuation will serve just as well for the Trinitarian promoters of missions to the triad-worshiping HINDOOS. The same indifference appears in your treatment of moral Atheists and philosophical Deists. Here, again, you seem to shrink back with a conscious hollowness' of cause, and appear not at all solicitous to snatch them as brands from the burning. Your motive for whatever presumes or enforces the for this coldness is, in part, your aversion reasonableness of Christianity. You are sensible that the intelligent sceptic will not yield up his reason to that which contradicts reason. Believing that the contradiction to human reason is the great evidence of supernatural truth, you make no attempt to produce conviction by reasoning; but, when pressed by infidel arguments, reply by uttering the damnatory clauses of your creed, and thanking God that you are not as other men are.' The hardness of your creed, and the terrific medium through which you contemplate God, have their natural effect in familiarizing to your imagination a cool, and perhaps self-complacent, estimate of the numbers sealed to perdition.

"But, Sir, if we cannot boast so much of our missionary miracles abroad, we have not buried our single talent' at home. We may at least say, though without the boasting of the godly, that, in this our native land, we have sown the seeds of that righteousness which alone exalteth a nation.' Many of our countrymen, through our preaching of the gospel in its simplicity,' have been brought to the knowledge of a God' who is love,' and to the practical obedience of the gospel which he gave

Review-Belsham's Sermon on the History of the Creation.

by his Son. We have paramount calls and claims upon our sympathies and our resources. We have to assist those who, by studying the Scripture for themselves, have submitted their educational prejudices to the testimony of Christ, that the Father is the only true God.' We have to assist female teachers, deprived of their scholars, and masters of charity-schools, who on some detected point of private heterodoxy, are turned from the house that sheltered themselves and their infants, in the darkness of midnight, and amid the pelting of the pitiless storm.' We have seen the vision of those who cry, earnestly, Come and help us,' from places where the believers in the One God and Father are cursed in the name of the Lord. We may at least say, that we have stood between the REPUTED HERETIC and his HOLY OPPRES. SOR; that, through our intervention, the prey has been rescued from the teeth of the spoiler;' that, through our instrumentality, under the blessing of Him who 'prospereth the work of the hands," the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she

may lay her young, even thine altars, O

LORD OF HOSTS! MY KING and MY GOD!""
-Pp. 177-181.

The British Review is, we apprehend, very little known amongst Unitarians: for their sake an answer was not necessary: but when it is considered, that the charge which is not answered is commonly pronounced unanswerable, and that there is a large class of readers who are easily imposed upon, by the specious misrepresentations and oracular decisions of Reviewers, Servetus's defence of his brethren must be allowed to be seasonable, and to entitle him to the thanks of "the sect every where spoken against" and every where prevailing.

ART. III-Reflections upon the History of the Creation in the Book of Genesis: a Discourse, delivered at Warrington, August 19, 1821: and published at the Request of the Ministers, and of the Congregation. By Thomas Belsham, Minister of the Chapel in Essex Street, Strand. 8vo. pp. 36. Hunter.

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a lively interest amongst theologians, and the controversy which it has occasioned must be allowed to be of considerable importance. Mr. Belsham states his opinions with his usual clearness, and maintains them with his usual ability. The question to which the sermon has given rise will therefore be argued with this advantage, that the preacher has not left the possibility of a doubt concerning what he himself intends.

Mr. Belsham takes for his text Gen. i. 1, and states in the introduction to his discourse his acquiescence in the conjecture of some learned men, that this book is a compilation of ancient documents. These, he thinks, may be traced to at least three dif ferent writers; for this he assigns the following reasons:

"First, that there are many passages, and some whole chapters, in which the word God (in the original Elohim) is constantly used to denote the Supreme Being, and no other title is applied to the Divine Majesty. Secondly, in other passages the word Lord (in the original Jehovah) ouly is used, and the appellation God is excluded; excepting that in a few instances it is joined with the other, and the Divine Being is called JehovahElohim, the Lord God. Thirdly, there are other passages, and even whole chapters, from which the words, both God and Lord, and every other title expressive of the Supreme Being, are altogether excluded, which must have been intentional, if it were not the effect of iguorance; because, in the greater part of the books of the Old Testament, and even in the other portions of the book of Genesis itself, the words God or Lord, occur. in almost every sentence."-P. 3.

It is probable, according to Mr. Belsham, that some of the documents existed previously to the age of Moses; amongst which he reckons those chapters and sections in which the title God is applied to the Supreme Being, and where the word Jehovah does not occur. He refers for proof

to Exod. vi. 6.

After these introductory critical remarks, Mr. Belsham proceeds to state those great and important moral truths

to which the writer of the narrative of the creation bears his solemn testimony, viz. that there is a God, the Creator, the Former, the Sovereign Proprietor and Lord of the heavens,

the earth, the seas, and of all their productions and inhabitants: that God possesses almighty power, unerring wisdom, and unbounded goodness: and, finally, that there is no other God but ONE; one Creator, one Preserver, one Universal Benefactor, one Being, possessed of infinite power, wisdom and goodness, one sole object of all religious homage and adoration. These truths Mr. Belsham thinks the writer did not deliver by immediate inspiration, because his narrative " contains many great philosophical errors:" on the other hand, he cannot allow that he attained to the knowledge of so pure and perfect a system of theology, by the exercise of his own intellectual powers: the only remaining hypothesis is that he derived his beautiful theism from an anterior revelation, preserved by tradition.

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The second part of the Sermon is a detail of the account of the creation, and a specification of the mistakes into which Mr. Belsham supposes the writer to have been led by an erroneous philosophy. His system of philosophy, says the preacher, is that which arises from the observation of the most obvious appearances of the universe, and which existed before science began. He believed that light might exist in the absence of the sun, as it appears to do in the morning and evening twilight. He regarded the firmament as a solid arch, which rated the waters above from the waters below. He conceived of the sun and moon as lamps fixed in the solid firmament for the convenience and comfort of the inhabitants of the earth, and of the stars as mere ornamental spangles. In these and other particulars, Mr. Belsham regards the writer's account as directly and palpably inconsistent with what is now demonstrated to be the true theory of the universe; and he pronounces the attempts to reconcile the Mosaical cosmogony to philosophical truth to be unsatisfactory and useless, and even injurious to the cause of revealed religion. This conclusion sets aside the inspiration of the narrative, but inspiration is not claimed by the writer, nor does the divine legation of Moses, as a prophet or lawgiver, depend upon the supposition. At the same time, the preacher is forward to express his

unqualified admiration of some pas sages of the history. Referring to its assertion of the infinite power of God, he says,

"And this great truth it does not express in explicit language, but in a manner peculiarly emphatic and sublime: by representing the most extraordinary effects as produced instantaneously by a divine command. God said, 'Let there be light, and there was light: let there be a firmament, and there was a firmament.' Thus asserting and illustrating the infinite facility and the absolute inis no lapse of time, however momentary, stantaneity of the Divine operation. There between the volition and the effect: God wills and it is done. Not that will and

power are one and the same thing in the Supreme Being, as some have erroneously asserted; but they are co-ordinate, coexistent, there is no interval, not an instant between volition and effect. This is a representation of Divine Omnipotence so original and magnificent, that it never occurred to any Heathen writer: and it judicious and the most celebrated of all is for this reason selected by the most the ancient critics, as a grand and unparalleled example of the true sublime."Pp. 9, 10.

Of the account of the creation of man, he remarks,

"But thus much we may at least affirm, without fear of contradiction, that nothing can be more rational, more probable, or more dignified, than this

account of the creation of the human species. There is nothing low or ludicrous in the narrative. The human pair are created at once, both at the same time, male and female, at the fiat of the Almighty: they are made sovereigns of the new-created world: and are inducted into their high office with all things ready prepared for their accommodation, with a grant of the whole vegetable creation for their food, and of dominion over the various tribes of animals for their convenience and use. The whole transaction is dignified and sublime, and in all respects worthy of the character and attributes of the great Former and Parent of mankind."-P. 25.

As this interesting discourse is at this moment a subject of discussion between our correspondents, we have confined ourselves to such an analysis of its contents as may put the reader in possession of Mr. Belsham's opinions; and we shall observe only that considerable latitude has been

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