A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.Ballou, Hosea
Religion
A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.
Ballou, Hosea
Revelation; Universalism -- Doctrines
You are disposed to call on me to inform you what I mean by this
mission, to which I reply; I mean a divine appointment to act in a
certain official character, accompanied with certain powers by which
they were _enabled to evince_, by miracles, this their appointment.
Jesus was appointed by God himself to reveal the divine character,
nature, and will of the Father to the world, by his preaching, by his
miracles of mercy, by his sufferings, by his death and resurrection.
The apostles were sent by Jesus Christ on the same mission, on which
Jesus himself was sent. See his prayer, John xvii. "As thou has sent
me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world."
Those who believed in Jesus, and acknowledged him to be the Messiah,
believed on account of the miracles which he wrought, and as I have
before argued, Jesus never required of any a belief in him, barely on
his testimony of himself, but on the evidence afforded by the works
which he did in his Father's name. So likewise, those who believed on
Jesus through the ministry of the apostles, never were called on to
believe but by the authority of as great wonders as were wrought by
Christ himself. I need not say much on this particular, as you must
know that the ground on which I have here placed this subject, is the
ground on which the New Testament places it.
The absurd notions which have been erroneously adopted by Christian
doctors and councils concerning the mission of Christ to appease the
divine wrath, to reconcile God to man, to suffer the penalty of the
divine law, &c. &c. which have rendered the gospel a mystery and a
mist, in room of a high way for the ransomed of the Lord to return to
Zion in, is chargeable to the enemy who sowed tares among the wheat.
These opinions with a multitude of studied inventions about a
mysterious work of sovereign elective grace wrought in certain
individuals, in an unknown way and frequently in an unknown time all
which is to be followed by a system of mysterious sanctification,
connected most mysteriously with final perseverance, together with all
the intricate unknown items set down in the Westminister Catechism,
have only served to perplex some, puff others up with spiritual pride
and exalt them in the kingdom of spiritual wickedness in high places,
to drive some to despair, and to disgust reason and common sense in
others. There is not a word of all the above jargon in the sacred
scriptures, which give us a most rational account of the great object
of the gospel ministry. This object is the redemption of mankind from
moral darkness, which is the whole occasion of moral evil, and to
produce that improvement in the religious world which science is
designed to effect in the political. It is to bring truth to light, to
commend the character of God to man, to lead all men into the true
knowledge, spirit, and temper of the divine nature. Thus we discover
in Jesus no partialist, no sectarian, no friend to any one
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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