Church Reform: The Only Means to That End, Stated in a Letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., First Lord of the TreasuryCarlile, Richard
Religion
Church Reform: The Only Means to That End, Stated in a Letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., First Lord of the Treasury
Carlile, Richard
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Church and state -- Church of England; Rationalism
You, Sir, if you enter the House of Commons next month, may be said to
personate the Electors of Tamworth; a power in the abstract greater than
you, because many and supposed qualified to reject your personation
and to elect another. Therefore, the personation is not the power
personated. As the King's chief Minister, you will also personate the
King's Government in the House of Commons; but you are not in reality
that governing power; because, it is something distinct from you, and
greater than can be concentrated in your person. You, as plain Robert
Peel, and I, as Richard Carlile, are not persons; and though it is a
custom so to use the word and so to describe us, yet it is a mistake and
misuse of the word, unless the body may be said to personate the mind,
soul, &c. I hope you see that much of the error of our Church has turned
upon this point; because a person was never the reality of the power,
and consequently the persons of the Trinity are not to be considered
the reality of the Trinity: and hence the Unitarian Dissenter has
no reasonable ground of dissent. The doctrine of the Trinity, as a
description of Deity, is a valid theological and philosophical doctrine,
admitting of no rational dissent.
I wish the Bishops to learn this before the Dissenters, so that the
Church may be taught how to call back her errant and ignorant children,
that her property may be held together for useful purposes, and not be
wasted at the shrine of dissenting ignorance or bankrupt government.
And now, Sir, can you yet see your way with me, "to remove every abuse
that can impair the efficiency of the establishment; extend the sphere
of its usefulness, and strengthen and confirm its just claims upon
the respect and affections of the people?" If you cannot, I beg you to
follow me farther.
It is not only in physics that the doctrine of the Trinity is
theologically and scientifically correct, but in morals also; and this
is the foundation of the Christian Religion.
As God, the Father, personates all science, under the attribute of
omniscience; that is, personates all existence, both omnipotence and
omnipresence, and is, in that reality, the fountain of knowledge--the
all and every part that can be known; so God the Son, Christ or
Logos, personates the human mind, as the existence or manifestation of
knowledge and reason, as Jesus or the principle of salvation from evil,
in possessing that knowledge, and as the true God, in us and with us, in
and with whom we live, and move, and have our being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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