Unitarianism Defended: A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of LiverpoolMartineau, James
Religion
Unitarianism Defended: A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool
Martineau, James
Unitarianism
It is in remarkable consistency with these views that very little is
said in the popular systems of Christ’s character. The doctrinal ideas
respecting Jesus are all in all: the moral and spiritual ideas are
looked upon as not peculiarly Christian. A vast deal is said about his
Rank, his Merits, his Mediatorial Distinction: very little is said about
his Life, his Example, his Revelations of Duty and of Destiny. The
Trinitarians taunt us with having no use for Christ in our system.
Certainly we believe in a God who does not require their Christ. We do
not speak of Atonement therefore. But we might retort, that if we
neglect their metaphysical Christ, they neglect our moral and spiritual
Christ. They speak little of his character, his life, his example, as a
model for humanity: nor could they in consistency with their system.
Jesus, as God and man, is powerless as an exhibition of what man may be.
He is no revelation of Humanity to Humanity. Humanity with Deity
attached to it, or indwelling, is Humanity no more.
If Christianity is a system of doctrines to be deduced from words, and
if our salvation depends upon the certainty of our deductions, then is
it not clear that God would be requiring an absolute Truth of
Interpretation which he has not given us the means of attaining, and
that the Revelation, even to “Critics and Scholars,” would be an
_uncertain property_? But if Christianity is an inspired Life, the
Duties and the Destinies of Man shown forth on the Son of God, the word
made flesh, the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ, a
character perfectly reflecting the purposes of Providence, and preserved
for us, in faithful narratives that still enable us to have the image of
Jesus formed within us, then is it not clear that the Revelation is
perpetuated in our hearts, and that the Christ with us still, the same
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, is the gift of God to all men? “Lo,
I am with you always, to the end of the world.” Now this is Christ’s own
account of himself as a Revelation. “I am the Light of the world.” “I am
the Resurrection and the Life.” “I am the way, and the truth, and the
life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye had known me, ye
should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him and
have seen him.”[136] “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he
seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth
the Son likewise.”[137] “Whoso hath seen me hath seen the Father also.”
And to crown all this scriptural evidence, this is God’s own account of
his Christ as a Revelation, authenticating him at the opening of his
Mission, and repeated again as His seal upon its close, “This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
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