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
Religion, we maintain, was made for man, and not man for religion. The
mediator, therefore, which we require, is one who would guide and not
confound our nature; who would ennoble but not perplex it. We would look
for a mediator by whom we should receive the light and truth of God and
heaven to our souls. We need to see the capacities, the duties, and the
destinies of our kind, in one who is perfectly, but yet simply, of
ourselves. Our sorrows, our sufferings, and our darkness, we regard as
but so many reasons why our Redeemer and Saviour should be entirely of
our own kind. We require one who would manifest to all that God is
really interested in us. We require one who would show that we are not
shut out from communion with the infinite, the invisible, and the
future. We require one who would correct our evils, and yet resolve our
doubts. We require one who could sympathize with our weakness. We
require one who would show us of what our nature is capable, and thus
flash upon us the guilt of our deficiencies, or inspire us with the hope
of advancement. We are feeble, and need strength; we are tempted, and
need support. Jesus proves to us that the strength is in us, if we use
it; and that the support is at hand, if we choose to apply it. In our
transgressions, we are but too much inclined to yield to, or justify
ourselves with, a guilty sophistry; but our views of Jesus leave us no
room for such delusion. Whilst Trinitarianism places most of our
religious wants afar off and outside us, Unitarianism fixes them within
us. Whilst Trinitarianism demands a Christ which shall reconcile God to
us, Unitarianism holds a Christ which shall conform us to God:—to us his
word and work is a spirit of life, his word and work to them but dogma
or mystery.
Upon our views, Christ is properly a mediator; on those of orthodoxy, he
can bear no such character: compounded of Deity and humanity, he is
truly of neither. It is said that we have no need of Christ; that, in
fact, he has no purpose in our system; that he might be taken from it
without creating any loss. We maintain the contrary. We maintain that
Christ is our all in all; that he is the impersonation of our religion,
that he is bodily our Christianity. Whilst others principally regard him
in the retrospect, we have him as a present and a living reality. Whilst
others trust him for what he has done, we love him for what he was.
Whilst others make his nature the subject of hard and abstruse dogmas,
we hold it forth as the subject of affectionate contemplation. Whilst
others propose faith, we propose imitation as the greatest virtue. We
look upon him as the Instructor in our moral doubts; the enlightener of
our ignorance, which, in so many cases, press down our hearts respecting
the general course of Providence and our future destiny; of our
ignorance respecting God, and all that belongs to the future, the Past,
and the Invisible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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