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
the seal of divine confirmation on his resurrection as the pledge of
human immortality. He is then our Instructor in every doubt; our
Consolation in every sorrow; our Strength in the griefs of life, and our
Support in the fears of death. We see him in his own ennobling and
sanctifying human nature, and by his impressive and vital energy sending
out from him the power for its redemption.
The character of God, as revealed in Christ’s teaching, and manifested
by Christ’s life, in the Unitarian faith, is not only discerned with a
clearer light, but commands a more sacred reverence, as well as a more
willing love. He that hath seen me, says the Saviour, hath seen the
Father. Now we believe this expression to be full of profoundest truth,
if we receive it as a moral revelation; but orthodoxy reduces it to a
mystical enigma, and robs it of meaning and of value. We discern God
through Christ as a Father, universal, merciful, good, holy, and
all-powerful. This we collect from the teachings of Christ; we could
never deduce it from the teachings of Calvinism. If we turn to the
teachings of Christ, we hear of a Father impartial and unbounded; if we
turn to the teachings of Calvinism, we read of a God that, in any
benignant sense, is but father to a few, and these few purchased by the
agonies of innocence; if we turn to the teachings of Christ, we are
instructed of a Father who is merciful, and that mercy is proposed to us
as the most perfect object of imitation; if we turn to the teachings of
Calvinism, we are told of a Father who properly cannot be merciful at
all, for the good he gives has been purchased, and is the equivalent of
a price; a Father, I repeat, whose good-will is paid for; the primary
element in whose character, as drawn in many popular creeds and
formularies, is a stern wrath, falsely called justice; the imitation of
which, in the creature, would turn earth into a darker hell than ever
theology visioned. If we turn to the teachings of Christ, we find in
them a Father supremely good, holding towards all his creatures a
benignant aspect; who, when his children ask for bread will not give
them a stone,—who casts with equal hand the shower and the sun-shine;
who rules in the heavens with glory, and in earth with bounty; who hears
the raven’s cry as well as the Seraph’s song. If we turn to Calvinism we
are informed of a Deity who has seen the ruin and the wreck of his own
workmanship, and pronounced a curse over that which he did not choose to
prevent; we are told that all creatures sicken under that original
curse; that earth feels it to her centre; that it spreads a frown over
heaven, and roars with a voice of destruction in the thunder and the
tempest; that living creatures throughout all their countless tribes,
suffer by it; that it pursues man from the first tears of infancy to the
last pang of death. If we turn to the teachings of Jesus, we are taught
that God is most holy; we are placed before that invisible Being who
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