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
quote one author, Boston, who seems actually to feast and luxuriate
amidst the dark monstrocities which he pictures; his spirit appears to
bound, and his heart to exult within him, at the sound of the dreadful
trumpet which calls the wicked to their final doom; and one can almost
imagine the rapture of his eye, as in fancy he saw the flame kindling,
and the smoke of torment arising in which they were to burn for ever. In
his description of hell he displays no ordinary degree of graphic and
geographical talent, and when he comes to paint the sufferings of damned
bodies, he is so accurate and anatomical, that as Paley at 60 learned
anatomy, to write on natural theology, you would suppose that Boston
learned it to enlarge with correctness on the physical tortures of the
lost. I wish not to fix his opinions upon any man or body of men;
substantially, however, they are no more than Calvinism, though some
might object to his mode of expressing them. This I may fairly say to
any of those who do not agree with Boston in their Calvinism, and would
yet fix the Improved Version on us, that _they_ are as bound to receive
the one as _we_ the other. Nay, more so, inasmuch as Boston’s work is in
a wider circulation, and with the evidence of most extensive approval.
It is published by the London Tract Society, and I have an edition
before me as late as 1838; it is sold by every evangelical bookseller,
and it is to be found on the shelves of every evangelical circulating
library. We are accused of rebellion against God and Christ; but let any
one read dispassionately the extracts contained in this, and reflect on
the sentiments to be deduced from their collective testimony, and then
let him say whether deeper injury was ever done to God, or Christ, or
man, than is inflicted by these repulsive dogmas. By these descriptions,
if God is a being of love or justice, then language has no meaning, or
we are to interpret the terms by their contradictories. If you were only
to disguise the words, but preserve the sentiments, and attribute the
character implied in them to the parent of the most zealous of
Calvinists, he would spurn the aspersion with honest indignation. And,
if we mean not by goodness in God, something analogous to goodness in
man, what is it that we can mean? The abstractions in which these dogmas
are involved by scholastic mysticism, blinds the mind to their ordinary
import. But let us suppose an illustration. Take the case of a human
father, who, granting he had the power, should pre-ordain his child to
misery; should attribute a guilt to him, he never knew; should require
from him what he had no power to accomplish, and condemn him because he
had not fulfilled it; should place him in circumstances in which he was
sure to grow worse, and yet withhold the help that could make him
better; should, as the son sunk deeper in iniquity, heap heavier
malediction on the wretch he abandoned; should see without pity the ruin
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