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
And now, Gentlemen, accept from us in conclusion, our solemn protest
against the language of unmeasured insult, in which, under the cover of
sanctity, the associated clergymen whom you represent, have thought
proper to speak of our religion; against the accusations personally
addressed to us, in the presence of 3,000 people, by the Lecturers in
Christ Church, of “mean subterfuges,” “of sneering,” of “savage grins,”
of “damnable blasphemy,” of “the greatest imaginable guilt,” of “doing
despite to the Spirit of Grace,” of “the most odious of crimes against
the Majesty of Heaven,” and in common with all Unitarians of forming our
belief, from “the blindness of graceless hearts,” too bad “to have been
touched by any spirit of God,” and against the visible glee, fierce as
Tertullian’s, with which “the faithful” are reminded that ere long, _we
must and shall_ bow our proud knees, whether we like it or not, to the
object of their peculiar worship;—so that they are sure of their triumph
in heaven, however questionable it may be on earth. You began the
controversy by ascribing to us one shade of “infidelity;” you end it by
ascribing to us a blacker. Beneath “the lowest deep,” there is it seems
“a lower still.” We have sat quietly under all this, bearing the rude
friction upon everything that is most dear to us, assured that if
anything in heaven or earth be certain, it is this;—that no spirit of
God ever spake thus, or thus administered the poison of human passions,
falsely labelled as the medicine of a divine love. What is the
difference between your religion and ours, that this high tone (than
which, to a pure moral taste, nothing surely can be _lower_) should be
assumed against us? We believe, no less than you, in an infallible
Revelation (though had we the misfortune to doubt it, we might be, in
the sight of God, neither worse nor better than yourselves); you in a
Revelation of an unintelligible Creed to the understanding; we in a
Revelation of moral perfection, and the spirit of duty to the heart; you
in a Revelation of the metaphysics of Deity; we in a Revelation of the
character and providence of the Infinite Father; you in a Redemption
which saves the few, and leaves with Hell the triumph after all; we in a
Redemption which shall restore to all at length the image and the
immortality of God: we _do_ reserve, as you suggest, “_a sort of
inspiration_” for the founders of Christianity, “a sort” as much higher
than your cold, dogmatical, scientific inspiration, as the intuitions of
conscience are higher than the predications of logic, and the free
spirit of God, than the petty precision of men. We believe in a
spiritual and moral Revelation, most awakening, most sanctifying, most
holy; which _words_, being the signs of hard and definite ideas, could
never express, and which is therefore pourtrayed in a mind divinely
finished for the purpose, acting awhile on Earth and publicly
transferred to Heaven. All men may see that such a Revelation
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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