ON THE UNITARIAN BELIEF. WE shall undertake to state in the following pages what we understand to be the prevailing belief of Unitarian Christians. Our position as a religious body seems still to require statements of this nature. It is a position, that is to say, entirely misunderstood. Misconstructions, once in vogue, seem to have a strange power of perpetuating themselves; or, at any rate, they are helped on by powers that seem to us very strange. In the face of a thousand denials, and in spite of the self-contradicting absurdity of the charge, it is still said, and, by multitudes, seems to be thought, that our creed consists of negations; that we believe in almost nothing. It seems to be received as if it were a matter of common consent, that we do not hold to the doctrines of the Bible, and that we scarcely pretend to hold to the Bible itself. It is apparently supposed by many, that we stand upon peculiar ground in this respect; that we hold some strange position in the Christian world, different from all other Christian denominations. We must, therefore, if our patience fail not, explain ourselves again and again. We must, again and again, implore others to make distinctions very obvious indeed, but which they are strangely slow to see, to distinguish, that is to say, or at least to remember that we distinguish, between the Bible and fallible interpretations, between Scripture doctrines and the explanations of those doctrines, between mysteries and absurdities, between piety and fanaticism. The former we receive; the latter only do we reject. one. Our position in the Christian world is not a singular We profess to stand upon the same ground as all other Christians, the Bible. Our position, considered as dissent, our position as assailed on all sides, is by no means a novel one. The Protestants were, and are, charged by the Romish Church with rejecting Christianity. Every sect in succession that has broken off from the body of Christians, the Lutherans and English Episcopalians first, then the Scotch Presbyterians, then the Baptists, the Methodists, the Quakers, the Puritans, the Independents of every name, have been obliged to reply to the same charge of holding no valid nor authorized belief. And what has been the answer of them all? It has been the answer of Paul before Felix, that they did believe; that they "believed all things that are written" in the holy volume. This same defence, namely, Paul's defence to the Jews, Luther's and Wickliffe's to the Romish Church, the defence of Knox, of Robinson, of Fox, of Wesley, and Whitfield, and of our own Mayhew and Mathers to the English Church, this same defence, it has fallen to our lot to plead as Unitarian Christians. We bear a new name; but we take an old stand, a stand old as Christianity. We bear a new name, but we make an old defence; we think, as every other class of Christians have thought, that we approach the nearest to the old primitive Christianity. We bear a hard name, the name of heretics; but it is the very name which Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Arminians, Calvinists, have once borne, which all Protestant Orthodoxy has once borne, which Paul himself bore, when he said, "After the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers." We bear a new name; and a new name draws suspicion upon it, as every Christian sect has had occasion full well to know; and we think, therefore, that our position and our plea demand some consideration and sympathy from the body of Christians. We think that they ought to listen to us, when we make the plea, once their own, that we believe, according to our honest understanding of their import, all things that are written in the Holy Scriptures. There is one circumstance which makes the statement of this defence peculiarly pertinent and proper for us. And that is, the delicacy which has been felt by our writers and preachers about the use of terms. When we found, for instance, that the phrase, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," and that the words, atonement, regeneration, election, with some others, were appropriated by the popular creeds, and stood in prevailing usage, for orthodox doctrines, we hesitated about the free use of them. It was not because we hesitated about the meaning which Scripture gave to them, but about the meaning which common usage had fixed upon them. We believed in the things themselves, we believed in the words as they stood in the Bible, but not as they stood in other books. But finding that, whenever we used these terms, we were VOL. IX. - No. 96. 1* charged as even our great Master himself was, with "deceiving the people," and not anxious to dispute about words, we gave up the familiar use of a portion of the Scriptural phraseology. Whether we ought, in justice to ourselves, so to have done, is not now the question. We did so; and the consequence has been, that the body of the people, not often hearing from our pulpits the contested words and phrases; not often hearing the words, propitiation, sacrifice, the fall, the new birth, and the Spirit of God, hold themselves doubly warranted in charging us with a defection from the faith of Scripture. It is this state of things, which makes it especially pertinent and proper for us, as we have said, distinctly to declare not only our belief in the Scriptures generally, but our belief in what the Scriptures teach on the points in controversy, our belief, we repeat, in what the Scriptures mean by the phrase, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," and by the words, atonement, conversion, election, and others that stand for disputed doctrines. To some statements of this nature, then, we now invite attention; only premising further, that it is no part of our purpose, within the brief limits of this exposition, to set forth any thing of that abundant argument for our views of Christianity, which so powerfully convinces us that they are true. Our object, at present, is limited to statement and explanation. We would present the Unitarian creed, according to our own understanding of it. With this object in view, we say, in general, that we believe in the Scriptures. On a point which is so plain, and ought to be so well understood as this, it is unnecessary to dwell, unless it be for the purpose of discrimination. If any one thinks it |