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    didactic sectary in the fellow-disciple ^ and ( so but Christ were preached not " in pretence" but honesty , not in the words which man ' s w ^ om or foolishness might teach , but in those which the Holy Spirit has taught ) ,

    to study for a season truth at the li p ^ of charity , and seek future unanimity in the bosom of present variety of opinion ? Could , indeed , a strictly scriptural church long want a strictly scriptural liturgy ? But iu the mean

    time take only that of the established sect in this country , and divest it of its traditional deformities- —arid why should conscience so peremptorily require of any worshiper of " the Most Highest in and through Christ Jesus , that he tolerate at his elbow no other

    creed than the last he made his ownr though that creed no less than his own religiously abjures every vocabulary save that of the Bible , a 4 id introduces nothing but what can equally plead totidem verbis , the litera scripta of some portion of that book in its

    apology ? Why , for instance , must not he who had only the name of Christ " called upon himself , " endure to hear as honest an inquirer as himself into the meaning of every scriptural phrase , " invoke that name" with the protomartyr , pray to it with Paul ,

    or even apostrophize it with Thomas ? Could two such men love as brethren , only with a middle wall of partition between their devotions ? Forsooth , might not two such men become all

    the better in point of faith , for having become all the better in point of charity ? Might not either listen till he learnt , and learu till he obeyed ? Who knows how soon idolatry might to the one assume the form of

    subordinate homage , or blasphemy , to the other , put on the semblance of a purer Theism ? Who shall say that a congregation formed upon this Catholic plan might not one day chance to be of one mind , and that mind the mind

    of Christ ? Halcyon hour ! at the thought of thee how much does a Procrustean spirit lose of its least questionable charm ; how almost does a rigid conscientiousness itself abate of its most hallowed dignity ! But would such a place of worship be Unitarian ? * Pon honour ! I knaitf not , and to be candid with my querist , care not . I will go a step fcurtkatv and

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    gregate his motley thousands and tens of thousands to the unhallowed tinkling of an unscriptural phraseology , and Christ still importune in vain that more than two or three should be gathered together in his name to worship the Father in spirit and in truth , test haply here and there a louder hosannah than to some Pharisee may seem meet , should mingle with the unanimous diapason of the hallelujah ?

    Shall I be fo > r ever scandalized at my better-informed or more erring brother ' s homage to the Son , because I cannot haply join with him in an occasional petition to that intercessor at God ' s right-hand , who is able , according to my creed , no less than his own , to save to the uttermost all who come

    unto the Father through him ? Nay , let the Trinitarian , content to confine his antibiblical , however orthodox , aspirations to his private oratory , so far only concur with me as to worship

    God in the spirit , through his Son our l , ord Jesus Christ ; and shall I feel the profanation of his presence , because aware that he cannot recognize in the " one Lord * of us both a mere

    man , or though he cannot forbear conscientiously even to explain away his admitted inferiority to the Father ? Let us differ as men , but pray together as Christians . And with our

    Bibles in our hands , and a spirit of evangelical unity at our hearts , would it be so impracticable to devise a form of prayer , which , while it offended none but those with whom the

    language of that book was not as oracular as its contents , should comprehend all who did not prefer hypothesis to narrative , the inferences of their own prurient imaginations to the ipse dixit of an apostle , and the established

    usage of the primeval church , as evidenced by its only authentic documents in the day of its heavenly Founder and his contemporary missionaries ? Surely so noble an experiment were worth at least the hazard

    of a failure ; and to secure its probable success , what more were necessary than to confide its execution to men who were not so bigoted to their own construction of any part of the sacred record , as unnecessarily to preclude that of any other " Bible only" Christian—» -who for a grand purpose would be well pleased for once to merge the

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    560 Mr . Clarke on his proposed ChapeL

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1818, page 560, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2480/page/24/