Uncial

“ Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. ”

“ That court of conscience which moderates the rigour of the law, we call a court of equity. Those who are found faulty were perhaps overtaken in the fault, and are therefore to be restored with the spirit of meekness. ”

“ If it be said, that the Creeds are not the creators of divisions, but that divisions are the creators of Creeds, I admit that they act and react on each other. If they create not the differences which they make, they give them all their bitterness. ”

“ Union in discipline and doctrine, the offensive sin of schism, the notion of a church and a hierachy, they laugh at, as foppery, cant, and priestcraft. They see no necessity at all that there should be a national faith; and what we usually call by that name, they only style the religion of the magistrate. Since the dissenters and we agree in the main, why should the difference of a few speculative points, or modes of dress, incapacitate them from serving their prince and country, in a juncture, when we ought to have all hands up against the common enemy? ”

“ Every one who entered this society was obliged, at least so long as he continued to be a member of it, to lay aside all distinctions arising from rank, nation, or religion, in short, every general mark or distinction whatever, and to submit himself to the condition of universal equality. ”

“ Altogether, I find opening before us, vistas of heresies to which I, for one, must shut my eyes. I have always been in sympathy with the dogmatists and exclusionists: that is plain in our opening lines: that to seem to be is falsely and arbitrarily and dogmatically to exclude. ”

“ You find, then, all over Europe, all over civilization, just as much Unitarianism as you would expect to find, when you consider the questions as to whether the law permits it and as to whether the people are educated and free. ”

“ Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible would be this; that when the persons are named, by their distinctive Divine titles, their equality will be recognized, nor any one of them be represented as subordinate to another. ”

“ We shall at almost every turn hear modern laws and constitutions—liberty of worship, liberty of the press, liberty of meeting, with representative legislatures and responsible governments—denounced as the curse of mankind in all the varying accents of a strange dialect, or a dialect happily strange to us. ”

“ A kindly critic in the New York Nation, reviewing the first volume of the Constitutional History, has described the writer as entirely free from political bias, and adds that, 'what is more surprising, he appears to be scarcely influenced by ecclesiastical sentiment or prejudice.' Well, I thought, when I read that notice, here is at last a man who takes a right view of the clerical character. ”

“ The process includes the comparison of an isolated custom or belief belonging, perhaps secretly, to a particular place, a particular class of persons, or perhaps a particular family or person, with a custom or belief which is part of a whole system belonging to a savage race or tribe; of a custom or belief whose only sanction is tradition, the conservative instinct to do what has been done by one's ancestors, with a custom or belief whose sanction is the professed and established polity or religion of a people ”

“ There are certain languages of which the original unity can be proved, either by the extrinsic evidence of history, or by the gradual approximation they display as we ascend from modern to earlier epochs, and compare modern with ancient specimens. We can show, by means of the like evidence, the progressive changes they have undergone, and the nature of the existing differences which have been the result of those changes. ”

“ Let us see now how he explains the civil theology itself. I see, indeed, why it should be distinguished as fabulous, even because it is false, because it is base, because it is unworthy. But to wish to distinguish the natural from the civil, what else is that but to confess that the civil itself is false? For if that be natural, what fault has it that it should be excluded? ”

“ Assuming then, for the sake of argument at least, that the proposition that all men are created equal is and was intended to be a statement of the Reformation doctrine in its broadest and most universal form, a clue is given for the interpretation of the propositions which follow. ”

“ The Gentile would naturally plead, that as God had not made him of the chosen nation, he had given him no law, except that of conscience; that, being without the law, he must be a law unto himself; and that if he had lived according to his light, he could not be justly excluded on the ground of accidental disqualification. Possibly, in the provocation of dispute, the Gentile might sometimes become froward and insolent in his assertion of claim ”

“ The only trustworthy argument for the unity of the race is derived from comparative philology. If it should be established that one of the three families of speech was more ancient than the others, and the source of the others, the argument would be unanswerable. ”

“ And no one of our denomination has taken so much pains to prevent the Unitarians from committing themselves to the wrong side, or failing to do their duty on the right side, of every question relating to slavery. ”

“ The result is that the unity of the race, in the sense of its common origin, is no longer a matter of debate; and although actually some erratic writers may still speak of it as open to discussion, they are not taken seriously, and practically it is universally treated as a fixed fact that mankind in all its varieties is one, as in fundamental characteristics, so also in origin. ”

“ What reason there is, or would be, to boast of the happy effects of uniformity in a great number of societies, comprehending a whole kingdom, or the whole christian world, we may judge from the horrible evils, before recited, that attend the necessary methods of enforcing this uniformity in a single society; for these must be multiplied in proportion to the number. We see, in fact, much more good than harm is found to result from the diversities in dissenting congregations. ”

“ We can have no intellectual or doctrinal union. We must give up therefore the idea of aggregate life, as a Body devoted to a uniform Belief, and held together by the forms of an uniform Ecclesiastical Government. ”

“ Let them set aside absolutely all prejudice in favor of nation, family, school or order; let them relinquish all party spirit, and keep before their minds the undoubted doctrine of the Church, as laid down in the decrees of the councils, in papal documents, etc., knowing that there are opinions that, while they seem certain to one nation, school, or order, are, with the knowledge of the Holy See, opposed by others ”

“ For a long time the Unitarian sect did not grumble unduly, but set itself to promote the cultivation of reason, and apply that to religion; to cultivate morality and apply it to life; and to demand the most entire personal freedom for all men in all matters pertaining to religion. ”

“ A most powerful instrument in accommodating men's minds to this change of view, in other words, to the establishment of the new individualistic principle, was the Roman or Civil law, which, at the period dealt with in the present book, had become the basis whereon disputed points were settled in the Imperial Courts. ”

“ We feel, therefore, a natural interest in the determination of yourself and brother clergymen to call attention to the Unitarian Controversy, and a desire that the occasion may be made conducive to the promotion of candid research, the diminution of sectarian prejudice, and the diffusion of the true faith, and the spirit of our great Master. ”

“ In our search for the origin of denominational divisions, with all their attendant evils, we must look in some other direction. Let me appeal to you as an individual. How did you come to be what you are religiously? ”

“ As you think it the duty of Unitarians to judge of your doctrines, not from our objections, but from your vindication, you cannot question the duty of Trinitarians to take their impressions of our faith from us, rather than from you. ”

“ I have made frequent and earnest inquiries of a great number of holy and learned men, how I might discriminate, that is, what certain and universal rule there was for discriminating, between Catholic truth and heretical pravity ”

“ And the reason why such confederacies are kept so sacred and inviolable, is very plain; because, in each of those cases I have mentioned, the whole body is moved by one spirit in pursuit of one general end, and the interest of individuals is not crossed by each other, or by the whole. ”

“ UNITARIANISM.⁠The term Unitarianism in its widest sense includes certain lines of the great religious and theo logical movement or revolution of the Reformation in the 16th century, when this is regarded as the commencement of the process of the humanization of theology and ethics on the basis of the autonomy of the human mind. ”

“ The General body of the Dissenters are composed of four sorts, and those four so opposite in their tempers, customs, doctrine and discipline that I am of opinion ‘tis as probable all four should conform to the Church of England as to one another. ”

“ It was asserted in Christ Church, that if there is not a plurality of persons in the godhead, the oriental style, “let us make man in our own image,” and the use of the plural where we use the singular, made the word of God an agent of deception, and affected the morality of the divine mind. ”

“ Your petitioners regret that a nation professing the Christian faith, should so far counteract the principles of humanity and justice, as by the cruel treatment of this oppressed race to fill their minds with prejudices against the mild and benificent doctrines of the Gospel. ”

“ If we would blot out Unitarianism from the history of the country, we must erase the names of many famous statesmen, many famous philanthropists, many great reformers, many great orators, many famous soldiers, from its annals, and nearly all of our great poets from its literature. ”

“ If we have not made out, by the evidence of institutions, that a confused credulity concerning the equality and kinship of man and the objects in nature is actually a ruling belief among savages, and even higher races, from the Lena to the Amazon, from the Gold Coast to Queensland, we may despair of ever convincing an opponent. ”

“ The principle of the equality of believers, pastors or laymen, great or little, was at its base, and out of this naturally arose the equality of the citizens; for the State and the Church ever tend to be, in their respective attributes, the counterpart of each other.
We must add, that all these elective bodies, from the consistories to the national synod, formed a sort of jury, which had authority to take cognisance of private errors, and to inflict spiritual penalties. ”

“ Among barbaric, and more particularly among civilized, races definite moral laws are formed by the association of these hereditary religious, moral, and legal ideas. 11. In the civilized races the Church formulates the religious commands, and jurisprudence the legal commands, in more definitely binding forms ”

“ But following the reign of law, the profound significance of which I will not now pause to dwell on, there is a third meaning attached to "civilise": it means to refine and enlighten; elevation in social and individual life. In the second and third meanings of this term, we have the guarantees of liberty, justice, equality, fraternity. ”

“ A correct orthography would render the pronunciation of the language as uniform as the spelling in books. A general uniformity thro the United States would be [Pg 198] the event of such a reformation as I am here recommending. All persons, of every rank, would speak with some degree of precision and uniformity. Such a uniformity in these States is very desirable; it would remove prejudice, and conciliate mutual affection and respect.
"3. Such a reform would diminish the number of letters about one sixteenth or eighteenth. ”

“ Nor can we be silent on that awful system which, either by statute or by custom, interdicts to any race of man, or any portion of the human family, education in the truths of the gospel and the ordinances of Christianity. ”

“ It is a very long time since it has been customary for people to divide themselves into sects and classify themselves under different names on account of variations of opinion as to matters of religion. ”

“ This view does not conflict with the doctrine of the unity of the race. The great difficulty in interpreting the Scriptures is its briefness. A long period of time is comprehended in a very few words, and much is left to inference. The tenor of the Scriptures favors the idea of the unity of the race, still it is not specifically declared. ”

“ The rudiments of the social state, so far as they are known to us at all, are known through testimony of three sorts—accounts by contemporary observers of civilisations less advanced than their own, the records which particular races have preserved conceding their primitive history, and ancient law. ”

“ I think generally people wish to become acquainted with the Unitarian pulpit. 'What do Unitarians preach?' is the cry. 'I want to hear a Unitarian;' 'those who have been educated in that denomination.'"
February 20, 1885.
Your article in "Unity," February 16, on "A Blessing on the Day," pleased me very much.... We haven't quite the right book yet, and with you I say, "about twelve verses from the Bible well knitted around some central thought," as we principally want to become acquainted with the Bible as the "Book of man." ”

“ Into this environment the first Act of Uniformity was projected. In the preamble of the Act we find the state of things not unfairly described, with a discreet avoidance, however, of all reference to the causes of confusion. Mention is made of the old diversity of use, and then of the new and far greater diversity that was coming in. The godly care of the King, the Protector and the Council, in setting the bishops and divines to work at reforming the service of the Church, is gratefully acknowledged. ”