POINTS OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN UNITARIAN AND ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS. NOTHING is gained, as it seems to me, by asserting that the differences between liberal and orthodox Christians are small, and comparatively unimportant. This is true of the peculiarities which distinguish orthodox sects from each other; the Baptist from the Methodist, the Episcopalian from the Presbyterian. They relate to forms either of worship or government, or to shades of opinion. But there were not more important principles involved in the Reformation itself than in the Unitarian controversy, The Lutheran of the sixteenth century did not differ more from the Catholic, than the Unitarians of our day from the rest of Christendom. In asserting this, I say what our orthodox brethren will be glad to hear confessed, and what they continually assert themselves; but what, in our love of peace, we have not always been willing to allow. They could afford to be separated from us, but we would fain have dwelt with them. But the time has come, when the full width of the chasm that separates us must be contemplated. There are certain great principles as far apart as the east is from the west, on which divided Christendom seems to have taken up its two positions, and from which the conflict of opinions is, for the next half century, to be waged. For all purposes of useful discussion, we may consider the christian church divided into two sects, and two only. As in the time of Luther, the controversy lay between Catholic and Protestant, so it continues to lie. This is the true issue. We claim to be the only consistent Protestants; for, by whatever name they are called, we recognise, as belonging to us, all those who are thorough Protestants. On the other hand, we class all other sects together, as being in spirit anti-protestant. We do not recognise their lines and boundaries. They either profess, or practise without professing, the same principles. We can trace a strong family likeness among all creed-professing Christians. The various orthodox sects (and by this term I mean all who claim this name) are but different shades of the same color; and every day helps to blend them more closely together in this unity of their faith. The transition from the Catholic to the Episcopalian seemed for a time to be rather abrupt, but Puseyism has shown us how direct and narrow the passage is. The Methodist Episcopal church unites the evangelical sects with the Catholic family, and the shades of difference between Methodist and Presbyterian, Baptist and Calvinistic Congregationalist, and all other orthodox bodies, are, from our point of view, so slight, that we see little to choose between them, and what we say of one we say of all. In this classification, we design no offence to any of these sects. We mean but to say, that our objections, as Unitarians, do not lie against their respective peculiarities of faith, but against that which is common to them all. We do not deny that their differences in other points of view are real and important; but they are not important to us as Liberal Christians. We object to them in their common character of anti-protestants. The two great principles of the Protestant Reformation were, 1st, that the Bible is the sole rule of faith and practice; and, 2d, that the individual mind is the sole interpreter of the Bible. The right of private judgment. was the radical doctrine of the Reformation. We conceive this to be the great right, which Liberal Christianity has in its keeping. In defence of this right, it stands up against the rest of Christendom. In the exercise of this right it has reached its own conclusions. And in the denial of it, it sees the great barrier to the general spread of its own views. The One of the capital errors of the religious public is, that of confounding the theological opinions of the reformers with their protestant principles; and we hear therefore a great deal said in praise of the doctrines of the Reformation, as if that reform had been a theological one. reformers had indeed theological opinions on which they laid great stress, and the opinions of great and good men upon this subject are always valuable. But the reformation itself was in no sense theological. It was political and social. It was as little theological as the movement of the puritan fathers. They, too, had their own doctrinal ideas; but their exile was in behalf of the liberty of conscience, not in behalf of the doctrine of faith without works, or the validity of anti-episcopal ordination. It is very possible that the reformers themselves may have attached primary importance to their theology, and have been so inconsistent as to value freedom of inquiry and NO. 206. VOL. XVIII. 1* |