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A BRIEF ESSAY

ON

SOCINIANISM.

PREFACE.

In the foregoing Essay I have ventured to predict the downfal of the Athanasian doctrine, and the restoration of pure Christianity within half a century. The greatest impediment I can foresee in the way of so desirable an event, is the lamentable and, I fear, increasing prevalence of Socinianism.

By the term Socinianism, I mean that doctrine which denies the pre-existence of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the benefits offered to mankind through his merits, sufferings, and death. Now, to give up the Athanasian doctrine, and adopt this in its stead, is only to exchange one error for another equally unscriptural.

There are many points upon which men may differ without violating the essential principles of Christianity; but if we consider the Lord Jesus to have been no more than an ordinary man, the son of Joseph, and disclaim the offered propitiation

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through faith in his blood," the Bible

becomes worse than useless: we must look upon it as only buoying us up with false hopes, and leading us astray.

I have affirmed, and I here solemnly repeat it, that I had never read any Unitarian work when I composed my former Essay. Nearly a year had elapsed after I had completed that work before I looked into any Unitarian or Socinian publication. Since that time I have read several works from the pens of the most eminent writers of the latter persuasion. I have generally found them powerful and satisfactory, so far as they oppose the Athanasian doctrine, and treat of the early corruptions of Christianity: but in their defence of the peculiar doctrines, which we understand by the term Socinianism, I humbly conceive they are weak and unscriptural. If the following pages should convince but an individual, who may have imbibed their notions, of the error, and the danger of such doctrine, I should consider my time to have been well employed.

Bath, 30th June, 1829.

J. S.

A BRIEF ESSAY

ON

SOCINIANISM.

It has been frequently, and truly remarked, that parties engaged in controversy commonly err by running into opposite extremes; and this is more strikingly the case when the subject relates to the doctrines of Christianity.

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Thus, whilst some writers have affirmed that our blessed Lord Jesus Christ is equal in dignity and glory with his Almighty Father, others have held that he had not even a pre-existent state, but that he was an ordinary man, the son of Joseph and Mary. Others, more strangely still, have confessed their belief in the evangelical narrative of the miraculous conception of our Lord, and yet deny that there was any thing super-human in his person; and argue that the only benefit we can derive from his ministry, sufferings, and death, is transmitted to us in the excellent system of morality which he taught, and in the example of his spotless and benevolent life.›

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