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A Half-Century of the Unitarian Controversy: With Particular Reference to Its Origin, Its Course, and Its Prominent Subjects Among the Congregationalists of Massachusetts. with an Appendix
A HalfCentury of the Unitarian Controversy With Particular Reference to Its Origin Its Course and Its Prominent Subjects Among the Congregationalists of Massachusetts with an Appendix Author:George Edward Ellis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 58 MB. NORTON AND THE CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR. admit that these extracts, when arranged and summed up in their doctrines, present a most shocking portraiture of C... more »alvinism. We do not wonder that an Orthodox man should shrink from them with mingled feelings of horror and indignation, or that he should avail himself of all the skill of evasive dialectics and subtle metaphysics to find relief. The editor of the Spectator declined to insert this letter, on the ground of its containing some " reproachful and menacing expressions," but promised to publish its substance if these were " purged " out of it. Still, though the editor refused to allow Mr. Norton to address his own reply to the readers of the Spectator, he proceeded to make a very imperfect and unfair representation of the contents of the letter, and, by garbled, partial, and perverted quotations from the authorities in the case, to endeavor to set aside the overwhelming evidence adduced by Mr. Norton in support of his positions. Mr. Norton therefore published his letter, with the remarks of the Spectator upon it, in the Christian Disciple for July and August, 1822, and added some further comments of his own. The utmost that his reviewer had effected was to show that Calvinistic authorities contained some contradictory and inconsistent passages. Of this fact Mr. Norton, of course, was well aware, but it was no concern of his to disprove it. He convicted his reviewer, however, of absolute misrepresentation in a professed quotation from Calvin; of a poor quibble in applying the words " creation of nature" to the divine endowment with which each of us enters upon existence, when Calvin had used them only of the nature created in Adam; and of confounding an issue of metaphysics concerning the doctrine of necessity. There Mr. Nort...« less