I make the greatest difference between _ans_ and _isms_. I should deal
insincerely with you, if I said that I thought Unitarianism was
Christianity. No; as I believe and have faith in the doctrine, it is not
the truth in Jesus Christ; but God forbid that I should doubt that you, and
many other Unitarians, as you call yourselves, are, in a practical sense,
very good Christians. We do not win heaven by logic.
By the by, what do you mean by exclusively assuming the title of
Unitarians? As if Tri-Unitarians were not necessarily Unitarians, as much
(pardon the illustration) as an apple-pie must of course be a pie! The
schoolmen would, perhaps, have called you Unicists; but your proper name is
Psilanthropists--believers in the mere human nature of Christ.
Upon my word, if I may say so without offence, I really think many forms of
Pantheistic Atheism more agreeable to an imaginative mind than Unitarianism
as it is professed in terms: in particular, I prefer the Spinosistic scheme
infinitely. The early Socinians were, to be sure, most unaccountable
logicians; but, when you had swallowed their bad reasoning, you came to a
doctrine on which the _heart_, at least, might rest for some support. They
adored Jesus Christ. Both Laelius and Faustus Socinus laid down the
adorability of Jesus in strong terms. I have nothing, you know, to do with
their logic. But Unitarianism is, in effect, the worst of one kind of
Atheism, joined to the worst of one kind of Calvinism, like two asses tied
tail to tail. It has no covenant with God; and looks upon prayer as a sort
of self-magnetizing--a getting of the body and temper into a certain
_status_, desirable _per se_, but having no covenanted reference to the
Being to whom the prayer is addressed.
* * * * *
The sum total of moral philosophy is found in this one question, Is _Good_
a superfluous word,--or mere lazy synonyme for the pleasurable, and its
causes;--at most, a mere modification to express degree, and comparative
duration of pleasure?--Or the question may be more unanswerably stated
thus, Is _good_ superfluous as a word exponent of a _kind_?--If it be, then
moral philosophy is but a subdivision of physics. If not, then the writings
of Paley and all his predecessors and disciples are false and _most_
pernicious; and there is an emphatic propriety in the superlative, and in a
sense which of itself would supply and exemplify the difference between
_most_ and _very_.
_April_ 5. 1832.