Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who
believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus; or the impious
dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I say these are the false
shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but
to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian
name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy
imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their
blasphemies have driven thinking men into infidelity, who have too
hastily rejected the supposed author himself, with the horrors so
falsely imputed to him. Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always
as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would
now have been Christian. I rejoice that in this blessed country of free
inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience
to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is
reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the
United States, who will not die an Unitarian.
But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be re-established, its
votaries will fall into the fatal error of fabricating formulas of
creed and confessions of faith, the engines which so soon destroyed the
religion of Jesus, and made of Christendom a mere Aceldama; that they
will give up morals for mysteries, and Jesus for Plato.
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