The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor Volume 5 (Paperback)

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: THE CHRISTIAN MONITOR. No. XXXV ] NOVEMBER, 1823. [Vol V. State of the Dutch Church. To the Editor, Sir, ' In your article on the Prospects of Unitarianism, in the Miscellany for July last, you have made mention of "four prominent places, where orthodoxy, since the era of the Reformation, was planted with a strength and deepness, which mere human foresight would predict could never suffer it to be eradicated, but where the result has utterly baffled such prediction." That part of Europe, generally denominated Holland, once considered as the bulwark of the reformed religion, and the strong hold of what is called orthodoxy, and where it has been defended in numerous ponderous volumes, with perhaps unequalled learning and perseverance, you have not named; but it offers at this moment another proof of the truth of your observation, that in all those places where Christianity has been partially or wholly released from her alliance with power, and the religious principle anil the spirit of inquiry have together been allowed to exert their ener- gies, more liberal views of religion have been introduced. Notwithstanding the great name acquired by the protestant church in Holland, its situation soon after the introduction of the reformation had become truly deplorable; the spirit of protestantism, a spirit of freedom, without which it is lifeless, had fled; and the understanding, even among many of the learned, had become darkened by the disputes about those doctrines, which baffled the human intellect, and contradicted the plain doctrines of the Bible. The study of Hebrew and Grecian literature was neglected for the explanation of the writings of the first reformers; and these, and not the Bible, were explained, and their doctrines enforced. Except Drusins, Episco...