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ADDRESS OF THE REV. J. CLOWES. 281
is exalted to honour and pre-eminence. Your candour
will keep this observation ever in view, and feeling the
force of it, you will not be deterred from endeavouring to
discover and develope the fair and heavenly form of
wisdom, even though disguised by the mantle with which
an unreasonable aversion may have veiled it. You will
be bold to strip off this mantle, not intimidated by
equivocal appellations, such as mystic, visionary, en
thusiast, gnostic, sabellian,* and the like, which you
may find written upon it by ignorant or ill-designing
men, who seek thus to depreciate the useful labours of an
enlightened teacher, and then, for your reward, you may
hope to recognise and embrace as your own, the simple
but beautiful body of everlasting truth and order.
66
I wish only further to observe on the subject, that it
is impossible for you to read many pages of the writings
in question, seriously, and in a Christian spirit, without
discovering some things of importance, which must needs
affect every well-disposed mind. You will see, for ex
ample, the divinity of the Christian Redeemer, and His
oneness with the Father, principally insisted upon, and
demonstrated with such a power of solid proof, deduced
from the Sacred Scriptures in general, as will supply the
most effectual antidote against the poisonous tenets of
modern Arianism and Socinianism. You will see, also,
the sacred doctrine of the Holy Trinity explained and
elucidated, in a manner so simple, and yet sublime, so
agreeable to the Word of God, and at the same time so
consonant to sound reason, so satisfactory to the under
standing, and so edifying to the life, that you will wonder
how so much darkness could ever prevail in the world,
respecting so bright and clear a truth, but will wonder
* Mystic, visionary, and enthusiast, are names importing at this
day that a writer on spiritual subjects sees somewhat deeper than
the generality of his readers. In regard to the appellations of
gnostic and sebellian, which have been bestowed occasionally on
our author, it is hard to say in what they have originated, unless
in this, that every theologian who makes any pretensions to
philosophical knowledge, is to be called a gnostic, and every writer
who maintains the union of the Father and Son in the person of
Jesus Christ, is to be called a sabellian.
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