The Book of Churches and Sects

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1826 edition. Excerpt: ... human capacities. He held, therefore, that God punishes no one. All evil, according to his creed, originates either from matter, or from the free-will of man: and if there be suffering, it is not that God wills it, but that he permits it, (for the sake of a greater overbalance of good that could not otherwise possibly be produced, ) as the necessary consequence of an inert instrument like matter, and the imperfection of creatures less pure than himself. Upon his system all beings will finally be happy. He utterly rejects the doctrine of atonement, and ridicules the supposition that the offended justice of the one perfect supreme being requires any satisfaction. His theory is, that man, by withdrawing himself from God, had lost the divine life in his soul, and that all communication between him and his maker was nearly lost. In order to remedy this, in order to make some mysterious way to re-open an intercourse between the deity and the soul of man; and finally, in order to afford the soul a more near, and, as as it were, sensible perception of its maker, the second person ih the trinity became man. Law alleges that St. Paul, when he speaks of redemption, says "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." Now, he adds, had the Almighty required an atonement, the converse of this proposition would have been the truth, and the phrase would have been reconciling himself to the world. The narration of the fall of man, he regards as an allegory. He believes that the first human being Was a creature combining both sexes in its own peN feet nature and possessing an infinite capacity of happiness: the fall, he thinks, consisted, not in tasting of any forbidden fruit, but in turning from God as the whole source of joy, and in a...