Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/358

Rh faith. Some, it seems, silently abandoned the divine and infallible character of the Old Testament—as Socinus had done—but clung strongly as ever to that of the New Testament, while they admitted the greatest latitude in the criticism and exegesis of that collection. The Unitarians were at first the most reasonable of sectarians. The Bible was their creed. Thinking men, who would conclude for themselves, say the Church what it might say, naturally came up to Unitarianism. Hence its growth in the most highly cultivated portion of the New World, and the most moral, it has been said. Men sick of the formality, the doctrines, the despotism of other sects, disgusted with the sophistry whose burrow was in the Church; pained at the charlatanry which anointed dulness sometimes showed, as the clerical mantle blew aside, by chance—these also came up to the Unitarians. Besides these, perhaps men of no spiritual faith, who hated to hear hell mentioned, or to have piety demanded, came also, hoping to have less required of them. Pious men, hungering and thirsting after truth—men born religious, found here their home, where the Mind and the Soul were both promised their rights. This explains the growth of the sect. The Unitarians, seeing the violence, the false zeal, of other sects, the compassing of sea and land to make a proselyte, went, it may be thought, to the opposite extreme, in some cases. They were called “cold,” and were never accused of carrying matters too fast and too far, and pushing Religion to extremes. They were never good fighters, unless when occasion compelled. They stood on the defensive, and never crossed their neighbour's borders, except to defend their own. They thought it better to live down an opponent, than to talk him down, or even hew him down,—the old theological way of silencing an adversary whom it was difficult to answer.

Still, however, it seems there always were in their ranks men who thought freedom was too free; that “there must be limits to free inquiry,” even within the canon; and Unitarians must have a “creed.” Others began to look into the mythology of the Old Testament, and to talk very freely about the imperfections in the New Testament. Some even doubted if the whale swallowed Jonah.