Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/362

Rh when he says they did; David in the Psalm is a sick man, speaking only of himself, but when Simon Peter quotes that Psalm, the inspired king is predicting Jesus of Nazareth! These things are notorious facts. If the Athanasian Creed, the thirty-nine articles of the English church, and the Pope's bull “Unigenitus,” could be found in a Greek manuscript, and proved the work of an “inspired” apostle, no doubt Unitarianism would in good faith explain all three, and deny they taught the doctrine of the Trinity or the fall of man. The Unitarian doctrine of inspiration—can any one tell what it is?

But let the sect be weighed in an even balance, its theological defects be set off against the vast service it has done, and is still doing for morals and religion. But this is not the place for its praise. Of the “new school” of Unitarians, if such it may be called, embracing as it does men of the greatest possible diversity of religious sentiment and opinion—it is not decorous to speak here.

Now Unitarianism must do one of two things, affirm the great doctrines of Absolute Religion—teaching that man is greater than the Bible, ministry, or church, that God is still immanent in mankind, that man saves himself by his own and not another's character, that a perfect manly life is the true service, and the only service God requires, the only source of well-being now or ever—it must do this, or cease to represent the progress of man in theology, and then some other will take its office; stand God-parent to the fair child it has brought into the world, but dares not own.

To sum up what has been said:—we see that the Catholic and the Protestant party both start with a false assumption, the Divinity of the Churches, or that of the Bible; both claim mastery over the Soul; but both fail to give or allow the Absolute Religion. Both set bounds to Man,