Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island

Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the nation's oldest synagogue, will no longer be in the hands of the local congregation but rather under the control of the nation's first Jewish congregation, in New York, Shearith Israel.

A federal appeals court in Boston overturned a lower court's decision that put control of the building and a set of bells worth millions of dollars in the hands of the congregation that worships there.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided on Wednesday that Shearith Israel is the rightful owner of the bells and the synagogue.

An attorney for the Newport congregation said he was disappointed with the panel's ruling.

"We are reviewing our legal options on behalf of the Touro Synagogue and Jeshuat Israel, the Congregation that has prayed there for over a century,"

 attorney Gary Naftalis said.

Touro Synagogue holds an important place in the history of the nation's commitment to religious liberty. In 1790, George Washington visited Touro, and then sent a letter to the congregation pledging America's commitment to religious liberty.

The synagogue, dedicated in 1763, is a national historic site that draws thousands of visitors each year.
By 1820, all of the Jews had left Newport, and Congregation Shearith Israel became trustee of Touro. It was reopened later that century as Jews began to move back to the city.

The dispute over ownership began when the Newport congregation, which was struggling with money, formed a plan to establish an endowment by selling the bells to the Museum of Fine Arts. The New York congregation objected, arguing that the sale would violate religious law and would be akin to selling a "birthright."

Who are the Christadelphians

Base for a community

Since the day Jesus got followers, there were serious people who loved to follow everything Jesus told them to belief and to do. Many of them had to bring a lot of changes to their life, which was not always received kindly by family and friends. But they found it more important to take actions under the Law of Christ, doing the Will of God Like Jesus also wanted only to do the Will of his and our heavenly Father.

Those beliefs and practices of the earliest disciples continued to live by many individuals throughout the ages. Several enthusiast continued the preaching work the apostles had started and did not mind going to places far away to preach the Gospel of the Good News, the coming Kingdom of God. Around the world countless independent communities were founded on the same believes the early followers of Christ had. Those people who came together in several places, private and public, found it most important to follow the Holy Scriptures, The Bible, which they considered to be the infallible Word of God.  For them the best way to get to know what God wanted from them and humankind was to eagerly study the Bible and to accept its simple teachings, above the teachings of man

The beliefs and practices of the Christadelphians can be traced from the New Testament to the earliest Christians of the 1st and 2nd Centuries in documents such as the Epistle of Clement, The Didache and The Apostles’ Creed.

With the advent of religious freedom in Europe in the 16th Century Reformation and the the Antitrinitarian Council of Venice in 1550, the same beliefs and practices resurfaced in Bible-minded groups such as the Swiss Anabaptists and Polish Socinians. The early English Baptists held similar beliefs (although these beliefs are not held by Baptists today and at the turn of the 20th century many left the Baptist community because it had become more and more trinitarian). In the 18th Century many leading figures in the Enlightenment such as Sir Isaac Newton and William Whiston held these beliefs.

 

A renewed movement

In the world of the Christian religion many times people found it necessary to react against the activities of religious behaviour or against the way of living at that time.

Early in the 19°century lots of people did not like how things were going in their country and looked for better pastures somewhere else. Going from one place to an other far away place they had  lots of time to think about their and others way of life and about the world they were living. They also were confronted by the beauties of nature and looked for the Hand of God.

The modern Christadelphian movement has its origin in the 1830s, an age of revival and reform in America and England. The British medical doctor, John Thomas (1805-1871), whose family descended from French Huguenot refugees, emigrated to America in 1832 where he joined a group of evangelical Christians, the Campbellites. He disagreed with their beliefs and pursued his own study of the Bible. In May 1834 the first issue appeared of his magazine the Apostolic Advocate (1834-39).

He began to believe that the basis of knowledge before baptism was greater than the Restoration Movement believed and also that widely held orthodox Christian beliefs were blatantly wrong. His difference on the works we should do to be able to come in the Kingdom of God and the preaching of these beliefs as necessary for salvation met with a lot of controversial debates particularly between Dr Thomas and Alexander Campbell. For him it was clear that be baptised was not always a clear way to the hope we all should have, to inherit the Kingdom.
In 1843 Dr Thomas was introduced to William Miller, the leader of the Millerites, and agreed with their belief in the second coming of Christ and the founding of a millennial age upon His return.

 

Groups around bible students

John Thomas

Going around the New Country he encouraged many to study the Bible and those Bible Students in turn created small groups or home-churches were they tried to go back to the way the first Christians worshipped. Exchanging his ideas with many other enthusiast Bible students he started bringing all their ideas together and putting them in order. Sometimes it is held against him that he took ideas of different denominations and formed his own sort of faith, but he found what was right should be kept and what was false or doctrinal teaching should have to be abandoned.

He arrived at his unique interpretation of various Bible doctrines by about 1848 and attracted a small group of followers who were, at first, known as 'Thomasites'.

John Thomas published the magazines The Herald of the Future Age (1843-49) and Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come (1851-61). His writings from writings from 1845-61 were posthumous published as Faith In the Last Days. 
The Herald of the Kingdom set out Bible teaching on the resurrection and the Kingdom of God.


On 1 January 1834 in Philadelphia John Thomas married Ellen Hunt who became his lifelong companion and constant support throughout the trials of faith that persisted throughout his life. John Thomas made never a claim to any vision or personal revelation and wanted never to be seen a a prophet.

In Britain a journalist named Robert Roberts took up the same cause in the Ambassador of the Coming Age. Thomas and Roberts made no claims to any vision or personal revelations - only to try to be honest students of the Bible.

 

 

To be registered

In 1854  Bro. John Thomas wrote in the Herald of the Kingdom and Age To Come a "Constitution Of the Royal Association Of Believers In New York" which was also published as The Old Man and The New Man In The Coming Tribulation.
 
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861 those Christian groups who did not fight were required to register with the Union government. Sam Coffman and other brothers in Ogle County, Illinois, registered themselves as "Brethren in Christ, or in a word Christadelphian". This name was soon adopted by many like-minded groups of believers in America and Britain. Since then, independent Christadelphian groups have been established in countries all over the world.

Those Bible students did not want to be lovers of the world but make sure that they came together as loving of the law of God, finding it a characteristic of the faithful, who search the Scriptures daily as circumstances allow.

 

Robert Roberts

The man who is mainly responsible for having a worldwide community under the name of Christadelphians or having several  Brothers in Christ adhering to the teachings of Dr. John Thomas is the son of a captain of a small coasting vessel, Robert Roberts, born in Link Street, Aberdeen, Scotland (1839 – 1898).
After he had come across a copy of a magazine, belonging to his sister, entitled the Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come, by Thomas, when in his teens he started his Bible studies in earnest.

After reading Thomas’ book Elpis Israel, with Bible in hand, he became convinced of its soundness, and ceased attending the Calvinistic Baptist chapel with his family. He was baptised in 1853 aged 14 as part of the "Baptised Believers" (this was 11 years before the name 'Christadelphian' was coined by John Thomas; he was re-baptized in 1863 "on attaining to an understanding of the things concerning the name of Jesus, of which he was ignorant at his first immersion")

The reading plan, later published as The Bible Companion, to facilitate his daily systematic reading of the Scriptures he developed is still followed by many Christadelphians and other Biblestudents.

He married Jane Norrie in Edinburgh on April 8, 1859. They had 6 children, only three of whom survived into adulthood.

Being of one faith

Christadelphians want to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ (Jeshua) and would love to become like the Nazarene man, only doing the will of God.

In the Christadelphian faith each person is responsible for himself and has to make their own choices, this with the knowledge that every man's work is always a portrait of himself.

For Christadelphians it is not persons or organisations that we do have to follow, but we may not be so bounded to the world that we keep to the traditions of that world. Everything what is against the Word of God and against the Will of God, we should avoid to be connected with. Each of us has to make sure to whom we want to be enslaved, man or God.

Christadelphians are convinced that the God of gods is a loving God Who has given His Word for humankind as a guide and a message which can build us up. We should take it at heart so that it can bring us as individuals to faith in God and His Son and can make us to become one part of the sharing community which should be part of the Body of Christ, all having God's hope as our hope.

All believing in only One God, Who has given us His son as the only one mediator between God an man, for salvation, should come into Fellowship to help each other to grow if faith. Christadelphians do believe that it was God Who sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.

The Christadelphians do believe that this Jew from Nazareth, born in the tribe of King David was a man of flesh and blood who, though tempted several times, did not sin. He died to show God’s righteousness and to redeem those who receive this sacrifice by faith. God raised him from the dead, gave him immortality, granted him all authority in heaven and on earth, and set him, the one with the other name, as the mediator between God and man in whose death is glorification. (Romans 3:21-26; Ephesians 1:19-23; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:5) 

The Christadelphians want to give Jeshua or Jesus Christ full honour for what he has done. They believe that the unbiblical doctrine of the Trinity diminishes the work of Christ by denying both his humanity and the reality of his death. For if he was God he was not tempted, and could not die. (1 Timothy 2:5; 1 Corinthians 11:3; Hebrews 5:8)

The Christadelphians do believe that the Divine Creator has given many promises to the world which shall become fulfilled and are fulfilled in Jesus Christ and give the believers reason to treasure that Great and Precious Promise. (Acts 13:32; Genesis 13:14-17, 22:15-18; 2 Samuel 7:12,16; Luke 1:31-33; Galatians 3:6-9,16,26-29) Knowing those many promises they are convinced that the world shall not end. Only this system will end but those who believe in the son of God will not perish, but have everlasting or eternal life, because God shall receive us on the basis of our faith. (Matthew 1:20-21, 3:17; Luke 1:35; John 3:16) 

The only hope of life after death is the resurrection of the body and everlasting life in God’s kingdom on earth after the Conclusion of the System of Things. (Psalms 49:12-20; John 11:25-26; Acts 24:15; Romans 8:22-39; 1 Corinthians 15:12; Revelation 5:10, 20:4; Daniel 12:2; Matthew 25:31-34; Luke 21:20-32; John 5:28-29; Acts 1:11; 2 Tim 4:1; Revelation 22:12)

The Christadelphians do believe that the Kingdom of God will be established on earth. Jesus will be king in Jerusalem; his rule will be worldwide and his government will bring eternal righteousness and peace. (Psalms 72; Isaiah 2:2-4, 9:6-7, 11:1-9, 61:1-11; Jeremiah 3:17; Daniel 2:44, 7:14,27; Acts 3:21)

The Christadelphians are convinced that the way to enter the kingdom of God is by faith. This involves belief in the Bible and obedience to its requirements that men and women confess their sins, repent, be baptised and follow Jesus faithfully. (Matthew 16:24-27; Mark 16:16; John 3:3-5; Acts 2:37-38, 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:15; Hebrews 11:6)

As parts of the body of Christ we should take all opportunities to share a love like brothers and sisters, reading and studying the Bible, as our only authority, with each other. Together the Christadelphians do look forward to the return of Christ at the Last Days, believing that he will return in power to set up a worldwide theocracy beginning at Jerusalem. Though they believe that we do not know when the Messiah shall return, the Christadelphians believe the world can see the signs of the days coming to an end and that we should prepare ourselves to be ready to enter the Kingdom of God.

For the Christadelphians no one is infallible. We all have our own shortcomings. They also believe each of us has to work on their own failings but should also be prepared to help others to overcome their inadequacies. This helping each other should be done in agapé or brotherly love, together tasting a great promisse of being renewed under Christ.

 

Organisation

Coming together to study the Bible

The Christadelphians want to show the world that not all christians are followers of a Greco-Roman culture, and that we best take care to come to live according to what the Bible teaches. With Power in their life they do find it important to come together at regular times. But their meetings or not dependent of one greater organisation; All Christadelphian groups have their own independence.

Following the teaching and example of the Apostle Paul all Christadelphians aim to support themselves and their family by honest work. Certain professions (politics, the military, the police, criminal law) are avoided. (I Timothy 5:8; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12) For the work of God, the work in the ecclesia, the preaching, the members are not paid for and as such always do have to provide for their own means to live properly.

In the communities there is also no demand to give money to the ecclesia or to tithe (give 10% of our income to the church) because in the Old Testament tithes were to provide for the (Levitical) priesthood - which has now been abolished.(Numbers 18:24; Hebrews 7:1-28)

Christadelphians gathering at the Belgian ecclesia Brussel-Leuven

Christadelphians are, both individually and in groups, involved in charitable work and giving. However they try not to "do our works to be seen of men", and also do not mix charity with preaching to avoid people coming to Christ for the wrong reasons. (Galatians 6:10; James 1:27, 2:15-16; Matthew 6:1-4; John 6:26)

They want to be an open community welcoming everybody without any distinction for culture, race or colour. all people are considered to be created in the image of God and being part of creation and as being a creature of God should be respected likewise.

 

Christadelphianism

Christadelphianism is nothing more nor less than the result of that principle that God intended men to make themselves acquainted with the Bible, the word of God, and to embrace what it teaches, and reject what it denounces, however many may be arrayed against the conclusions to which the study of it may lead them.

All over the world there are different Christadelphian groups which may have or may not have any connection with each other. Most of them are belonging to one of the main deviations like the Amended, Unamended, Central (with the CBM-mlembers), Bereans, Dawn Christadelphians, Carlinks, Christadelphian Bible Students, or are just Free Christadelphians.
Further there are Thomasites, Old-Path, Antipas,  Maranatha Christadelphians, Nasu Christadelphians, Republic Christadelphians, or
Some other groups also may be considered belonging to the Christadelphian breed: Nazarene Fellowship, Nazarene Friends, Church of God of Abrahamic Faith, Abrahamic Faith church, Commandments of Christ, Remnant of Christ's Ecclesia ,United Shepherds, Restoration Fellowship, Restoration church, a.o..

All of the members are free to read whatever theological writings and no Christadelphian writer is considered to have all the knowledge and power. they themselves also not consider themselves as pope, bishop, theologian, or a prophet every Christadelphian should believe in and follow.
Each Christadelphian is free to express himself or herself and every ecclesia, wherever in the world is free to organise its own ecclesia as they want. there is not a central committee that decides everything for all the Christadelphians over the world.

They all are under Christ, liberated and as such not bounded to any man or organisation, but to Christ.

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Please do find also:

What are Brothers in Christ 

&

Find additional literature:

1. Bible Word of God, inspired and infallible
2. Inspired Word
3. Belief of the things that God has promised
4. God of gods
5. Finding God amid all the religious externals
6. Challenging claim 4 Inspired by God 3 Self-consistent Word of God
7. Not all christians are followers of a Greco-Roman culture
8. Catholicism, Anabaptism and Crisis of Christianity
9. Science and the Bible—Do They Really Contradict Each Other?
10. Being Religious and Spiritual 5 Gnostic influences
11. Looking for something or for the Truth and what it might be and self-awareness
12. Many forgot how Christ should be our anchor and our focus
13. Christianity without the Trinity
14. Interpreting the Scriptures (Part 5)
15. Servant of his Father
16. The Law of Christ: Law of Love
17. Hellenistic influences
18. Raising digression
19. Archaeology and the Bible researcher 2/4
20. Gainsayers In Apostolic Days
21. Our openness to being approachable
22. Position of the Bible researcher
23. Being Religious and Spiritual 4 Philosophical, religious and spiritual people
24. Religions and Mainliners
25. Not many coming out with their community name
26. Keeping an ecclesia in modern times
27. Christadelphian people
28. Christadelphians
29. Christadelphians or Messianic Christians or Messianic Jews
30. My faith 
31. A Living Faith #8 Change
32. Priority to form a loving brotherhood
33. Small churches of the few Christadelphians
34. What Christadelphians teach
35. About the Belgian Free Christadelphians
36. 19° Century London Christadelphians
37. Faith and works
38. Breathing to teach
39. Breathing and growing with no heir
40. Perishable non theologians daring to go out to preach
41. Self inflicted misery #8 Pruning to strengthen us
42. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #2 Purity
43. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #5 Prayer #2 Witnessing
44. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #5 Prayer #3 Callers upon God
45. Reasons to come to gether
46. Meaning of “speaking in tongues”
47. Tongues a sign of authenticity or divine backing
48. Not words of any organisation should bind you, but the Word of God
49. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #1 Christian Reform
50. Commitment to Christian unity
51. Fellowship
52. The Ecclesia
53. The Ecclesia in the churchsystem
54. The ecclesia or Christadelphian church
55. Atonement And Fellowship 4/8
56. Missional hermeneutics 3/5
57. A Society pleading poverty
58. People Seeking for God 2 Human interpretations
59. How long to wait before bringing religiousness and spirituality in practice
60. Power in the life of certain
61. Dedication and Preaching Effort 400 years after the first King James Version
62. Belonging to or being judged by
63. Good or bad preacher
64. Jehovah's Witnesses not only group that preach the good news
65. Last Events Of Old Testament – Right or Wrong ?
66. Not all will inherit the Kingdom
67. Art and other taboos
68. Edward Wightman

19° century London, Unitarians and Evangelical Alliance

In our day we have seen something of an Evangelical Alliance, that is, a manifestation of the great fact that people are yearning after a Catholic union, and are caring less and less for denominational differences.  The Unitarians all speak and write of the orthodox as of a body of Christians perfectly distinct from themselves.  Yet there is an approximation between them, nevertheless.  Unitarianism, as it becomes a living faith — as it leans to the theology of the sweetest singers and most impassioned orators of the universal Church — becomes in sentiment and practice orthodox; while orthodoxy, as it grows enlightened, and burst the bonds of habit, and, laden with the spoils of time, gathers up the wisdom and the teaching of all the ages underneath the sun, sanctions the Rationalism and the spirit of free inquiry for which Unitarianism has ever pleaded and its martyrs have died in our own and other lands.

Sign on a UU church in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Actually, at the meeting of the British and Foreign Unitarian Society, an effort was made to get rid of the title altogether, and to call themselves instead a British and Foreign Free Christian Association, on the plea that the Christian Church consists of all who desire to be the children of God in the spirit of Jesus Christ His Son, and that, therefore, no association for the promotion of a doctrine which belongs to controversial theology can represent the Church of Christ.  To this Unitarianism has attained in our time.  This is the teaching of Foster, and Ham, and Ierson, and Martineau — a teaching seemingly in accordance with the spirit of the age.

Unitarian theology is always coloured with the philosophy of the hour, and consequently it is now spiritual and transcendental instead of material and necessitarian.

As regards London, the statistics of Unitarianism are easy of collection.  In their register we have the names of fifteen places of worship, where HolyScripture is the only rule of faith, and difference of opinion is no bar to Christian communion.  In reality Unitarians are stronger than they seem, as in their congregations you will find many persons of influence, of social weight, of literary celebrity.  For instance, Sir Charles Lyell and Lord Amberley are, I believe, among the regular attendants at Mr. Martineau’s chapel in Portland Street.  At that chapel for many years Charles Dickens was a regular hearer.  The late Lady Byron, one of the most eminent women of her day, worshipped in Essex Street Chapel, when Mr. Madge preached there.  In London the Unitarians support a domestic mission, a Sunday-school association, an auxiliary school association, and a London district Unitarian society.

- p. 196 - p 204 from The Religious Life of London by J. Ewing Ritchie

Release Date: June 16, 2010  [eBook #32844]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Religious Life of London, by J. EwingRitchie 

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Preceding articles:

 19° Century London Christadelphians and the Religious Life Of London

19° century London and Unitarians

19° century Londoners, religion and heretical opinions

 Next: Old orthodox Dissenters and Unitarians in 19° Century London

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19° century London and Unitarians

 It is not like certain website may want to  believe people that the "original movement began in Poland back in the mid-1500s when a member of the Minor Reformed Church challenged the Trinity doctrine."

 Unitarians, are people wanting to keep to Only One True God have been around for ages. Though we do agree that the the church denomination which is called Unitarian Church did come into existence many years after the death of the son of God. Most people in Poland were such believers in Only One God and took Jesus as the son of God, who really died, whilst God can not die.
Those who agreed with the member of the Minor Reformed Church who challenged the Trinity doctrine were given the ultimatum to convert to Roman Catholicism or leave.

 Most of the once preferring to keep to the biblical Truth went to Transylvania, which is where they first used the name “Unitarian” to describe themselves.

 Unitarianism came to the U.S. in the 1780s; Boston’s King’s Chapel was its first church. Many Unitarians, including the ones who attended church with the family of Andrew Sullivan, the author of the Dish, refer to themselves as Universalists. The term originally meant universal salvation, opposing the idea that God would punish or not save anyone. …

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19°Century U.K.

Unitarianism has made way in England.

Newington Green Unitarian Church, London, England. Built in 1708, this is the oldest non-conformist church in London still in use as a church. (October 2005) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act became law the Unitarians in England were a small sect, and had not a single place of worship.  It was not till 1779 that it ceased to be required of Dissenting ministers that they should subscribe to the Articles of the Church of England previous to taking the benefit of the Toleration Act, and even this small boon was twice thrown out in the Upper House by the King’s friends and the Bishops.  In 1813, however, one of the most cruelly persecuting statutes which had ever disgraced the British code received its death-blow, and the Royal assent was given to an Act repealing all laws passed against those Christians who impugn the commonly received doctrine of the Trinity.  It was no easy matter to get this act of justice done; the Bishops and the Peers were obstinate.



  In 1772, we read, the Bishop of Llandaff made a most powerful speech, and produced from the writings of Dr. Priestley passages which equally excited the wonder and abhorrence of his hearers, and drew from Lord Chatham exclamations of “Monstrous! horrible! shocking!”  A few years after we find Lord North contending it to be the duty of the State to guard against authorizing persons denying the doctrine of the Trinity to teach.  Even as late as 1824, Lord Chancellor Eldon doubted (as he doubted everything that was tolerant in religion or liberal in politics) as to the validity of this Act, and hinted that the Unitarians were liable to punishment at common law for denying the doctrine of the Trinity.  Yet the Unitarians have a remote antiquity.  They can trace their descent to Apostolic times, and undoubtedly were an important element in the National Church, in the days of William and the Hanoverian succession.

Dr. Parr, says Mr. Barker,

 “spoke to me of the latitudinarian divines with approbation.  He agreed with me in thinking that the most brilliant era of the British Church since the Reformation was when it abounded with divines of that school;”

 and certainly Unitarians may claim to be represented at the present day in Broad Churchmen within the Establishment, and in divines of a similar way of thinking without.  They have been much helped by their antagonists.  No man was less of a Unitarian than the late Archbishop Whately, yet, in a letter to Blanco White, he candidly confessed,

 “Nothing in my opinion tends so much to dispose an intelligent mind towards anti-Trinitarian views as the Trinitarian works.”

As a sect, the Unitarians are a small body, and at one time were much given to a display of intelligent superiority as offensive in public bodies as in private individuals.  They were narrow and exclusive, and had little effect on the masses, who were left to go to the bad, if not with supercilious scorn, at any rate with genteel indifference.  There was in the old-fashioned Unitarian meeting-houses something eminently high and dry.  In these days, when we have ceased to regard heaven—to quote Tom Hood — as anybody’s rotten borough, we smile as a handful of people sing—

“We’re a garden walled around,
Planted and made peculiar ground;”

yet no outsider a few years ago could have entered a Unitarian chapel without feeling that such, more or less, was the abiding conviction of all present.

  “Our predominant intellectual attitude,”

 Mr. Orr confesses to be one reason of the little progress made by the denomination.  A Unitarian could no more conceal his sect than a Quaker.  Generally he wore spectacles; his hair was always arranged so as to do justice to his phrenological development; on his mouth there always played a smile, half sarcastic and half self-complacent.  Nor was such an expression much to be wondered at when you remembered that, according to his own idea, and certainly to his own satisfaction, he had solved all religious doubts, cleared up all religious mysteries, and annihilated, as far as regards himself, human infirmities, ignorance, and superstition.  It is easy to comprehend how a congregation of such would be eminently respectable and calm and self-possessed; indeed, so much so, that you felt inclined to ask why it should have condescended to come into existence at all.

  Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks, as described by that lady herself, may be taken as a very fair description of an average Unitarian congregation at a no very remote date.  Little Nell says, “I never saw any waxworks, ma’am; is it funnier than Punch?”  “Funnier?” said Mrs. Jarley, in a shrill voice, “it is not funny at all.”  “Oh,” said Nell, with all possible humility.  “It is not funny at all,” repeated Mrs. Jarley; “it’s calm, and what’s that word again—critical?  No, classical—that’s it; it’s calm and classical.  No low beatings and knockings about; no jokings and squeakings like your precious Punch’s, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of coldness and gentility.”

  Now it was upon this coldness and gentility that the Unitarians took their stand; they eliminated enthusiasm, they ignored the passions, and they failed to get the people, who preferred, instead, the preaching of the most illiterate ranter whose heart was in the work.

In our day a wonderful change has come over Unitarianism.  It is not, and it never was, the Arianism born of the subtle school of Alexandrian philosophy, and condemned by the orthodox Bishops at Nicea; nor is it Socinianism as taught in the sixteenth century, still less is it the Materialism of Priestley.

CDV portrait of James Martineau (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  Men of the warmest hearts and greatest intellects belonging to it actually disown the name, turn away from it as too cold and barren, and in their need of more light, and life, and love, seek in other denominations what they lack in their own.  The Rev. James Martineau, a man universally honoured in all sections of the universal church, confesses:

“I am constrained to say that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian heroes, sects, or productions of any age.  Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity.  I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed.  In philosophy I have had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text-books and the authors in chief favour with them.  In Biblical interpretation I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham.  In devotional literature and religious thought I find nothing of ours that does not pale before Augustine Tauler and Pascal; and in the poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley or Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor and cold.”

  This is the language of many beside Mr. Martineau — of all, indeed, to whom a dogmatic theology is of little import compared with a Christian life.

Let us attempt to describe Unitarianism negatively.  In one of his eloquent sermons in its defence, the late W. J. Fox said,

 “The Ebionites, Arians, is not essential to Unitarianism; Dr. Price was a Unitarian as well as Dr. Priestley, so is every worshipper of the Father only, whether he believes that Christ was created before all worlds, or first existed when born of Mary.  Philosophical necessity is no part of Unitarianism.  Materialism is no part of Unitarianism.  The denial of angels or devils is no part of Unitarianism.”

  Unitarianism has no creed, yet briefly it may be taken to be the denial of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, or of the natural depravity of man, or that sin is the work of the devil, or that the Bible is a book every word of which was dictated by God, or that Christ is God united to a human nature, or that atonement is reconciliation of God to man.  Furthermore, the Unitarians deny that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit, or that salvation is deliverance from the punishment of sin, or that heaven is a state of condition without change, or that the torments of hell are everlasting.

  It may be that the Broad Churchman entertains very much the same opinions, but then the Unitarian minister has this advantage over the Church clergyman, that he is free.  He has not signed articles of belief of a contrary character.  He has not to waste his time and energy in sophistications which can deceive no one, still less to preach that doctrine so perilous to the soul, and destructive of true spiritual growth, and demoralizing to the nation, that a religious, conscientious man may sign articles that can have but one sense and put upon them quite another.  Surely one of the most sickening characteristics of the age is that divorce between the written and the living faith, which, assuming to be progress, is in reality cowardice.

- p. 196 - p 202 from The Religious Life of London by J. Ewing Ritchie

Release Date: June 16, 2010  [eBook #32844]

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Religious Life of London, by J. EwingRitchie 

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Preceding article: 19° Century London Christadelphians and the Religious Life Of London

19° century London and Unitarians

continues with: 19° century London, Unitarians and Evangelical Alliance

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19° century Londoners, religion and heretical opinions

J. Ewing Ritchie, author of “british senators,” “the night side of london,” etc., wrote in his book the Religious Life Of London in 1870 that man is undoubtedly a religious animal.  It seemed that at the time he was living in England at any rate the remark hold good.

St. Alban's, Golders Green Parish Church in Barnet, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No one who ignores the religious element in our history can rightly understand what England was, or how she came to be what she is.  The fuller is our knowledge, the wider our field of investigation, the more minute our inquiry, the stronger must be the conviction in all minds that religion has been for good or bad the great moving power, and, in spite of the teachings of Secularism or of Positivism, it is clear that as much as ever the questions which are daily and hourly coming to the front have in them more or less of a religious element.

The author knew it were not often foreigners who perceived this. Several foreigners mastered the English habits and ways, all that the English called their inner life; yet, to Louis Blanc for example, the English pulpit was a piece of wood — nothing more.

According to him, the oracles are dumb, the sacred fire has ceased to burn, the veil of the temple is rent in twain; church attendance, he tells us, in England, besides custom, has little to recommend it.  There is beauty in desolation — in life changing into death —

“Before Decay’s effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers;”

Logo of the Church of England (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not even of this beauty could the Church of England boast.  Dr. Döllinger — a more thoughtful, a more learned, a more laborious writer — was not more flattering, according to Ritchie.

The Church of England, he tells us, is “the Church only of a fragment of the nation,” of “the rich, cultivated, and fashionable classes.”  It teaches “the religion of deportment, of gentility, of clerical reserve.”  “In its stiff and narrow organization, and all want of pastoral elasticity, it feels itself powerless against the masses.”

In the 19° century London the patronage was mostly in the hands of the nobility and gentry, who regarded it as a means of provision for their younger sons, sons-in-law, and cousins.

Our latest critic, M. Esquiros, writes in a more favourable strain, yet even he confesses how the city operative shuns what he deems the Church of Mammon, and draws a picture of the English clergyman, by no means suggestive of zeal in the Master’s service or readiness to bear His yoke.  Dissent foreigners generally ignore, yet Dissent is as active, as energetic as the State Church, and may claim that it has practically realized the question of our time—the Free Church in the Free State.

Life to most of the people living in the 19°century Britain was hard, and it would have been harder still

 if after a day’s toil Paterfamilias had to discuss the three births of Christ, or His twofold nature, the Æons of the Gnostics, the Judaism of the Ebionites, the ancient Persian dualism which formed the fundamental idea of the system of Manes, or the windy frenzy of Montanus, with an illogical wife, a friend gifted with a fatal flow of words, or a pert and shallow child.  We like those with whom we constantly associate.  They are wise men and sound Christians.  They are those who fast and pay tithes, and are eminently proper and respectable.  As to the heretics—the publicans and sinners, away with them.  Let their portion be shame in this life, perdition in the next.  Thus it is heretics have got a bad name.  Church history has been written by their enemies, by men who have honestly believed that a man of a different heresy to their own would rob an orphan, and break all the commandments.

The Rev. Mr. Thwackem “doubted not but all the infidels and heretics in the world would, if they could, confine honour to their own absurd errors and damnable deceptions.”

When looking at English literature of the 19° century I may think we mostly are confronted with classical Christian families, mostly belonging to the mainstream protestant churches England still has to day. The Church of England being the most common denomination.


At that time it was no different probably than today that people would easily say of others they where heretics.

Free Church of England (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the Articles of the English Establishment,

 “the Church of Christ is a company of faithful people among whom the pure Word of God is preached and the Sacraments rightly administered according to Christ’s institution.”

But on this very matter we also did find the Church divided.

Low Churchmen tell us that the ritualists do not rightly administer the Sacraments, and the latter say the same of their opponents.  The Record suggests that Bishop Colenso is little better than one of the wicked, and charitably insinuates that the late Dean Milman is amongst the lost.  Dr. Pusey places the Evangelicals in the same category with Jews, or Infidels, or Dissenters, and has strong apprehensions as to their everlasting salvation.  Dr. Temple was made Bishop of Exeter, and Archdeacon Denison set apart the day of his installation as one of humiliation and prayer.  Yet all these are of the Establishment.

I am not quite sure if there were more non-trinitarians or unitarians in the 19° century, but we can read about the attitudes taken to such beleivers.

Dr. Parr gladly associated with Unitarians, and went to Unitarian chapels to hear Unitarian ministers preach.  Would Dean Close do so?  Yet Dr. Parr, as much as Dean Close, was of the Church as regards solemn profession, and deliberate assent and consent.  Mr. Melville believes Dissent to be schism, and one of the deadly sins, while the Deans of Westminster and Canterbury hold out to Dissenters friendly hands.

When Ritchie wrote his books there were Ebionites  who regarded Christ as a mere man and Gnostics whom considered Jesus as superhuman; but in that capacity as one of a very numerous class.
The author considered the Monachians, who were divided respectively into Dynamistic and Modalistic as possible heretic.  As the latter held that the whole fulness of the Deity dwelt in Christ and only found in him a peculiar mode of manifestation, it was assumed that the natural inference was that the Father himself had died on the Cross.

Hence to these heretics the name of Patripassians was applied by the orthodox.  Sabellius, who maintained a Trinity, not of divine Persons but of successive manifestations under the names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, was one of the chief Patripassians.  The Arian controversy, as Dean Stanley shows, turned on the relations of the divine persons before the first beginning of time.

 There was also a lot of division in the many denominations.

If we take the Articles, the Church Establishment is as orthodox as the firmest Christian or the narrowest-minded bigot can desire; if we turn to its ministers, we find them as divided as it is possible for people professing to take their teaching from the Bible can be.  If there be any grace in creeds and articles, any virtue in signing them, if their imposition be not a solemn farce, it is impossible that heresy should exist within the Established Church.  It is in the wide and varied fields of Dissent that we are to look for heresy.

Though he considered the Church of England to be tolerant, to a certain extent, of heresy.  The judicious Hooker writes,

 “We must acknowledge even heretics themselves to be a maimed part, yet a part, of the visible Church.  If an infidel should pursue to death an heretic professing Christianity only for Christian profession’s sake, could we deny unto him the honour of martyrdom?  Yet this honour all men know to be proper unto the Church.  Heretics, therefore, are not utterly cast out from the visible Church of Christ.  If the Fathers do, therefore, anywhere, as often they do, make the true visible Church of Christ and heretical companies opposite, they are to be construed as separating heretics not altogether from the company of believers, but from the fellowship of sound believers.  For where professed unbelief is, there can be no visible Church of Christ; there may be where sound belief wanteth.  Infidels being clean without the Church, deny directly and utterly reject the very principles of Christianity which heretics embrace, and err only by misconstruction, whereupon their opinions, although repugnant indeed to the principles of Christian faith, are notwithstanding by them held otherwise and maintained as most consistent therewith.”

The Privy Council by its Judgment of “Essays and Reviews” has decided that a Churchman may hold heretical opinions.

In popular language, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians are orthodox; the Quakers, the Methodists, Wesleyans and otherwise, are orthodox; for our purpose popular language is sufficient.

Ritchie wrote.

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Preceding article: 19° Century London Christadelphians and the Religious Life Of London

Continues with:  19° century London and Unitarians

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