Lectures Illustrating the Contrast Between true Christianity and Various other Systems. By William B. Sprague, D. D. [pp. 524-536]

Sprague's Contrast between
the body as a doctrine of his own; but that, on the contrary,
when speaking as he often spoke, of the resurrection of the
dead, he meant the sulrvivorship of the spirit.' Again, in
the Christian Examiner it is thus written:-' I do not believe
there ever will be any general judgment. The assembled
universe, so often spoken of, as gathered at once before the
throne of God, to be reciprocally spectators of each others'
trial and judgment, is, I believe, a mere coinage of the human
brain. Certainly the Scriptures assert no such thinog.'' The
last day therefore spoken of in the Scriptures, we conceive
to be the last day of each individual's mortal life.' And
thus in the Unitarian Advocate:-' We are told that Christ
will judge the world.'' We are not to presume, however,
that he will do it in person; but only that the world will be
judged by the principles which he has set forth in the gospel.' I do not say that all Unitarians would concur in these
views; but I take for granted the mass of them do, from
finding them thus explicitly stated in some of their standard
publications; and in view of these statements I leave you to
define, as well as you can, the boundary between Unitarianism and Deism."
The more we meditate on the subject, the more are we
convinced, that Unitarianism is as really subversive of Christianity as Deism. There is indeed more of truth in the
system, but much more of inconsistency. And if there be
any such thing as fundamental truth in Christianity they reject it; and, therefore, as it relates to salvation, their prospects are not a whit better than those of a sober deist. While
they seem to acknowledge and honour Christ, they do in
fact deny him and degrade him. How can they suppose
that they honour the Son, even as they honour the Father?
We cannot be censured as bigoted for refusing to rank Unitarians among Christians. They are no more Christians
than Mohamedans are Christians. They do not, in fact,
think so honorably of Christ as do the Mohamedans. If
Unitarianism is the true religion, then Mohamed was a great
reformer. If this religion be true then the propagation of
Christianity produced the most odious and incurable system
of idolatry which ever existed in the world. Indeed, upon
this hypothesis, Christ utterly failed of establishing the religion which he and his apostles taught; for it has been made
to appear with an evidence, to which we can scarcely wish
for addition, that Unitarianism was not the belief of the
primitive church, in the age immediately succeeding that of
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