WHAT DO UNITARIANS BELIEVE?
By
Rev. Samuel J. May
Circa 1867
[The following is reprinted,
at the request of many of our brethren from a tract which has been much
circulated. Of course, it is only an individual statement, and is not intended
as a creed.]
BECAUSE we have no formula of
faith; no system of doctrines; no list of articles prescribed by pope, bishops,
General Assembly, or other human authority, which every one must profess to
believe before he can be admitted to membership in our church, -- there are
those who allege that we Unitarians have no faith; that we believe nothing, or
that each one believes what he pleases.
Other churches, it is urged,
deal better by their members, instructing them as to what they must believe,
nay, furnishing to all who wish them printed copies of the system of doctrines which
those churches severally uphold and contend for as the “faith once delivered to
the saints," which every one must accept in order to salvation. Nay, you
may go to the bookstores, and buy the volumes in which are printed the creeds
of the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Baptist sects, -- creeds devised
and written out (some of them centuries ago) by men accounted wise enough to
determine what others, as well as themselves, ought to believe, and thereby
secure to the churches, for whose edification they were especially concerned, a
unity of faith.
But, if anyone supposes that
this end has been attained in either of the above-named churches, he is much
mistaken. Of course, what the creed is, that either church prescribes, may be
found, as I have said, in this or that printed volume. But what Episcopalians
or Presbyterians or Methodists or Baptists individually believe, you can
ascertain only by inquiring of them individually. As you will discover, -- if
you can get the members of either of these churches to define to you their real
beliefs, -- you will discover as many and great discrepancies between them as
between the members of the
I am utterly unable to
discover the benefit which ever has been or can be derived from a creed
prescribed by human authority; a formula of faith; a system of doctrines
devised and concocted by any man or any set of men, to be enforced upon the
assent of other men, each of whom has an inalienable right to think for
himself. Were there time now, and were this the occasion, I would show that
many and very grave evils, gross hypocrisies and atrocious cruelties, have
everywhere, and in all ages, been the legitimate offspring of this assumption
of authority to dictate to fellow-men what they must believe.
But my purpose, at this time,
is to inform those who wish to know, what is the faith of
Unitarians. Of course, I may not speak for all who bear this name, but
for those only whose opinions and belief I do know; and they are many.
First. We believe
and insist, that each and every rational and moral being, male and female, is
under the highest obligation to form his or her own opinions about religion.
Every one, we hold, is bound and therefore should be left perfectly free to
seek after, if haply he may find, the truth of God for himself; form his own
creed, his own body of divinity; be fully persuaded in his own mind as
to what is true on every question that may arise respecting the character of
God, the principles of the divine government, man's accountability, the design
of his life in this world, and his destiny in the world to come. There is no
other subject of thought comparable to this in importance; therefore everyone
should be encouraged and urged to give all the attention to it he may be able
to give. By the study of the
Bible, and the works and the providence of God, each one should strive to learn
all he may of the mind, the purposes, the will of the heavenly Father, that he
may become an intelligent and obedient child. He should avail himself of the
thoughts, the results, of the inquiries and reasonings of others, so far as he
shall find them profitable. But he is under no obligation whatever to accept
the conclusions at which the mightiest intellects have arrived, if they do not
appear to his own mind and heart accordant with the truth and righteousness of
God. He who, in deference to the authority of another,
professes to believe what he does not see to be true, has hoodwinked himself;
or he has entered a labyrinth in which he will not know whether he is going
right or wrong. But he who reverently embraces
whatever, in the best use of his understanding, seems to him true and right,
shows his allegiance to God; and he will not be left to wander into the path of
fatal error.
We Unitarians believe with
the Apostle Paul (Rom. viii. 14), that, "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are
the sons of God." We believe that Jesus of Nazareth was led by the Spirit of God more constantly
and entirely than any other son of man; that he is therefore called the dearly
beloved Son of God, and is the best teacher of true religion. We believe that
the doctrines he preached disclosed more fully than those of any other teacher
the character of God and his purposes respecting man and that the moral
precepts he gave were more nearly identical with perfect righteousness, “the
righteousness of God." Indeed, we believe that they only who hear and obey
the commandments of Christ will be redeemed from all iniquity; and that the
world will never be filled with righteousness, peace, and joy, until the
children of men shall be trained up in the school of Christ, rather than that
of Augustine or Calvin, -- be taught to understand, and persuaded to conform
to, the principles and spirit of “the dearly beloved Son of God."
All Unitarians believe that
Jesus was one with God, -- in a spiritual sense; the sense in
which he prayed (John xvii. 21-23) that all who shall be brought to believe on him
might become one with him and the Father. We believe he was wholly devoted to
God, was led always by his Holy Spirit, and had no desire but to do his will.
We all believe that Jesus was not a self-existent, but a created being,
dependent upon and accountable to the one Supreme, whom he often addressed as
his Father and his God.
Many Unitarians are Arians,
that is, they believe that Jesus pre-existed; that he was an archangel, next in
dignity to the Most High; that he appeared upon earth in the person of the son
of Mary, and led the life and died the death that is narrated in the New
Testament. Other Unitarians, probably the larger part of them, believe that he
was a man supernaturally born of his mother only, in accordance with the
accounts given by Matthew and Luke. But there are many of our denomination who
believe, as I do, that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary; that the accounts
prefixed to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, inconsistent with each other, are
not genuine, but were taken from the thousand marvelous stories which were
invented in the second and third centuries of the Christian era to magnify, in
the eyes of the ignorant and credulous, the founder of the new religion, and do
away the reproach of his crucifixion.
But, whatever may be our differences
of belief on this point, we Unitarians all agree, that it is not the physical
or metaphysical nature of Christ which most concerns us, but his moral and
religious character. We believe that he was the most excellent person who has
ever lived upon earth; that he was a perfect man, holy, harmless,
undefiled. We believe, that, in the highest degree, he was the Son of God,
dearly beloved, because he was at all times, in all things, led by the spirit
of the heavenly Father. We believe that he was tempted in all points like any
other man, but that he never yielded to temptation. He did no sin. He was a man
of sorrows, acquainted with grief; but he was perfected by his sufferings, and
not made by them, as too many are, peevish, discontented, rebellious.
We Unitarians believe that
Jesus is our great exemplar, set before us by the heavenly Father to be our
pattern in all things; that in him we see "the measure of the stature of
the perfect man," “the mark of our high calling;” that, “as he was holy,
so are we called to be holy in all manner of conversation." It is
therefore a prominent article of the Unitarian faith, that
all men ought to act at all times as Jesus would act in the same circumstances.
The best test we can apply to our own conduct, words, feelings, and to the
conduct, words, feelings of others is this: Would
"the perfect man" act, speak, feel thus? And in estimating the
character of men, and the regard in which they ought to be held in the
Christian Church, we Unitarians believe that we should consider, not the
accuracy of their speculative opinions, "the form of sound words" to
which they may give their assent, but the degree of goodness which is seen in
their daily lives, the principles on which they act, and the feelings which they
manifest in their intercourse with their fellow-men; moreover, the spirit which
they evince towards God under the various trying circumstances of life,
prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, health and sickness. In short, we
Unitarians believe that "he only who doeth righteousness is
righteous;" that he only whose character resembles Christ's is a
Christian; that he only loves God who loves his fellow-men, who loves to be and
to do good.
Unitarians, most if not all
of us, repudiate the Orthodox doctrine of Atonement, as it is explained by
many, -- that men are saved by the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, or
in some way transferred to their account in the final reckoning with the Judge
of all. Much more earnestly and utterly do we reject it as others teach it, --
that God inflicted upon him, and that Jesus endured, the punishment due
to all sinners for their native, original depravity, and for their actual
transgressions; and that, in consideration of his vicarious punishment, those
are saved who believe in and gratefully accept this propitiation. Most
Unitarians, if not all, consider this dogma as most odious, an impious stigma
upon the character of our heavenly Father. Of course, we most gratefully
acknowledge that Christ suffered much for the redemption of sinners; that he
gave his life on the ignominious and excruciating cross, that he might fix in
the hearts of men those truths, those principles, that faith, that hope, that
love, which alone could raise them above the trials and temptations of earth. But
we believe that men are saved only so far as they themselves accept the truths
and embrace the principles which Jesus so impressively inculcated, and acquire
the spirit which the beloved Son of God manifested through life, and especially
on the day and in the hour of his death. We believe that men are saved, and can
be saved, only so far as they become themselves righteous in the sense and
spirit of Christ's righteousness.
We repudiate utterly the
Orthodox doctrine, that only a small portion of the human race are elected to
be saved; that these favored few were predestinated unto everlasting life
before the foundation of the world; and that all the rest of mankind were
fore-ordained to everlasting death, which means everlasting life in unalterable
and profitless suffering. We turn from such a proposition as from the blasphemy
of demoniacs. We believe that the gift of life was intended by the heavenly
Father to be a blessing to every one upon whom he has conferred it; that it may
be a blessing to every one, in this present state, who chooses so to make it;
and that, in the future state, those who have been perverted, misguided,
depraved by the evil influences of this world, may be brought to a sense of
their folly and wickedness by the retributive consequence -- the shame and
suffering they will endure in the future life, -- and there may repent,
turn to God, and be accepted by him.
We Unitarians believe that
the consequences of transgressions are evil, only evil, and that continually,
both in this world and in the world to come. Sin is the poison of life, and it
is "the sting of death." Sin is the only thing to be dreaded in time
and in eternity. It is the abundant source of all our misery. It obscures the
light of the Sun of Righteousness, and covers the benignant face of the
heavenly Father with a dense cloud which men call "the wrath of God,"
although we are assured he is unchangeable, ever the same tender, compassionate parent, “slow to
anger," "ready to forgive," but too just, too holy, too pure to
overlook any iniquity. Benignant as God is, no sinner can ever stand before him
but in shame and confusion of face; and he must cease to be a sinner before he
can be happy in his presence, that is, anywhere.
We believe that our all-wise,
all-merciful Father in heaven can feel no more displeasure, no more anger at
our sins, than the wisest and kindest parent ought to feel. He cannot be
stimulated to vengeance, as the Orthodox would have us suppose, by any pride of
place, or jealousy of his power. He will inflict no more suffering, no more
punishment, upon any, than it is right we should endure, until we repent, and
return to him in entire obedience of life and thought. Indeed, many Unitarians
hardly dare to pray that any of the consequences of our iniquities may
be averted from us, excepting upon our true repentance, because we believe that
there is no more wise, no more merciful provision in the Divine Government,
than that which has attached shame, suffering, punishment, to iniquity,
transgression of any of God's laws, sin of every kind. It is by these
consequences, by the bitter experience of some of them in this life, and the
fearful looking-for of others in the life to come, that we are taught the
essential, the irreconcilable, the eternal difference between right and wrong,
good and evil, sin and holiness.
We Unitarians believe that
there is nothing in the life or the life to come to hinder the salvation of
anyone, nothing in the peculiarities of the Divine Nature or the organization
of the Divine Government, nothing to prevent the acceptance of any child of
Adam, excepting his own sins; and that, whenever these are repented of
and forsaken, no earthly father ever received a returning prodigal more
graciously than the heavenly Father will receive and bless the penitent sinner.
Of course, consistently with
what I have declared to be our faith, we Unitarians do not believe as do our
Orthodox brethren respecting the nature of man; or rather, I should say, we
cannot believe what the creeds of the Presbyterian and other Orthodox sects set
forth on this subject. We cannot believe, that, in consequence of their
transgression, our first parents “became dead in sin," as the Presbyterian
Confession of Faith declares, "and wholly defiled in all the faculties and
parts of soul and body." Nor do we believe that "the guilt of this
sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature was conveyed to
all their posterity," whereby “we all are utterly indisposed, disabled,
and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to
all evil." We reject this as a horrible misrepresentation of God, and of
the nature and condition of men.
But we do believe that the transgression of Adam and Eve, and the sins of all parents since
their day, have transmitted to their offspring germs which, if not
repressed, will develop into kindred sins. We believe that all the children of
men are born capable of holiness and liable to sin; with senses, appetites,
faculties, affections, passions, which adapt them to live in a world like this,
to enjoy, innocently if they will, all the good and pleasant things which here
abound, and to discharge all the duties and exercise all the virtues that here
may be required of them: but, at the present time, these properties of their
nature are avenues to temptations, which, if not resisted, will mislead and
corrupt their souls.
We do not deny, but
sorrowfully own, that a great proportion of the children of men, in all ages,
have yielded more or less to their temptations; and, therefore, that sins and
their sad consequences ever have and still do abound in the world. The lusts of
the flesh, the pride of life, the love of money, the eager desire for power,
envy, jealousy, revenge, have overspread the earth with crimes and miseries.
This sad state of things, we
believe, is owing, in a great measure, to the
incompetency, or the negligence, or the evil examples of parents, or to their
mistaken views of human nature and of education. We hold that the highest
office which can be conferred upon human beings is the office of parents. Upon
the faithful and wise fulfillment of its duties depends the welfare of mankind,
more than upon that of governors, presidents, or kings, or upon that of
ministers, priests, or bishops. If all fathers and mothers were what fathers
and mothers ought to be, the children of men would be also children of God;
communities would be like well-ordered, happy families; the only law would be
the Golden Rule; and the will of God would be done on earth as it is done in
heaven.
We Unitarians believe that
the ignorance, sin, and misery which abound in the world are, in another great
measure, owing to the influence of false religions. Pure and undefiled religion
--doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly, keeping one's self unspotted from
the world -- is so noiseless and unostentatious, as well as difficult, that men
have ever been found too ready to believe, and priests and religious
visionaries have encouraged them to believe, that something else might be
substituted for the daily and hourly practice of all righteousness. Outward
observances, imposing rites and ceremonies, costly sacrifices and oblations, the keeping of holy
days, paying tithes, performing pilgrimages, building churches, contributing
generously to the support of the priesthood or for the maintenance of those who
will compass sea and land to make proselytes, -- these things, and such as
these, have, in all ages, in every country, and under every religious system,
been substituted for personal obedience to the laws of right action, fidelity
to God and to man, in all things, at all times.
Notwithstanding the
exceedingly plain and emphatic declarations of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and
other Hebrew prophets; not withstanding the explicit, impressive preaching of
Jesus Christ, his Sermon on the Mount, his inimitable parables, his prophetic
description of the final judgment, and, more than all, his own perfect example,
-- the people throughout Christendom have been misled by their priests and
theologians into notions respecting the way to avert the displeasure and
conciliate the favor of the Most High scarcely less false than those which
prevail in the Mahometan and Pagan lands.
The vast majority of the
people called Christian have been so perverted from the religion of the gospel,
that they suppose their salvation and acceptance with God depends very much
more upon their faith in the righteousness of Christ, than upon their own
personal righteousness, very much more upon their assent to the creed which
some church prescribes to them, than upon their obedience to the commandments
which God hath given them; very much more upon their having been the subjects
of a revival, and having had a remarkable experience, than upon having always
humbly and prayerfully endeavored to know and to do what the Lord require; very
much more upon their strict observance of the sabbath, their frequent
attendance upon religious meetings, their fervency in prayer, and their zeal in
defense of this or that form of sound doctrine, than upon their living truly
and beautifully in all the relations of life, “denying ungodliness and worldly
lusts, and living soberly, righteously, and godly in the world." [Footnote
here in the original publication: The most popular and able Orthodox preacher
in our country has just now so declared, in “A Familiar Lecture,” delivered to
his large audience, and published in an extensively circulated journal, “The
Independent,” Feb. 9, 1860. “This is our danger: not that we shall be sinful,
not that we shall be imperfect, not that we shall be vain, not that we shall be
foolish, not that we shall be corrupt in our imaginations, but that we shall
not believe in Christ. Our salvation is
not half so much imperiled by wickedness as by unbelief.]
Now we Unitarians believe
that each and all of these substitutes for true religion -- the putting of
Roman Catholicism or Calvinism or Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism or Baptism
or Methodism in the stead of Christianity -- has been, is, and ever must be,
disastrous in its influence upon the characters, the spiritual welfare, and
improvement of men.
We believe that only those
teachers of religion who insist that personal holiness of life and heart is the
one thing needful, --only such are teachers of the school of Christ; and
that never, until people generally are brought unfeignedly to believe that this
personal obedience to God in all things is indeed the one thing needful, --
never will that obedience be generally sought after, and the education of
children be so devised and conducted, from the beginning, as to develop the
divine in them, and lead them to “seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness."
Never, until the health and
life of each man's soul is shown and believed to depend upon his conformity of
himself to his highest ideas of right, will the thought of right assume and
maintain that prominence in his regard which it ought ever to have.
We believe in the cross; upon
it we behold the glory of our Lord, his spirit of entire self-sacrifice. Some
of us have put up, in and upon our churches, representations of the cross, as
the emblem, not of that righteousness which is to be imputed to us, but of that
righteousness which each one of us should endeavor to attain to; a
righteousness so true, so entire, that it would prompt and strengthen us to cut
off a right hand, or pluck out a right eye, -- nay, even to give up life
itself, rather than violate a principle of godliness; yes, sacrifice our
bodies, and all that we hold dear in life, rather than deny the faith, sully
the purity, or darken the hope of our souls.
We Unitarians believe in
prayer. True prayer is the breathing of the soul. Without it there is no
spiritual life. It is the constant aspiration of the "inner man" to
be continually renewed in knowledge and holiness, "after the image of Him
that created him." But we reject much that is called prayer. Nothing is
prayer but the sincere desire of the heart, “uttered or unexpressed."
Exercises of domestic, social, and public prayer are doubtless very useful,
when conducted in a right spirit. But the prayer-meeting or the church-assembly
is not the place to which we go to satisfy ourselves whether any men are
truly religious. The mere decorum of the occasion would keep most persons there
"seeming to be religious." We would go rather to the places of men's
business and pleasure. We would
observe them in their intercourse with their fellow men and women. We would
know on what principles they act in trade, in politics, in places of amusement;
how they deport themselves toward their superiors and their inferiors, those they
are dependent on, and those who are dependent on them. We would see them in
their hours of recreation, when unwithheld, and consider how far their love of
pleasure carries them. Still more must we be informed of their conduct in their
domestic relations, whether they fulfill well the paramount duties there, --
the conjugal, parental, filial and fraternal.
We believe that it is not
what a man may profess or pretend to be that should establish his claim to the
Christian name, but what he is seen and known to be in all those relations and
intercourses which try and prove "what spirit he is of."
These are some of the things
that Unitarians believe. We do not, however, set them forth as a creed; we
have not arranged them into a system of faith which every one must accept and
assent to in order to his salvation. We dare not prescribe any form of words,
which our fellow-men must subscribe to, or else be damned. Some dear children
of God may believe more, some may believe less, than we do. "Let every one
be fully persuaded in his own mind."
Without, therefore, dictating
to others precisely any set of articles as essential to be believed, we only
insist that they must believe that or those things which shall incite, guide,
and strengthen them "to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed
hope, the glorious appearing of the great God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and
purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."
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