the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[44] perhaps, be doubted, whether it is really entitled to all the praise of impartiality and fairness which seems at first sight to belong to it. It is granted that we have good reason to consider it as no small recommendation of our religious opinions, that they admit of being expressed in the genuine words of scripture, without requiring the introduction of new and strange terms and phrases unknown to the sacred writers. But it may be alleged, that the difficulty which is sometimes felt in dispensing with such phrases, is to a certain degree incidental, arising from the change of language, and from the circumstance that the books of the New Testament were, for the most part, written with an immediate view to local and temporary purposes; so that it is hardly to be expected that they should contain a regular statement of doctrines which admits of being construed with minute verbal accuracy, like the clauses of an act of parliament, or the formal propositions of a systematic treatise. It must be remembered, too, that all Protestant sects profess at least to found their peculiar doctrines upon scripture; and there can be little doubt that, by a dexterous adaptation of the questions to the phraseology of detached passages selected from different places and separated from their connexion, catechisms might be constructed upon this plan which should appear to give the sanction of holy writ to the most discordant opinions. The method, if it be adopted at all, requires to be pursued with caution, from its tendency to withdraw the attention from the general scope and tenor of the sacred writings, and direct it upon particular words and phrases; in not a few instances, upon the words,