[Phases of Faith by Francis William Newman]@TWC D-Link bookPhases of Faith CHAPTER III 37/46
First, as to his incredulity, or rather, boldness of thought.
Eternal punishment was a notion, which nothing could make him believe, and for which it would be useless to quote Scripture to him; for the doctrine (he said) darkened the moral character of God, and produced malignity in man. That Christ had any higher nature than we all have, was a tenet essentially inadmissible; first, because it destroyed all moral benefit from his example and sympathy, and next, because no one has yet succeeded in even stating the doctrine of the Incarnation without contradicting himself.
If Christ was but one person, one mind, then that one mind could not be simultaneously finite and infinite, nor therefore simultaneously God and man.
But when I came to hear more from this same gentleman, I found him to avow that no Trinitarian could have a higher conception than he of the present power and glory of Christ.
He believed that the man Jesus is at the head of the whole moral creation of God; that all power in heaven and earth is given to him: that he will be Judge of all men, and is himself raised above all judgment.
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