Page:Richard Cumberland (1919).djvu/35

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Richard Cumberland

an air of exultation, as well as insult.” “Is this a man to confute the Holy Scriptures? Weak champion of an unworthy cause!”

He doubts whether the Jews can be converted: the miracles of the New Testament “will not be the means of converting his unbelieving brethren to Christianity: for how can I hope that what their fathers saw, and yet believed not, should at this distant period gain belief from their posterity?” In the next breath, however, he adds: “It is now time to dismiss the irony and apply to the argument,” so that Cumberland’s bark in a sense is worse than his bite. In adherence to his own case, however, Cumberland stands firm; the doctrines of Levi make no more imprint upon his mind than the arguments of the Unitarians whom he frequently couples with the Jews. Summing up his essays, he writes:

“The vague opinions of our own dissenting brethren, and the futile cavils of a recent publication by a

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