BY NEHEMIAH ADAMS, THIRD EDITION. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY TAPPAN & DENNET, 114 Washington Street. 1841. LETTER. REV. AND DEar Sir, My attention has been drawn to your Tract, entitled "Atonement," recently published by the American Unitarian Association. Its object is to show that "the popular doctrine of the atonement is condemned by reason, contradicted by scripture, and fruitful of evils which every one must lament." You "hold it therefore to be a duty to renounce and to expose it." p. 30. Your tract appears at a time when the community is specially interested in the subject of religion. Every denomination of Christians holding the Orthodox doctrine of the atonement, has lately had renewed evidence that faith in the vicarious sufferings and death of Christ, is efficacious, by the influence of the Holy Ghost, in turning men from "darkness to marvellous light.' Many of other denominations, are also led to serious inquiry upon the subject of religion, and therefore, the opportunity afforded by your tract, of exhibiting our views of what we consider a fundamental doctrine of the Gospel, is gladly embraced. As you have not attempted an abstruse, metaphysical discussion of the subject before us, I shall avail myself of your example in giving a popular form to the present remarks. The doctrine generally known as the atonement, you labor, in your tract, to disprove, and in its place to establish something to which you give the venerable name of that article of faith. Though you say that the word atonement occurs but once in the New Testament, and then that it might have been otherwise translated, you are evi |