trine ought to be acknowledged as true in its nature, or divine in its origin, of which all the parts are not level to human understanding: and that whatever the Scriptures teach concerning the counsels of Jehovah, and the plan of his salvation, must be modified, curtailed, and attenuated, in such a manner, by the transforming power of art and argument, as to correspond with the poor and narrow capacities of our intelligence."

Where are the simplicity, the sincerity, the love of Truth, which alone can make Controversy fruitful of good results, when such a representation of the spirit of our Theology can be given by "thirteen Clergymen❞ after we had published the following words in our fifth Lecture (p. 9), for their special instruction :"Let me guard myself from the imputation of rejecting this doctrine because it is mysterious; or of supporting a system which insists on banishing all mysteries from religion. On any such system I should look with unqualified aversion, as excluding from faith one of its primary elements; as obliterating the distinction between logic and devotion, and tending only to produce an irreverent and narrow-minded dogmatism. Religion without mystery' is a combination of terms, than which the Athanasian Creed contains nothing more contradictory; and the sentiment of which it is the motto, I take to be a fatal caricature of rationalism, tending to bring all piety into contempt. Until we touch upon the mysterious, we are not in con

tact with religion; nor are any objects reverently regarded by us, except such as, from their nature or their vastness, are felt to transcend our comprehension." Nay, it is not a little remarkable, that the very illustration employed by the "thirteen Clergymen❞ to exhibit our absurdity in rejecting the incomprehensible, had been previously employed by ourselves to exhibit the necessity of admitting the incomprehensible :

Trinitarian Preface, p. xviii. "Much of the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, with all the firmament of saving truth and love, whereof it is the radiant centre, must remain inexplicable to our present capacities. But to argue from thence, that this mystery is a cunningly-devised fable, is as illogical as it would be to maintain that there is no bottom to the sea, because we have no plumb-line with which it may be fathomed."

"The sense of what we do not know is as essential to our religion, as the impression of what we do know: the thought of the boundless, the incomprehensible, must blend in our mind with the perception of the clear and true; the little knowledge we have must be clung to, as the margin of an invisible immensity; and all our positive ideas be regarded as the mere float to show the surface of the infinite deep."

This is bold misrepresentation; a consistent hardihood in the tactics of holy war." To persevere, against all remonstrance, in the repetition of a misstatement injurious to an opponent, and to do this so coolly as to use almost his own words in imputing to him the very opposite of what he has said, is at least a convenient, if not an honourable nor yet a formidable policy.

In the same spirit of neither honourable nor yet formidable policy, is the attempt (p. xvii.) to identify Mahometanism and Unitarianism, by the help of a literary forgery, which even if it was authentic, would prove nothing except that the early Unitarians of England, in the reign of Charles the Second, amid the corruptions of Christianity, rejoiced in the testimony borne by Mahometanism to the great doctrine of revealed religion, the Unity of God. It is said that there is, among the MSS. in the Lambeth Library, a "Socinian Epistle (to this effect) to Ameth Ben Ameth, Ambassador from the Emperor of Morocco to Charles II." Leslie, in the Preface to his "Socinian Controversy Discussed," was the first who made use of this supposed letter, and not without the suspicion, that he had first forged it himself.* "I will here," says Leslie, "present the reader with a rarity, which I take to be so, because of the difficulty I had to obtain it." is in my mind," says Mr. Aspland, "decisive of the question, that immediately after Leslie had published the Epistle, Emlyn, who answered the tract to which it was prefixed, stated it as his belief, upon inquiry, that no such epistle had ever been presented by any one deputed' from the Unitarians, and insinuated

"It

*See "A Plea for Unitarian Dissenters," pp. 88-9, published in 1813, by the Rev. Robert Aspland, from whom we take the exposure of this forgery now brought forth again; for in Trinitarian Controversy falsehood seems immortal, and there is no work for us modern advocates, except to "slay the slain."

that no credit was to be given to a document published by Leslie, unless vouched by some other authority than his own; and that Leslie, in replying to this answer, though he dwells, for pages, upon the passages before and after this, relating to the epistle, says not a syllable about his rarity' or in defence of his veracity."

Leslie," continues Mr. Aspland, "is convicted (by Emlyn) of quoting passages from Archbishop Tillotson's Sermons, which had been published in the name of their eminent author, as if they were the work of an avowed' Socinian.' And if you will consult his reply, you will find this theological braggart completely humbled, and reduced to the necessity of using the wretched plea, that he had omitted the name of the great Prelate,' out of tenderness.-Is it uncharitable to suspect, under all these circumstances, that he who was proved to have resorted to one trick, might have had recourse to another ?"

"As to your rarity,'" says Emlyn in his reply to Leslie, "of the address to the Morocco ambassador, I see not what it amounts to, more than a complaint of the corruption of the Christian faith, in the article of one God, which the Mahometans have kept, by consent of all sides. Yet, forasmuch as I can learn nothing from any Unitarians of any such address from them, nor do you produce any subscribers' names,* I conclude no such

* «. There is internal evidence of its being written in the way of banter. No subscription appears to it, and no person is named as concerned in it, but a Monsieur Verze, a Frenchman, who might be employed as an agent, and yet not be a 'Socinian' agent."-ASPLAND.

address was ever made, by any deputed from them, whatever any single person might do. I suppose you conclude from the matter of it, that it must be from some Unitarian, and perhaps so; yet you may remember that so you concluded from the matter of Dr. Tillotson's Sermons, that they were a Socinian's.”*

For our own part, when we read this amusing attempt to identify us with Mahometans, by the help of an unknown letter, bearing no subscription, and addressed, by nobody knows whom, to the Ambassador of Morocco, in the reign of Charles II., we were forcibly reminded of two passages in Ecclesiastical History, in whose pages all tricks and absurdities can be paralleled, and whose exhibition of gratuitous follies and distortions has left the possibility of " nothing new under the sun," of this description, for our modern days. Hildebrand himself, yes, GREGORY THE SEVENTH, like our poor selves, was suspected of a leaning to "Islamism," (General Preface, p. xvii.) because he wrote a letter, not to the Ambassador, as in our case, but, as became his greater dignity, to the Emperor of Morocco, thanking him for the liberation of some Christian cap

"

* Plea for Unitarian Dissenters, p. 137.

My Lords, if your Lordships attended to the manner in which that quotation is introduced into Leslie, you might see that it bore internal evidence of being something of the nature of a jeu d'esprit. My Lords, this Leslie was a general maligner.

I

really think that this is raking into a dunghill to produce this address to the Ambassador of the Emperor of Morocco."-The AttorneyGeneral before THE HOUSE OF LORDS in the Lady Hewley Appeal, June 28th, 1839.