doubt; but does the Church exclude us from the Universities, that her Bishops may enjoy the entertainment of making us their laughing-stock, and inditing lampoons against us? Does she injure us first, that we may be insulted afterwards?

"

."** as so

Mr. M'Neile speaks of the late Archbishop's work as a barrier in the way of Unitarianism."* It is so; and if its influence were only that of fair argument, we should wish the barrier to stand in all its strength. But the book has become a standard authority for every kind of false and malignant impression respecting Unitarians, and prevents, instead of advancing, the knowledge of what we are. To be held up as entertaining "the cool and deliberate purpose of falsifying the word of God;"† as guilty of "machinations" to " subvert through fraud what had been found impregnable by force;" as staking" our very salvation on the adoption of a reading which is against evidence;"§ as distinguished for "steady and immoveable effrontery," and "shameful disingenuousness;"¶ as discerning in our Lord "that one HATED form on which we are terrified to look ;' "determined to resist and subvert one great truth;" that we "set but little value on every other," and make a “prevailing practice" of "DIRECT AND DELIBERATE FALSEHOOD:"†† to be thus slandered by one, for whom his station and accomplishments have procured, from the party spirit of the age, a credit denied to any possible learning or excellence of ours; this, being a grievous wrong to the character of Christianity as much as to our own, we confess to be a trial hard to bear: and we may well feel like the good man under successful calumny, which wounds himself a little, but truth and virtue more. Meanwhile, injury may have its compensations; and since, to prove his accusations, even this distinguished Prelate had occasion to tamper with the evidence, we have a fresh presumption that our cause is one, against which learning and acuteness, under the restraints of justice, find themselves of no avail.

* Magee on the Atonement, Preface, p. vi.
Vol. i. xii.

p.

47.

P. 67.

+ Vol. iii. p. 108.

§ iii. 204. ¶p. 100.

tt p. 57, 58.

THE

UNSCRIPTURAL ORIGIN

AND

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

OF

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

A LECTURE,

DELIVERED IN

PARADISE STREET CHAPEL,

LIVERPOOL,

ON TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1839.

BY

REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.

BEING THE SEVENTH OF A SERIES, TO BE DELIVERED WEEKLY, IN ANSWER TO A COURSE OF LECTURES AGAINST UNITARIANISM, IN CHRIST CHURCH, LIVERPOOL, BY THIRTEEN CLERGYMEN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

LIVERPOOL:

WILLMER AND SMITH, 32, CHURCH STREET.

LONDON:

JOHN GREEN, 121, NEWGATE STREET.

PREFA CЕ.

THE REV. D. James commences the Preface to his Lecture with these words: "Modern Unitarianism is a compound of Infidelity and Heresy." It would be very easy for me to say what modern Trinitarianism is, and to attach to it two epithets which Mr. James would relish no more than I do Infidelity and Heresy. It is evident, however, that this calling of names proves nothing but the unfitness of the mind which so indulges its temper and feeling to be engaged in intellectual and argumentative controversy. Does Mr. James expect to convince or persuade any Unitarians, by calling them Infidels and Heretics? The Christ Church method of Conversion is very well for Infallibles, who have only to denounce, and for "ordained Clergymen," who, with a simplicity of extravagance approaching the sublime, shrink from no consequences of their first principles, and boldly assert that the Holy Spirit is their Interpreter of Scripture, but it displays a strange ignorance or contempt of the only avenues by which the minds of their fellow Christians can be approached, and of the moral and argumentative means by which alone conviction can be produced.

In what sense does Mr. James use the word ' Heresy,' in the sentence quoted? If in the sense of error, then is he of the infallible Church that he decides authoritatively on such points? If in the sense of schism and division, who does not know that the Creed-making Church is the Mother of the Sects, the fomentor of our religious strifes? With what grace or justice does that man call another an infidel, who is himself an infidel in respect to the primal and universal Revelation, and applies himself to blot out the divine signatures from the soul of man, and the material works of God? There is no infidelity so bad as this. The Apostle speaks of the law written on the heart, and of the Gentiles who had not the Jewish Law, being yet a

a