sions to a sound understanding and liberality of mind, to affect to exclude their christian brethren from their rights and privileges as members of the church of Christ, merely because they differ from them in certain mysterious questions, though they are equally honest in their inquiries after truth! Surely none but the lowest, the most ignorant and despicable of mankind, none whose understandings are not prostrate to the most contemptible extreme, can now seriously believe that any truly virtuous and upright man, such for example as Newton or Clarke or Locke, can without doubt perish everlastingly, only because he withholds his assent from the palpable contradictions of the Athanasian Creed! It is, indeed, high time for learned and liberal men to drop these foolish anathemas in theological controversy. Let them be zealous in their inquiries after truth: it deserves their most laborious and indefatigable research. Moral and religious truth is a pearl of inestimable. value. Let them, if they please, contend earnestly for the faith: and if they have discovered truth, let them in the spirit of benevolence and kindness communicate the blessing to others. But let them not fondly flatter themselves that they are the only favourites of heaven, and take upon themselves to sit in judgment upon and to condemn their fellow servants. Another, who has

not been equally successful in his inquiries, may have been equally humble, honest, and diligent with themselves, and therefore may be equally acceptable with themselves to that God who is indulgent to the frailty of human nature, and who is ready to make gracious allowance for unavoidable ignorance and invincible prejudice. And what are we, that we should reject those whom God has received?

And to speak plainly, In what a ridiculous and degrading light does a man of learning and character, who makes no pretensions to supernatural illumination, place himself when he lends his name to such illiberal censures! Who, it may be said, is this Dr. Moysey, who takes upon himself to sit in judgment upon the character and claims of hundreds and thousands of his fellow christians in different regions of the world! who like another antichrist takes his seat in the temple of God, usurps the prerogative of the Great Supreme, and opens and shuts the gates of Heaven! What is his authority, and what are his qualifications, that he should presume to exclude from the christian community, multitudes of whose real character it is impossible for him to judge, who equally with himself acknowledge Jesus as their Master, who yield an unfeigned assent to his doctrine, and submission to his authority, and many of whom

are no way inferior in any valuable intellectual or moral attainment to their self-constituted censor and judge? At any rate, if he expects that they should bow to his authority, let him at least produce his credentials. Till then, they must beg leave to regard all his solemn and pompous anathemas as a mere brutum fulmen, the private opinions of one Dr. Moysey, rector of a village in Somersetshire, who appears to have meddled with things which he does not very well understand, and to have intruded himself into an office to which he was not called, and for which he is but indifferently qualified; whose censures therefore will be duly appreciated by a discerning public.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER III.

My design in writing these Letters is not to dis

cuss the threadbare arguments concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, which have been stated and urged by much abler advocates than the learned Lecturer, but to rebut the charges and repel the abuse which this pious ecclesiastic has poured forth, after the fashion of the day, against that body of christians to which I shall ever esteem it my highest honour to belong, the Unitarians. I shall therefore be very brief in my observations upon the arguments alleged in favour of what this writer calls the doctrines, and the Unitarians the corruptions, of Christianity; though some of the learned Lecturer's observations are too novel and too curious to be suffered to pass without due notice.

The second Sermon treats concerning "the "doctrine of the Holy Trinity," that grand and fundamental corruption of the christian religion which has paved the way for almost all the rest, and which is defended by the learned Lecturer pretty much in the usual way.

He is offended with the Unitarians for objecting to this doctrine as "inconsistent with reason," which, he tells us, " is the old plea of Deists and "is

Infidels," and which, to say the truth, is not at all the worse for wear. But instead of proving that the doctrine of the Trinity is not inconsistent with reason, he very judiciously blinks this question, and spends page after page in proving that a doctrine may be true which reason cannot fully comprehend; which is a truism that nobody denies, and which is nothing to the purpose.

The fact is, that though all Trinitarians agree in repeating the same form of words, their ideas are as opposite as light and darkness. Some of the explanations of the doctrine are not at all contradictory to reason, and can only be opposed as unsupported by argument and as contrary to Scripture. When Dr. Sherlock maintains that the three persons of the Trinity are as distinct from each other as three men, Peter, James, and John, agreeing only like three men in one common nature, the proposition is perfectly intelligible, and involves no metaphysical contradiction. It can only be objected, that in this case there would be three Gods: a fact which is unsupported by the phænomena of nature, and is contrary to the Scriptures. When Dr. Wallis, in express contradiction to Dr. Sherlock, advances an hypothesis