THE LIBRARY 
 
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 \
 
 HEADS 
 
 English Unitarian History 
 
 WITH APPENDED LECTURES ON 
 
 BAXTER AND PRIESTLEY 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER GORDON, M.A. 
 
 Cor filiorum ad patres eoniin 
 
 XonC>on 
 
 PHILIP GREEN, 5, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C. 
 1895
 
 3X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The history of English Unitarianism is less known than 
 it deserves to be. Many of its passages being obscure, and 
 the threads of its story being complicated, it has not 
 presented itself as an easy study. Moreover, while in the 
 constitution of the British and Foreign Unitarian Associa- 
 tion the diffusion of biblical, theological and literary know- 
 ledge is contemplated, no express provision is made for the 
 dissemination of historical information. Yet the history of 
 the Unitarian movement is the key to its meaning. 
 
 The following outline is the result of an attempt to lay 
 bare the framework of the subject, as a guide to learners. 
 For their aid a few references are given ; not to confirm the 
 text by indicating its primary sources ; but rather to meet 
 the reader's enquiry for further particulars, by directing him 
 to publications presumed to be fairly accessible. 
 
 The appended addresses are intended as specimens of an 
 ampler treatment of special passages. They deal with three 
 important sections : the Nonconformist exodus of 1662 ; the 
 Unitarian re-birth of the last century ; and the legalisation 
 of doctrinal change by the Chapels Act of 1844. 
 
 A. G. 
 
 824714
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LANDMARKS. 
 
 1 1 98 — Foundation of Fratres Domus Sanctae Trinitatis 
 
 ( Triititarii'). 
 1458 — Pecock deprived. 
 
 1546 — Tr initar a w^^di in modern sense by Serveto. 
 1548 — Recantation of Assheton. 
 1550 — Organisation of the ' Strangers' Church.' 
 1 55 1 — Martyrdom of George Van Parris. 
 1552 — Second Prayer-book of Edward VL 
 1553 — Martyrdom of Miguel Serveto. 
 1555 — Martyrdom of Patrick Pakingham. 
 1556 — Philpot"s Apology 'for spittyng on an Arian.' 
 1559 — Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity. 
 1564 — Death of Ochino. 
 
 Death of Calvin. 
 1565 — Acontius' Stratagemata Satanae. 
 1572 — Thirty-nine Articles. 
 1579 — Martyrdom of Hamont. 
 1583 — Martyrdom of Lewes. 
 1587 — Martyrdom of Cole. 
 1589 — Martyrdom of Kett. 
 1600 — First known use of term Unitarius. 
 1604 — Hampton Court Conference. 
 
 Death of Socinus. 
 1609 — Racovian Catechism dedicated to James L 
 161 1 — Vorst's De Deo burned.
 
 6 Chronological Landmarks 
 
 1612 — Martyrdom of Legate. 
 
 Martyrdom of Wightman. 
 1614 — Racovian Catechism burned. 
 1640 — Canon against Socinian books. 
 i64i' — Ussher's scfieme of episcopacy. 
 1643-59 — Westminster Assembly. 
 1643 — Solemn League and Covenant. 
 
 Cheynell's Rise, Groivth and Danger of Socinian- 
 isme. 
 1644 — Persecution of Bidle began. 
 1645-47 — Imprisonment of Best. 
 1646 — Ordinance for Presbvterianism in Lancashire 
 
 (2nd Oct.). 
 1647 — Earliest printed tracts of Bidle and Best. 
 
 First ordinance for a Presbyterian establishment 
 (13th Oct.). 
 1648 — Second ordinance for a Presbyterian establish- 
 ment (31st Jan.). 
 
 Ordinance making denial of the Trinity capital. 
 
 Westminster Confession of Faith issued. 
 1649 — First Universalist publications in English. 
 1650 — Knowles preaches at Chester. 
 1 65 1 — Fry expelled from Parliament. 
 
 Hobbes' Leviatha^i. 
 1652 — Bidle's church in London. 
 
 Racovian Catechism again burned. 
 
 Baxter's Worcestershire Agreement. 
 
 Racovian Catechism in English. 
 1653 — Antitrinitarian church at Dukinfield. 
 1654— Cromwell's Triers (20th March) and Expurgators 
 (28th Aug.). 
 
 Parliamentary Committee for Toleration. 
 1655-58 — Banishment of Bidle. 
 165 6 — Chewney 's A nti- Socinianisrn . 
 1658 — Death of Cromwell. 
 
 Independent revision of the Westminster Con- 
 fession.
 
 Chronological Landmarks 7 
 
 1659 — Lancashire movement for Union with Indepen- 
 dents. 
 1660 — Restoration of the Monarchy. 
 
 Charles II.'s Declaration for Ussher's scheme. 
 1 66 1 — Proclamation against Conventicles. 
 
 Savoy Conference. 
 
 First Test Act. 
 1662 — Act of Uniformity. 
 
 Death of Bidle. 
 
 Charles II.'s first Declaration of Indulgence. 
 1664 — First Conventicle Act (repealed 1863). 
 1665 — Five Miles Act (repealed 181 2). 
 1665-66 — Imprisonment of Knowles. 
 1665 — Publication of Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum 
 
 begun at Amsterdam. 
 1666 — Nonconformist 'tabernacles' erected after the 
 
 Great Fire. 
 1667 — Milton's Paradise Lost. 
 
 Baxter's Reasons for the Christian Religion. 
 1668 — Penn's Sandy Foundation Shaken. 
 
 Baxter's proposals for Union of Nonconformists. 
 1669 — Sand's Nucleus. 
 1 670-98 — Frankland's Academy. 
 1670 — Second Conventicle Act (repealed 1812). 
 1672 — Charles II.'s second Declaration of Indulgence. 
 
 Pinners' Hall Lectureship. 
 1673 — Second Test Act (repealed 1828). 
 
 Indulgence voided. 
 1678 — Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 
 1 68 1 — Bill for Relief of Nonconformists passed both 
 
 houses. 
 1682. — First known use of term Unitarian. 
 ' 16^7" — James II.'s Declaration for Liberty of Conscience. 
 
 Term Unitarian first appears in print. 
 1689 — Toleration Act. 
 
 Common Fund for Presbyterians and Congrega- 
 tionalists.
 
 8 Chronological Landmarks 
 
 1690 — Union of Presbyterian and Congregational divines. 
 
 Westminster Confession subscribed in Scotland. 
 1 69 1 — Death of Baxter. 
 1693 — Rupture of London Fund. 
 1694 — Rupture of London Lectureship. 
 
 Prosecution of Freke. 
 1695 — Locke's ReasonableJiess 0/ Christianity. 
 1 695-1 745 — French Uniform Church at Canterbury. 
 1697 — Death of Firmin. 
 
 1700 — General Baptists sanction Antitrinitarians. 
 1705 — Emlyn's London church. 
 1705-7 — Locke's Paraphrases. 
 1705-6 — Hickeringill's History of Priestcraft. 
 1706-38 — Grove, tutor at Taunton. 
 1710 — Whiston deprived of his chair. 
 1712 — Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. 
 17 16-19 — '^^^ Occasional Papers. 
 1 719 — Salters' Hall Rupture. 
 
 The Independent Whig. 
 
 Mint Meeting opened at Exeter. 
 1726 — Trial of Elwall. 
 1727-57 — Lardner's Credibility. 
 1729-51 — Doddridge's Academy at Northampton. 
 1736 — Butler's Analogy 0/ Religion. 
 1740 — Taylor on Original Sin. 
 
 Fleming preaches Humanitarian doctrine. 
 1 74 1 — Sykes on Sacrifices. 
 1749 — Hartley's Observations on Mafi. 
 1 75 1 — Taylor on Romans. 
 1755 — Priestley broke with the Independents. 
 1757-83 — Warrington Academy. 
 1758 — Lindsey became a Unitarian. 
 1759 — Lardner on The Logos (written 1730). 
 1761 — Seddon's Manchester sermons. 
 1764 — Robertson resigned his preferments. 
 
 Lindsey's Sunday School at Catterick. 
 1765-68 — Tucker's Light of Nature.
 
 Chronological Landmarks 
 
 y^j — Cardale's True Doctrine of the New Testament. 
 
 768 — Priestley became a Socinian. 
 
 769-88 — Theological Repository. 
 
 770 — Priestley's Appeal. 
 
 771 — Farmer on jMiracles. 
 
 773 — Lindsey resigned Catterick. 
 
 774 — Essex Street Unitarian Chapel opened. 
 
 779 — Revision of the Toleration Act. 
 
 786 — Priestley's History of Early Opinions. 
 
 Manchester Academy founded. 
 788 — Belsham joined Unitarians. 
 789 — First Unitarian Lay Preachers. 
 791 — Unitarian Society. 
 
 Birmingham Riots. 
 794 — Paine's Age of Reason. 
 
 Priestley's removal to America. 
 797 — Martin's Letter. 
 799 — Sturch's ApeleictJierus. 
 804 — Death of Priestley. 
 806 — Unitarian Fund. 
 
 Cooke expelled from the Wesleyans. 
 808 — Lmproved Version of the New Testament. 
 
 Death of Lindsey. 
 810 — Death of Barnes. 
 813 — Trinity Act. 
 8 1 5 — Yates " Vindication . 
 816 — Unitarian Fellowship Funds. 
 817 — Wolverhampton case begun. 
 819 — Channing's Baltimore sermon. 
 
 Unitarian Association. 
 S25 — Manchester Socinian controversy. 
 
 British and Foreign Unitarian Association. 
 830-42— Hewley Case. 
 833 — Manchester Domestic Mission. 
 
 Yates' scheme of Presbyterianism. 
 834 — Porter and Bagot discussion. 
 839 — Liverpool Unitarian controversy.
 
 lO Chronological Landmarks 
 
 1842 — Parker's Discourse. 
 
 1842 — Unitarians excluded from the Hewley Trust. 
 1844 — Dissenters' Chapels Act. 
 1846 — Barker's printing press. 
 1847 — Hibbert Trust founded. 
 185 1 — Greg's Creed of Christendom. 
 1854 — Unitarian Home Missionary Board founded. 
 1856 — Ministers' Stipend Augmentation Fund. 
 1 86 1 — Essays and Reviews. 
 1882 — National Conference (triennial) begun. 
 Sustentation Fund.
 
 HEADS OF 
 ENGLISH UNITARIAN HISTORY
 
 SYNOPSIS. 
 
 Introduction. Three Periods : I., dating from 1548; 
 II., dating from 1682; III., dating from 1774. 
 
 I. — I. Lollards. 2. Foreign Congregations. 3. 
 Assheton. 4. Influences from Holland. 5. Socinian 
 influence. 6. The Commonwealth. 7. The Restoration. 
 8. Milton and Bunyan. 
 
 II. — 9. Primary document of English Unitarianism. 
 10. Firmin. 11. Consequences of the Toleration Act. 
 12. Union of Dissent. 13. Unitarianism among Con- 
 gregationals. 14. Clarke. 15. Baptists, Friends, and 
 Huguenots. 16. Baxter and Locke. 17. Sahers' Hall. 
 18. The liberal Laity. 19. Dissenting Academies; Grove 
 and Doddridge. 20. John Taylor. 21. Humanitarians. 
 22. Wesley. 23. Priestley. 
 
 III. — 24. Lindsey. 25. Restriction of the Unitarian 
 name. 26. Belsham. 27. The Unitarian Societies. 
 28. Birmingham Riots. 29. Paine. 30. Periodicals. 
 31. Unitarian Fund and Missions. 32. Legalising of 
 Unitarianism; Unitarian Association. 33. Channing, 
 Tuckerman, and Rammohun Roy. 34. Arianism. 
 35. Controversies. 36. Dissenters" Chapels Act. 37. 
 Decline and revival of Unitarian zeal. 38. Newer biblical 
 Criticism. 39. Conclusion. 
 
 [This sketch was originally prepared for a meeting at Chicago, in October 
 1893 ; a few points have been since added.]
 
 HEADS OF 
 ENGLISH UNITARIAN HISTORY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In the history of the Unitarian movement in England, 
 three distinct stages are to be marked. Taken together, 
 they exhibit some continuity, as well as some over- 
 lapping ; but the prime business of the historical enquirer 
 is to attend to those distinguishing features which part 
 them from each other. 
 
 I. The stage of sporadic Antitrinitarianism, native 
 and exotic, dating apparently from the recantation of 
 Assheton in 1548. 
 
 II. The stage of a comprehensive School of 
 Thought, taking the Unitarian name, and dating from 
 the primary Unitarian document of 1682. In this stage, 
 the term Unitarian denotes a specific tenet of Theology ; 
 namely, the Unipersonality of the Godhead. 
 
 III. The stage of Unitarian Church Life, dating 
 from the opening of Lindsey's Chapel in 1774. In this 
 stage, the term Unitarian denotes a determining principle 
 of associated Religion; namely, the limitation of divme 
 worship to a single being, God the Father. 
 
 [For the general subject see Lindsey, Historical View, 17S3 ; Turner, Lives 
 of Eminent Unitarians, 1840 ; Tayler, Retrospect of Religious Life in 
 England, 1845 (Martineau's Edition, 1876); J. 11. Beard, Unitaiianisrn 
 exhibited in its Actual Coiuiition, 1840 ; Wallace, Antilriiiitnrian ISioiiraphy, 
 1850; Spears, Rrcord of Unitarian \V<irthies, 1877 ; Bnn.Ue Ihrford, Story of 
 Religion in England, 1877 (second edition, 1893) ; Bonet-Maury, Karly Soiircen 
 of English Unitarian Christianity, 18S4. Several of these writers occuijy tlie 
 standpoint of the Dissenters' Chapels Bill polemics.]
 
 PERIOD I. 
 
 1. Lollards. 
 
 Prior to the Reformation, some traces of Anti- 
 trinitarian tendency may be observed in the Lollards; 
 but they are slight and uncertain. Some modern writers 
 have misconceived the ground of the Lollard rejection of 
 the worship of the human Christ. Like most Protestants, 
 they worshipped Christ in his divine nature alone, refus- 
 ing that adoration which the Catholic offers to his human 
 nature also. 
 
 In the direction of primitive doctrine, the Represshig 
 of over mich ivy ting [blaming] the Clergie (1449), ^^'^ 
 Book of Faith (1456), by Reginald Pecock (1390-1460), 
 bishop of St. Asaph, were more cogent than the Lollard 
 tenets. He sought to stay the Lollard movement by 
 setting aside ecclesiastical infallibility, and taking the 
 appeal to Scripture and reason. For this he was 
 deprived in 1458. 
 
 [For Pecock see Perry, StudenVs Engliah Chnrch History, 1890, i. 472 sq.] 
 
 2. Foreign Congregations. 
 
 After the Reformation there is a certain amount of 
 Antitrinitarian tendency in all the Foreign Congregations 
 tolerated in England. Its volume has been exaggerated
 
 English Unitarian History 15 
 
 in two ways, {a) Heretics, and there were many, who 
 denied that Christ 'took flesh of the Virgin,' have been 
 treated as rejecting the miraculous birth ; whereas, they 
 augmented its marvel, by viewing Christ's body as of 
 purely celestial make. This was a Gnostic tenet revived, 
 and is usually known as the Valentinian view, {b) Ad- 
 vocates of tolerance, like Giacomo Contio (i 520-1 565), 
 known as Acontius, have been quite erroneously regarded 
 as endorsing heresies they were unwilling to proscribe. 
 Lelio Francesco Sozini (i 525-1562) was in England 
 for a few months in 1547-1548; Bernardino Tommasini 
 (1487-1564), known as Ochino, for a longer period (20th 
 December 1547 to 1553), but neither was at that time 
 under suspicion of Antitrinitarian heresy. 
 
 Still there were undoubtedly Antitrinitarians among 
 the Foreign Congregations. George Van Parris, a 
 surgeon from Maintz, was burned for Arianism at Smith- 
 field, on 25th April 1551. Juan Cassiodoro de Reyna 
 (d. 1594), minister of the Spanish congregation (1558- 
 1563), was one of the very few avowed disciples of 
 Miguel Serveto (1511-1553). For the origin, however, 
 of English Antitrinitarian thought, it is vain to look to 
 the 'Strangers' Church.' Its internal heresies did not 
 touch English opinion. Moreover, the appearance of 
 Antitrinitarianism in England precedes the organisation, 
 in 1550, of the Foreign Congregations. 
 
 [Bonet-Maiiry, Early Sourcea ; compare review in Christian Life, 21st 
 May and 4th .Tune XSSI. For Serveto and Lelio Sozini see EncyclopcBdia 
 Britannica, ninth edition.] 
 
 3» Assheton. 
 
 On 28th December, 1548, John Assheton. a priest, 
 was brought up before Cranmer for denying in his 
 preaching the deity and atonement of Christ. He is the 
 first Englishman who is known to have been arraigned 
 on such a charge; he fully admitted and recanted his 
 ' damned opinions.'
 
 1 6 English Unitarian History 
 
 Following him, we have Patrick Pakingham, burned 
 at Uxbridge as an Arian in August 1555, and a number of 
 laymen in Kent, who saved themselves by recantation. 
 
 Antitrinitarian also were many of the contemporary 
 Familists, such as Christopher Vitells (or Viret), the 
 first Familist preacher (1555) in England, who also 
 recanted. To this class probably belonged the so-called 
 'Arian,' a fellow prisoner with John Philpot (d. 1555), 
 archdeacon of Winchester, on whom the good arch- 
 deacon spat, to ' relieve that sorrow which he conceived 
 for that blasphemy.' 
 
 [Wallace, Antitrin. Biog., and references there given.] 
 
 4. Influences from Holland. 
 
 In subsequent cases (1579-1612J belonging to the 
 reigns of Elizabeth and James I., we can trace the 
 influence of the writings of Erasmus (i 465-1 536) and of 
 intercourse with Holland. 
 
 Two remarkable features are common to these cases, 
 which all belong to the Eastern counties; viz., (i) the 
 high personal character and deep biblical religiousness 
 of the men, freely testified by their opponents; and (2) 
 the advanced type of their Christology. Matthew 
 Hamont, wheelwright, of Hethersett, Norfolk, who 
 named his son Erasmus, was burned on 20th Mav 1579. 
 He maintained that Christ had sinned. He had 
 followers: John Lewes, burned on i8th September 
 1583, and Peter Cole, tanner, of Ipswich, burned 1587. 
 Frances Kett, a Norfolk man, ^nd Fellow of Corpus 
 Christi, Cambridge, was burned on 14th January 1589; 
 he held Christ to be ' a good man,' who suffered ' for his 
 owne sinnes,' adding a mystical belief that he was ' to 
 suffer againe for the sinnes of the world,' and ' be made 
 God after his second resurrection.' All these suffered at 
 Norwich. The brothers Legate, of whom Thomas died 
 in prison, and Bartholomew was burned on iSth March
 
 English Unitarian History 17 
 
 161 2 (the last victim at Smithfield), were natives of 
 Essex, and connected in business with Holland, 
 Bartholomew had been a preacher there among the 
 Seekers; he held Christ to be 'a meere man,' but ' borne 
 free from sinne," and he believed in his atonement. 
 
 Distinct from these is a Midland county man, Edward 
 Wightman, an Antitrinitarian Baptist of very confused 
 opinions, who fancied himself the promised Paraclete, 
 and was burned at Lichfield on nth April 16 12. 
 
 [Dictionary of National Dionraphy, for Hainont, Kett and Legate ; 
 Wallace, ut sup. ; also for an ideal picture, Miss Gregg's Bartholomew Legate.] 
 
 5. Socinian Influence. 
 
 These fires of 161 2 were effective for their purpose; 
 we hear no more of overt Antitrinitarianism till 1644. 
 Meanwhile, many works of this class, in Latin, had been 
 imported from Holland and studied by the learned. 
 The dedication of the Latin version of the Racovian 
 Catechism (projected and begun by Socinus, finished 
 by his friends in 1605) to James L, in 1609, had been 
 fruitless ; except, perhaps, in provoking James to the 
 display of a militant orthodoxy, directed abroad against 
 the Dutch Antitrinitarian, Conrad Vorst (i 569-1619'), 
 and at home against Vorst's book (burned at St. Paul's 
 Cross, in 161 1 ), and the Legates ; the Racovian Catechism. 
 itself was burned in 161 4, which may be the date of 
 issue of the Dutch reprint. Over minds of the stamp of 
 Lord Falkland (i 610-1643), William Chillingworth 
 (1602-1644), and John Hales (i 584-1656), all of them 
 Anglicans and royalists, the writings of Fausto Paulo 
 Sozzini (i 539-1 604), known as Socinus, exercised great 
 influence; but (except, perliaps, Chillingworth for a time) 
 they adopted, not his theology, but his reduction of 
 essentials, and his idea of a comprehensive toleration. 
 
 [Wallace, Antitrin. Biog. ; Did. Nat. Biog. for Chillingworth, Falkland 
 nuil Hales. For F. P. Sozzini see Ennjclnpwil ia Britannica, ninth edition.)
 
 1 8 English Unitarian History 
 
 6. The Commonwealth. 
 
 Among the abortive canons passed on the initiative 
 of Laud in the Convocation of Canterbury, 30th June 
 1640, was one (the fifth) ipso facto excommunicating 
 printers, importers, and readers of Socinian books. 
 These canons were condemned in the Long Parliament 
 (14th December) as 'of very dangerous consequence,' 
 but the condemnation imphed no favour to Socinianism. 
 Francis Clieyiiell,D.D.(i6o8-i665),amemberof the West- 
 minster Assembly of Divines (i 643-1 659), wrote fiercely of 
 the danger of this heresy. No Socinian book was printed 
 in England till 1647; nor did any such book, while the 
 Long Parliament lasted, escape a public burning. By 
 Ordinance of 2nd May 1648, denial of the Trinity was 
 made a capital crime. Paul Best (15^0-1657) and 
 John Bidle (161 6-1 662), both belonging to the Socinian 
 school, were saved from the capital penalty by the inter- 
 position of Cromwell. Best, a country gentleman, a 
 mathematician, and a poet, had learned his opinions in 
 the course of his travels in Poland and Transylvania. 
 Bidle, an Oxford tutor and schoolmaster, had reached 
 his conclusions through his own study of the Scriptures. 
 This was also the case with his Arian friend John 
 Knowles {fl. 1 646-1 668), a lay preacher of some 
 eloquence. Both were Independents, and gatherers of 
 churches of that order. Knowles' preaching at Chester 
 (1650) is the earliest known course of avowed Anti- 
 trinitarianism in an English pulpit. John Fry (1609- 
 1657) was, for a Sabellian pamphlet, deprived of his seat 
 in Parliament on 24th February 1651. Bidle's short- 
 lived church was begun in London in 1652, but closed 
 in 1654. There was a local Antitrinitarian secession from 
 the Independents, due to the influence of Knowles, in 
 1653. Bidle rendered great service not only by his own 
 writings, but by instigating the publication of the 
 Racovian Catechism, in Latin (1651), an edition which
 
 English Unitarian History 19 
 
 was burned by the hangman on 6th and 8th April 1652, 
 also in English (1652), and by translating the Life of 
 Socinus (1653). The spread of Socinian doctrine may 
 be measured by the number and virulence of the writers 
 against it, e.g., John Owen, D.D. (161 6-1 683), Nicholas 
 Chewney, D.D. (i 610-168 5), and Nicholas Estwick, 
 B.D., {fl. 1633-1656), besides many others. 
 
 Among the Baptists there were Antitrinitarian 
 preachers, e.g., Thomas Collier {fl. 1 634-1 691), among 
 the Particular, and Paul Hohson \fl. 1 646-1 660), among 
 the General Baptists. 
 
 In the looser sects, Ranters, Seekers, etc., a sporadic 
 Antitrinitarianism was common, and was closely con- 
 nected with Universalism. The first Universalist 
 preacher in England was probably Richard Coppin 
 \fl. 1646-1659), who began to publish in 1649. John 
 Reeve (1608-1658) and Lodowicke Muggleton (1609- 
 1698) founded, in 1652, an Antitrinitarian sect, which 
 still exists ; its theology anticipates that of Swedenborg 
 by maintaining that the human Christ is the only true 
 God. 
 
 To preachers, of every complexion of doctrine, con- 
 siderable latitude, in spite of Ordinances, was given under 
 the Commonwealth, especially in its later years, when, as 
 the Presbyterians plaintively put it, the Independents 
 claimed liberty of conscience, ' not only for themselves, 
 but for all men.' The standard of theological belief for 
 the three kingdoms was the Westminster Confession, of 
 1648. But adhesion to it was not yet enforced by sub- 
 scription, a Scottish measure of much later date (1690). 
 The only formulary to which subscription was legally 
 required was the Solemn League and Covenant (1643), 
 which binds to nothing more specific in matter of 
 doctrine than ' the word of God and the example of the , 
 best reformed churches.' The pledge taken (1643) by 
 members of the Westminster Assembly ran thus : * I, 
 A. B., do seriously promise and vow, in the presence of
 
 20 English Unitarian History 
 
 Almighty God, that in this Assembly, of which I am a 
 member, I will maintain nothing in point of doctrine, but 
 what I believe to be most agreeable to the word of God ; 
 nor in point of discipline, but what may make most for 
 God's glory and the peace and good of this church.' In 
 the preface (1659) by John Owen, D.D. (16 16-1683), to 
 the revision of the Confession issued by the Independents, 
 their attitude is thus indicated : ' The Spirit of Christ is 
 in himself too free, great and generous a Spirit, to suffer 
 himself to be used by any human arm, to whip men 
 into belief ; he drives not, but gently leads into all 
 truth .... which would lose of its preciousness and value 
 if that sparkle of freeness shone not in it.' 
 
 [Wallace, Antitrhi. Biog. ; Diet. Nat. Biog. for Best, Bidle, Coppin, Fry, 
 Knowles and Muggletou; Christian Life, 21st January 1S88, for CoUier 
 and Hobson ; 3rd September 1892, for Chewney ; 10th September 1892, for 
 Bidle and the Baptists ; Mr. Gunthorpe's life of Bidle is still unpublished.] 
 
 7. The Restoration. 
 
 With the Restoration (1660) and the Uniformity Act 
 (1662) came a period of severe restriction. It is true 
 that early in 1662 collections for the exiled Antitrinitarians 
 of Poland were made in several parish churches, at 
 Firmin's suggestion. But on ist June 1662, Bidle was 
 arrested while holding his little conventicle, which had 
 been resumed in 1658; within four months he died in 
 prison. In 1668 William Penn (1644-17 18) was sent 
 to the Tower for his Sandv Foundation Shaken, a Sabel- 
 lian publication. John Cooper (1620-1682), a follower 
 of Bidle, ejected from Cheltenham, is related to have 
 maintained a conventicle there till his death, but this is a 
 solitary and rather doubtful instance. 
 
 I Wallace, Antitrin. Biog. for Cooper and Penn; for Uniformity Act see 
 appended lecture on Baxter.]
 
 Etii^lish Uniian'a?! History 2 1 
 
 8. Milton and Bunyan. 
 
 All these overt thrusts of heresy were apart from the 
 main stream of Puritan development. But it was some- 
 what otherwise with the influence of the Paradise Lost 
 (1667) and Regaitifd (1671) of John Milton (1608- 
 1674). The biblicism of Mihon has in many directions 
 been more operative than the Bible itself, in shaping the 
 form in which biblical ideas have been admitted into the 
 English mind. His definite Antitrinitarianism was un- 
 known till 182- ; yet the sympathetic student of his great 
 "p"oems would necessarily become habituated to points of 
 view essentially Antitrinitarian. Nor be it forgotten that, 
 while penned as a manual of Puritan xloctrine, nothing 
 perhaps has contributed more to the humanising of 
 English theology than that masterpiece of heart and 
 humour, the Pilgrinis Progress (1678) of John Bunyan 
 (1628-1688). 
 
 [For ATil^fn «pp Wailm-p^ ^ntifrin. Rigj;_, and Chaniiinp^'s E ^ say on 
 
 Milton ; for Bunyan, Dwt. Nat. Bio;/.]
 
 PERIOD 11. 
 
 9. Primary Document of English Unitarianism. 
 
 In August, 1682, an address, taking the shape of an 
 Epistle, with appended tractates, was offered to Ahmet 
 Ben Ahmet, ambassador from Morocco in London, by 
 'two philosophers,' who withheld their names, but 
 claimed to represent 'that sect of Christians that are 
 called Unitarians.' The time was remarkable ; persecu- 
 tion of all Dissent was then at its height. The address 
 was remarkable ; for the first time, so far as is known, 
 the term Unitarian was employed in an English docu- 
 ment. Strictly speaking, this is its first appearance in 
 any document. The form Unitari«« (like Trinitariaw) is 
 exclusively English, just as \yc\\\.-Axisch (trinitarz^cA) is 
 exclusively German (with a Dutch cognate). The term, 
 without the suffix, first appears (in adjectival form, 
 unitaria religio) in a decree of the Transylvanian Diet, at 
 Leczfalva, 25th October 1600. Elek Jakab believes it to 
 have originated in the period 1 569-1 571, but this is not 
 proved. It was ratified by the Transylvanian Unitarians, 
 as the official designation of their church, at the Com- 
 planatio Deesiana, in 1638. The Polish followers of 
 Socinus never adopted it; though on the title page of the 
 Bibliotheca Fratrtim Polonorum, 1665, they admit that 
 the name was given to them by others.
 
 £tiglish Unitarian History 23 
 
 The use of the Unitarian name may have been 
 suggested by the motive of the address. Perhaps the 
 term was originally meant for the followers of Muhammad, 
 the sense it still bears in Gibbon, and in Wesley's well- 
 known ' Unitarian fiend ' ; just as the much earlier term, 
 'Trinitarii,' was devised as the name of a religious Order 
 (i 198), to antagonise Islam, and was rejected by John 
 Calvin (i 509-1 564) as a criminal insult, when applied 
 (1546) in its present sense by Serveto. Be that as it may, 
 the unknown 'philosophers' of 1682 employ the Uni- 
 tarian name in its broadest scope, as denoting all who 
 believe in ' an onely Soveraign God (who hath no 
 distinction or plurality in persons),' and they seek to win 
 over Ben Ahmet to the Christian type of Unitarianism. 
 
 [See this document in full, with introcluction,_£iris(ia'i L'/^^ September- 
 Octoher. 1892. It may be useful here to add some brief notes 1)y way of 
 definition. While all Christians hold that there is Imt one (iod, they differ 
 as to the position of the Sou and the Holy Spirit, i'afti'./ii'rtii.s' hold tiiat the 
 one God is threefold in aspect ; the three ' persons,' Father, Word (or Son) 
 and Holy Spirit being aspects of one and the same personality ; some of them 
 (Patripassians) hold Christ to be God in human form ; others view him .as a 
 man in intimate union with God. Arian» hold that the three persons are 
 entirely distinct beings ; the Son (or Word) and Holy Spirit, though existing 
 before all time, yet owe their existence to the will of the Father, who .alone 
 is the Most High God. Trinitarians hold that in the one God there are 
 three personalities, eternally distinct, and all equally divine. Socinians 
 hold with Arians that the Father ahme is the Most High God : they hold also 
 an Arian view of the Son (though they deny him pre-existence) but take a 
 Sabellian view of the Holy Spirit (interpreting this as divine inlluence). 
 Bidle, however, in other respects a Soeinian, held an Arian view of the Holy 
 Spirit, whom he treated as the first of archangels. It is further distinctive 
 of the Soeinian theology that it discards that view of the Atonement accord- 
 ing to which Christ suffered ' to reconcile his Father to us ' (Anglican Article 
 II.), maintaining that Christ's work operates not on God but on man.] 
 
 10. Firmin. 
 
 This primary document was not printed till 1708. 
 Meanwhile the term Unitarian had obtained currency 
 through the pious zeal of Thomas Firmin (1632-1697), 
 a main promoter of the J/nit arian Tracts._ Firmin, the 
 philanthropic mercer, was (though a comparatively illiterate 
 man) the confidential friend of all the liberal-minded 
 clergy of his day. John Tillotson, D.D. (i 630-1 694)
 
 24 English Unitarian History 
 
 as Dean of Canterbury, left it to Firmin to find supplies 
 for his London lectureship, when he had to leave town. 
 Firmin had befriended Bidle, and had got him a pen- 
 sion from Cromwell : it was from Bidle that he learned 
 to distrust mere almsgiving, and to attack the causes of 
 social distress by economic effort. Bidle made him 
 permanently heterodox in the article of the Trinity. For 
 a time he adopted Bidle's general type of opinion, 
 including that literally anthropomorphic view of the 
 Divine Being which was then current among Socinians, 
 and was shared with them by Milton. Firmin, however, 
 became a Sabellian under the influence of Stephen Nye 
 (164.8-1719), a Hertfordshire clergyman, grandson of 
 Philip Nye (1596-1672), the Independent. 
 
 The first appearance of the name Unitarian in 
 English print is in 1687, in the (anonymous)^ZJL^^ito^i' 
 of the_l/nitarians^call ed also StK wiatts. written by N}'e, 
 at~TirmiiTrs request. Here Unitarian is introduced as a 
 broad generic term for all who own the Unipersonality of 
 the vSupreme Being ; it is affirmed that ' both parties 
 (Socinians and Arians) are called Unitarians.' So, in the 
 Arts of Great Athanasius. 1690, the reader is invited to 
 distinguish betw'een Arian Unitarians, Bidellian Uni- 
 tarians, and Socinian Unitarians. The name was at 
 once adopted by William Freke (i 662-1 744), an Arian, 
 whose first pamphlet was burned by the hangman, and 
 its author fined and made to recant on 19th May 1694; 
 and by Henry Hedworth, a life-long disciple of Bidle. 
 Firmin never left the communion of the Established 
 Church, interpreting its formularies in a Sabellian sense. 
 At the close of his life, he formed a project of ' Unitarian 
 Congregations," which, however, were not to be separatist 
 meetings, but ' Fraternities in the Church.' There was 
 no idea of excluding the worship of Christ; for as Bidle 
 worshipped Christ in a Socinian sense, so did Firmin in 
 a Sabellian ; and so, later, in an Arian sense, did Thomas 
 Emlyn (i 663-1 741), who published (1706) a Vind ijat'-Qn
 
 English Unitarian History 25 
 
 0/i_the_Wi2jiship m/ the Lor d fesus Christ on Unitar ian 
 
 Principles^ 
 
 [Wallace and Diet. Nat. Biog. for Emlyn, Firmin, Freke and Nye ; ChriH- 
 tian Llje, 'iOth August 1892, for Hedworth ; I7th Septeniberl8!)2, for Kreke.] 
 
 11. Consequences of the Toleration Act. 
 
 The date (1687) of the appearance of the Unitarian 
 name in English literature marks the brief period during 
 which, by an act of arbitrary power, the profession of 
 Unitarian doctrine was freed from penalty. For it was 
 the year of James II. "s successive declarations (January, 
 1 8th March, and 4th April) for liberty of conscience 'to 
 all persons of what persuasion soever' (Calamy). By 
 the Toleration Act 124th May 1689), those who denied 
 tK Trinity (in preaching or writing) were, with Roman 
 Catholics, excluded from protection. This exclusion 
 had three consequences, which it may be well to 
 enumerate here, at the risk of some anticipation. 
 
 (a) Denied a natural expression and driven inward, 
 the spirit of the excluded sects became a virus, taking 
 morbid forms. Sup£ressed Romanism permeated the 
 Establishment as a staghahf sacerdotalism. Suppressed 
 Unitarianism turned to a hard and scornful deism. 
 Thomas Cliuhb (i 679-1 747) was an untaught genius, 
 who ' appears to have been a good deal read in America.' 
 He began as a high Arian and ended as a modified 
 Deist. He could not legally open a meeting for worship; 
 he started a club for religious discussion. Such clubs 
 were not uncommon ; they did not contravene the 
 Toleration Act ; and the enforced substitution of debate 
 for devotion had its natural consequences. We may 
 trace the same process in the history of other English 
 Deists. 
 
 (b) Chubb was all his life a conformist. The tempta- 
 tion to heretical conformity was strong, since there was 
 no legal freedom to be gained by going into Dissent,
 
 26 English Unitarian History 
 
 and the prosecution of an untolerated dissenter was a 
 much simpler matter than the arraignment of a con- 
 formist, however heretical. Emlyn was suffered to gather 
 a little congregation in London, at Cutlers' Hall (1705 to 
 about 171 1); but he 'never once' preached his Uni- 
 tarianism ; his theological tracts were anonymous ; and 
 the severity of his Dublin sentence (1703) had raised a 
 scandal which no one was anxious to repeat. 
 
 (c) Emlyn, while the first minister who publicly took 
 the Unitarian name, yet described himself as ' a true 
 Scriptural Trinitarian' (1708). Samuel Clarke, D.D. 
 (1675-1729), followed him by entitling his epoch-making 
 book The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (17 12). 
 The bona fides oi both" men was above suspicion. But 
 their example bred a fashion which tended to become 
 evasive. To avoid an open conflict with the Anglican 
 articles (the standard of belief for all Protestants under 
 the Toleration Act), some men were tempted, first, to 
 stretch a point, and, having gone as far as they could, 
 then to maintain that a piebald theology had th's double 
 merit, it was as white as human reason required, yet as 
 dark as the authorities could reasonably demand, thus 
 being a fair scriptural black. Some who had previously 
 adopted the Unitarian name, now avoided it. Stephen 
 Nye, the first publisher of the Unitarian name, dissociated 
 himself from it after Firmin's death, and in his later 
 publications took the line of attacking (from a practically 
 Sabellian standpoint) the Arianising positions of Clarke. 
 
 [For the Deists, see 3ualls_£6^3i2vpt(« Thought in Eiiglcmd, 1S70-3.] 
 
 12. Union of Dissent. 
 
 Immediately after the passing of the Toleration Act, 
 the Presbyterians and Congregationals established (1689) 
 a common Fund in the interest of Dissent. Already 
 they had instituted a common Lecture, supported by the 
 London merchants, at Pinners' Hall, on the Indulgence
 
 English Unilaria7i History 27 
 
 of 1672. They now agreed to form a united body, 
 dropping their distinctive names ; it was, however, a 
 coalition of clergy, not a confederation of churches. 
 This Union, begun in London in 1690, extended to the 
 country, where it endured and spread, though in London 
 it soon dissolved. The London rupture occurred in this 
 way. Among the Congregationals there were much wider 
 extremes of opinion than among the Presbyterians, who 
 maintained a steadier consensus of doctrine. The 
 extreme which first frightened the London Presbyterians 
 was Antinomianism. On the publication (1690) of the 
 posthumous works of Tobias Crisp, D.D. (i 600-1 643), 
 they were attacked as Antinomian by Daniel Williams, 
 D.D. (1644-17 1 6), in his Gos^^l Truth (1691). In 
 return, very reckless charges of Socinianism were hurled 
 at Williams, whose orthodoxy was vouched for by 
 Edward Stillingfleet, D.D. (i 635-1699), and by Jonathan 
 Edwards, D.D. (1642-1712), the antagonist of Arminians 
 and Socinians. But angry feelings were aroused ; the 
 Congregationals started a new Fund (1693); the 
 merchants dismissed Williams from his lecture, and 
 the Presbyterians started a new lectureship, at Salters' 
 Hall (1694). The upshot was that, in the working of the 
 now divided Fund, the Presbyterian Fund favoured 
 ministers of moderate views, while the Congregational 
 Fund gave support to extreme men. Hence, later in the 
 century, when the old names were resumed, they were 
 applied to congregations, irrespective of their history, 
 according to the Fund with which they were connected. 
 We may almost say that the names exchanged iheir 
 theological significations. Towards the end of the 
 century, Presbyterian meant simply latitude, Congrega- 
 tional or Independent meant doctrinal consensus. This 
 is the precarious ground on which Unitarians claim an 
 English Presbyterian ancestry, though at least half of the 
 old Presbyterian chapels (those of the period 1690-17 10) 
 are now in the hands of Congregationalists, and many of
 
 2 8 English Unitarian History 
 
 the older Unitarian chapels were erected by Congrega- 
 tionals. To-day the Presbyterian name is little more 
 than a London court-dress, in which Unitarians, since 
 1836, have enjoyed a privilege of separate access to the 
 throne ; and an expression of the undogmatic principle. 
 
 [See further on the Union, in appended lecture on Baxter.] 
 
 13. Unitarianism amoDg Congregationals. 
 
 At ihe other extreme from Antinomianism there was 
 a certain amount of Unitarianism among the Congrega- 
 tionals. Of this, a remarkable instance is exhibited in 
 William Manning (1630-1711), who had been ejected 
 from a Suffolk living by the Uniformity Act (1662), and 
 had established an Independent congregation at Peasen- 
 hall. Manning seems to be the only instance of an 
 Ejected Minister who adopted Antitrinitarian views. He 
 became a Socinian in 1690, by reading, with Emlyn, the 
 Vindication (1690) of the Trinity, by William Sherlock, 
 D.D. ( 1 641-1707). He carried a part of his congrega- 
 tion with him, and tried to convert his friend Emlyn, 
 Avhom Sherlock's book had made an Arian. The so- 
 called Socinian controversy practically ends in 1708. with 
 the pacinian Controversy Discuss ed, by Charles Leslie 
 (1650-1722). Clarke's book (171 2) marks the beginning 
 of the so-called Arian controversy ; for Emlyn's case, 
 originating in Ireland, interested the public rather as a 
 piece of persecution than as a burning question of 
 theology. 
 
 [See Wallace, Antitrin. Biog. ; and, for Manning, Diet. Xat. Biog.] 
 
 14. Clarke. 
 
 Clarke's theology, semi-Arian at the furthest, was 
 much more conservative than Emlyn's ; and his temper,
 
 English Unitanaj! History 29 
 
 like that of his friend, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), 
 who is believed to have gone beyond him in heresy, was 
 extremely cautious. Yet Clarke, in effect, did more than 
 Emlyn to determine the future of Unitarianism ; and this 
 because his opinions conflicted with the forms of worship 
 prescribed to him as an Anglican. In Clarke's view, 
 Christ possessed every divine attribute, excepting self- 
 existence. The test question was put to him in 1719 by 
 the Roman Catholic disputant, Edward Hawarden, D.D. 
 (1662-1735): 'Can the Father annihilate the Son and 
 the Holy Ghost.' ' Clarke hesitated, and made no reply. 
 Neither he nor William Whiston (1667- 175 2), who lost 
 his Cambridge chair for Arianism (17 10), and ultimately 
 joined the Baptists, wished to abrogate the worship of 
 Christ, but they sought to minimise it. Hence their 
 opponents confronted them with this dilemma: either 
 they broke the first commandment by a trilheism, or the 
 second by an idolatry. 
 
 Whiston and Clarke tried their hands at purging the 
 established forms to suit their views. Their example 
 was extensively followed, not only in a long series of 
 published drafts of revised forms (those of John Jones 
 (1700-1770), of Alconbury, being the most notable), but 
 even in the public conduct of the services by heretical 
 clergy, whose excisions were ignored by easy-going 
 bishops. 
 
 After the publication of TheCase of Arian Sub- 
 scripjion (172 1), by Daniel WaterlanS7 D.D. (1683- 
 1740), a few, with Clarke and John Jackson (1686- 
 1763), declined preferments which involved a renewal of 
 subscription. But a sophistical subscription became 
 deplorably common, on the principles of Benjamin 
 Hoadly, D.D. (1676-1 761), the great latitudinarian 
 bishop and ' idol of the Whigs." 
 
 [For Newton see Wallace, Antitrin. Bio<j. ; for Clarke, Hoadly, Jackson, 
 and Jones, Diet. Nat. Bio(j. \
 
 JO English Unitarian History 
 
 15. Baptists, Friends, and Huguenots. 
 
 Unitarian heresy among Dissenters, under the 
 Toleration Act, was in no conflict with forms of worship 
 established by law ; and the popular election of ministers 
 ^ave it local continuance. Yet it was not more widely 
 diffused than in the Establishment, nor did it begin to 
 spread so early. Exception must be made in the case of 
 (a) the Baptists and (b) the F'riends, but the proceedings 
 of these bodies attracted little attention outside tneir own 
 borders. 
 
 (a) In 1700, the General Baptist Assembly, in the 
 case of Matthew Cafiyn (1628-17 14), issued the first 
 formal endorsement of latitudinarian opinions in the 
 article of the Trinity, made by any tolerated section of 
 English Dissent. It led to a split; but the split was 
 healed in 1704, and both parties were in amicable com- 
 munion till 1770, when the New Connexion was formed 
 by Dan Taylor (173 8-1 816). The only London pulpit 
 opened to Emlyn, excepting his own, was that of a 
 General Baptist church. 
 
 Edward Elwall (i 676-1 744), a Sabbatarian Baptist, 
 was a Unitarian of somewhat Judaic type. He was 
 arraigned for blasphemy (1726), but discharged on a 
 technicality. 
 
 (h) Sabellian views were common among Friends from 
 the first. Both by George Fox (1624-1691) and by Robert 
 Barclay (i 648-1 690) the term Trinity was discarded, as 
 M^thout Scripture warrant. Among Friends' writings, the 
 posthumous tracts (1726) of Richard Claridge (1648- 
 1723) on the Trinity and Atonement merit special notice 
 for their ability and learning. They were edited by 
 Joseph Besse (i 683-1 757), the Quaker historian, and 
 were symptomatic of a strong current of opinion adverse 
 to the doctrines impugned. 
 
 A further exception may be found in the case of 
 the Huguenot congregations, French and Walloons
 
 English Lhiiiarian History 31 
 
 (i.e., French-speaking Flemings). These were not under 
 the Toleration Act, having special terms and conditions 
 of privilege. But at Canterbury, in 1695, a body of 
 Socinian seceders, headed by Jacques Rondeau, formed 
 a separate congregation, which, in 1697, came under the 
 Toleration Act, took the name of the French Uniform 
 Church, and existed till 1745. 
 
 [For Caffyn see Diet. Nat. Biog., and Chriiitian Life, 6th Nov. 1892 ; for 
 Elwall, Diet. Nat. Biog. For early Friends see Storrs Turner, The Qualeers, 
 1889 ; for Barclay's theology see Theological Revieiv, July IST."). For 
 Huguenots see Monthly Repository, 1810, p. 241.] 
 
 16. Baxter and Locke. 
 
 Most potent among the influential forces which 
 tended to the progressive liberalising of the old Dissent 
 were the writings of Baxter and Locke. Richard Baxter 
 (161 5-1 691) had often been a marplot to schemes of 
 accommodation, through over-subtlety of conscientious 
 scruple ; but he had furnished (in his Worcestershire 
 Agreement of 1652, a movement against Presbyterianism) 
 the model for the clerical unions of Dissent ; and his 
 posthumous autobiography (1696), popularised by 
 Edmund Calamy, D.D. (i 671-173 2), in his A bridgmenj 
 (1702; second edition, 1713), included a noble confes- 
 sion of the need for a comprehensive charity. 
 
 John Locke (1632-1704), if we estimate him by his 
 
 1 ^rincii)l<js (to say nothing of his specific opinions, which 
 
 ^were not fully known as Antitrinitarian till the publication 
 
 ^oT extracts from his common-place book in 1829), may 
 
 pass for the Socinus of his age. There was the same 
 
 lay disengagement from scholasticism, the same purpose 
 
 ot toleration tempered by prudence, the same interest in 
 
 the minimising of essentials, and the same recurrence to 
 
 Scripture, interpreted (that is to say, rationalised) by 
 
 common sense rather than by profound exegesis. 
 
 Locke's Rea so7iableness of Christianity as delivered in 
 ' the Scriptures (1695) owes more than its title to Baxter's
 
 32 English Unitarian Hist or v 
 
 Reasons for the Christian Religion (1667); but in 
 cutting down fundamentals (as Baxter would not have 
 done) to the acknowledgment of the Messiahship of 
 Jesus, Locke follows in the track of the ^viathanl 1 6=; i ) 
 by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who was more of a 
 Socinian than Locke. This simplification of the Christian 
 basis, adopted from Locke, was accepted with avidity by 
 liberal Dissenters ; its central thesis retained with them, 
 up to a very recent period, the position of an undisputed 
 axiom. 
 
 Locke's posthumous para phrases of St. Paul (1705- 
 1707) became the fountain head of that older school of 
 Unitarian hermeneutics, which produced the widely 
 known Paraphrase and Key (1745) to the Epistle to the 
 Romans by John Taylor, D.D. (i 694-1 761), and cul- 
 minated in the Jmproxed I'ersiou of the New Testament 
 (1808), and the arinotated translation of St. Paul's 
 Epistles (1822), by Thomas Belsham (1750-1829). 
 
 [On Locke see Wallace, Antitnn. Biog. ; and on Hobbes consult Hunt, 
 Religious Thought in England.] 
 
 17. Salters' Hall. 
 
 The effect of Clarke's book (17 12) became visible 
 among the Presbyterians in 1717. In that year the Exeter 
 Assembly (a clerical union formed in 1 691, on the Lon- 
 don model) censured the licensers of Hubert Stogdon 
 (1692-1723), whose Arianism was suspected, and who 
 ultimately became a Baptist. Luke Langdon, a candi- 
 date for a London charge, was rejected (17 17) as an 
 Arian. A part of the congregation seceded in his favour, 
 but he left the ministry. In 17 18, Martin Tomkins 
 (1682-1755), minister of Stoke Newington, was dis- 
 missed for Arianism. Tomkins was sound on the 
 Atonement; his tract (1732) on this topic won the praise 
 of Doddridge. In this he did but follow Clarke, whose
 
 English Unitarian History 33 
 
 sermons were commended by Dr. Johnson on his death- 
 bed as ' fullest on the propitiatory sacrifice.' 
 
 Meanwhile Exeter was aflame with the controversy 
 on the alleged Clarkean heresies of James Peirce 
 (1673-1726) and his colleague, Joseph Hallett (1656- 
 1722). The matter came for advice before a meeting 
 of the three denominations (Presbyterian, Congregational, 
 Baptist) at Salters' Hall, London, in March, 1719. The 
 meeting divided on the question whether they should 
 first subscribe to prove their orthodoxy, or first give their 
 advice and then declare their orthodoxy. The majority 
 resolved on the latter course ; the minority seceded and 
 acted apart. The leader of the Subscribers was Thomas 
 Bradbury (1677- 17 59), a Congregational ; the leader of 
 the Nonsubscribers was John Harrington Shute (1678- 
 1734), afterwards Viscount Barrington, also a Congrega- 
 tional, and a member of Bradbury's church. Peirce 
 himself was a Congregational, he had been a member (as 
 also was Bradbury) of the Stepney church ; his view of 
 ordination, though not Congregational, ran no higher 
 than was allowed by the terms of the London Union. 
 Among the Subscribers were most of the older Presby- 
 terians, including a majority of Dr. Williams' Trustees, 
 four of whom, William Tong (i 662-1 727), Thomas 
 Reynolds (1667-1727), Jeremiah Smith (1654-1723), 
 and Benjamin Robinson (1666- 1724), helped Bradbury 
 bv issuing a whip in the Subscribing interest. Among 
 the Nonsubscribers were, with the exception of Thomas 
 Ridgley, D.D. (i 667-1 734), the ablest of the Congrega- 
 tionals, viz., Moses Lowman (1680-1752), Jeremiah 
 Hunt, D.D. (i 678-1 744), Nathaniel Lardner, D.D. 
 (1684-1768), and David Jennings, D.D. (1691-1762). 
 Among them were also most of the younger Presby- 
 terians, several of whom soon conformed, while others 
 left the ministry altogether. 
 
 Sir Joseph Jekyll (i 663-1 738) is credited (by 
 Whiston) with the smart saying that ' the Bible carried it 
 
 c
 
 34 English Unitarian History 
 
 by four,' a witticism which does not state the case very 
 fully. Those who signed the Advices with the Non- 
 subscribers were seventy-three (including forty-eight 
 Presbyterians and eight Congregationals) ; those who 
 signed them with the Subscribers were sixty-one (in- 
 cluding twenty-three Presbyterians and twenty-five Con- 
 gregationals.) But the actual Subscribers, including 
 those who did not sign the Advices at all, were seventy- 
 seven (including thirty-one Presbyterians and thirty-one 
 Congregationals). Moreover, the Nonsubscribers sent a 
 letter with their Advices, in which they said they ' utterly 
 disown the Arian doctrine, and sincerely believe the 
 doctrine of the blessed Trinity and the proper divinity of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ.' 
 
 The Advices from both parties were practically 
 identical in terms, having indeed been drafted by 
 Barrington before the meeting. They lay down two 
 propositions, remarkable as summarising the most 
 absolute Independency ; first, there are doctrinal errors 
 which justify a congregation in renouncing a minister ; 
 second, each congregation is to decide for itself what 
 these errors are. 
 
 The Salters' Hall decision (in which the dispute as to 
 subscription is a mere episode, however significant) is 
 viewed by Unitarians as the charter of their liberties; 
 and properly so, for while it permitted a Trinitarian 
 congregation to get rid of an Arian minister, it allowed a 
 Unitarian congregation to exercise a like right. 
 
 Peirce and Hallett's Mint Meeting at Exeter, opened 
 1 7 19, was the first place of worship erected for divines of 
 the Clarkean school ; it was ranked as Presbyterian in 
 the Fund lists, but Peirce declined any name save 
 Christian. On his death a call was given to Emlyn, 
 which he was too infirm to accept. The minister of 
 Mint Meeting was admitted to the Exeter Assembly in 
 1753, when the doctrine of the Trinity was made an open 
 question. 
 
 [For Salters' Hall see Did. Nat. Biog., under Bradbury aud Peirce.]
 
 English Unitariaii History 35 
 
 18. The Liberal Laity. 
 
 It would be a mistake, in tracing the development of 
 opinion, to think only of the theological disputes of the 
 clergy. The liberal Dissenting laity were more deeply 
 interested in questions of religious liberty than in any 
 dogmatics. For them were written the Occasional Papers^ 
 (171 6-1 7 19), of which the keynote was struck by 
 Benjamin Grosvenor, D.D. (i 676-1 758), in the opening 
 paper on Bigotry. They read the J_ad£p£Jidait Whig 
 (from 1 7 19), and the collection of articles by Thomas 
 Gordon (d. 1750) reprinted from it under the title The . 
 Pillars of Priestcraft and Orthodoxy Shaken (1752). 
 A~TavoTiritelAaTfer with them was Edmund Hickeringill 
 ( 1 631-1708), an eccentric person, who had wandered 
 from sect to sect during the Commonwealth, settling 
 down as an Anglican clergyman at the Restoration, and 
 who condensed religion and duty into the following 
 rhymes : 
 
 By the liturgy learn to pray ; 
 So pray and praise God every daj'. 
 The Apostles' Creed believe also ; 
 Do as you would be done unto. 
 Sacraments take as well as you can ; 
 This is the whole duty of man. 
 
 From Hickeringill's History of Priestcraft (i 705-1 706, 
 re-issued 172 1), and from the writings of the Deists, they 
 learned something of a biblical criticism, smart if crude, 
 which charged the Bible with errors, and prepared the 
 way for a revision of the foundations. 
 
 {Bict. Nat. Biog. for Gordon, Grosvenor and Hickeringill.] 
 
 19. Dissenting Academies; Grove and Doddridge. 
 
 The Dissenting academies began as early as 1670, 
 with the Northern Academy for ' university learning,' 
 maintained by Kichard Frankland, M.A. (i 630-1 698), 
 from whom Manchester College derives its lineage. Start- 
 
 c 2
 
 36 English Unitarian History 
 
 ing two years before the. united lectureship of 1672, and 
 twenty years before the formal unions of Presbyterian 
 and Congregational divines, Frankland, himself a theo- 
 retical Presbyterian, from the first received candidates 
 for the Independent ministry, and Anglican laymen, 
 among the alumni of his hospitable academy. His 
 motto, ' Libera terra, liberque animus,' has ever been the 
 watchword of the best Nonconformist training. In the 
 last century, these academies, excellent nurseries of 
 liberal investigation, philosophic theology, and biblical 
 scholarship, equipped the ministry to meet the scepticism 
 of the age with defensive argument and defensive exegesis. 
 
 Henry Grove (1684-1738) and Philip Doddridge, 
 D.D. (1702-1751), did better. Grove, in his chair at 
 Taunton Academy (from 1706), made a very deep mark on 
 the ministry of the so-called Presbyterian dissent. He 
 taught no heresies ; but he illuminated the ethical side of 
 Christianity, and placed its ' reasonableness ' in the 
 suasiveness of its perfect moral purity. 
 
 Doddridge supplied the unifying element in the con- 
 troversies of his time, as Edmund Calamy, D.D. (1671- 
 1732), had endeavoured to do, in the generation pre- 
 ceding. Trinitarian as he was, with a Sabellian tinge, he 
 had a constant strife with ' orthodoxy ' ; he is the first to 
 use that term as a by-word. He upheld the evangelical 
 standing of Peirce ; and, in another case, declared that 
 he would ' lose his place, and even his life,' sooner than 
 excommunicate ' a real Christian ' for Arian proclivities. 
 Separation into congregations of diverse sentiments he 
 thought suicidal ; and held that bigotry ' may be 
 attacked by sap, more successfully than by storm.' His 
 academy (from 1729) furnished, not perhaps the most 
 learned, but some of the most catholic-minded and 
 efficient of the liberal Dissenting clergy. 
 
 Among them was Hugh Farmer (17 14-1787) the 
 Independent, whose Dissertation on Miracles (1771) was 
 long the evidential textbook of rational Dissenters. As
 
 English Unitariati History 37 
 
 the champion of the divine sovereignty, he first definitely 
 excluded from the physical world the operation of any 
 other invisible agents. Proclaiming the fixity of natural 
 law, he relied on the divine action for the production of 
 'new phaenomena ' to modify the fatalistic appearance of 
 fixed laws. 
 
 [See Diet. Nat. Bio(j. for Franklanil, Grove, Doddridge and Farmer.] 
 
 20. John Taylor. 
 
 On theological questions distinct from that of the 
 Trinity, a decisive influence was exerted by John Taylor, 
 D.D. (1694-1761J, through his treatises on Qriginal S in^ 
 (1740) and \.\\Q_A jo7ieme7i i (175 1). Between these dates 
 appeared the kindred Essay o fi Sac rifices (1748), pub- 
 lished anonymously by Arthur Ashley Sykes (1684- 
 1756), an Anglican disciple of Hoadly. 
 
 Taylor did not start the ' new light ' on these topics, 
 but he brought it to a focus. His books roused theologi- 
 cal opinion throughout the British Isles. Robert Burns 
 commemorates his influence in Scotland. In Ireland, 
 a worthy minister begged that none of his hearers would 
 read his book on original sin ; ' for it is a bad book, and 
 a dangerous book, and an heretical book ; and, what is 
 worse than all, the book is unanswerable.' Taylor's 
 Hgbrew C oacordanc^ (i 7 54-1? 57) gave him a European 
 repute. He was unquestionably the foremost theologian 
 of the Arian school, and though his tenure of the divinity 
 chair at Warrington Academy (from 1757) was brief, it 
 was remarkable for his insistance upon the freedom of 
 inquiry. Like Peirce he discarded every denominational 
 name except Christian. 
 
 [For Taylor see Turner's Lives of Eminent Unitarian^.] 
 
 21. Humanitarians. 
 
 Pioneers of the doctrine of the simple humanity of 
 Christ were Caleh Fleming, D.D. (i 698-1779), and
 
 38 English Unitarian History 
 
 Nathaniel Lardner, D.D. (i 684-1 768), both of them 
 lifelong Independents. Fleming preached the doctrine 
 during his whole ministry (from 1740). At his ordination 
 he declined to make any fuller confession of faith than 
 this, that he believed the New Testament contained a 
 ' revelation worthy of God to give and of man to receive,' 
 and that he would teach it as he should ' from time to 
 time ' understand it. Lardner refused ordination, being 
 unwilling to undergo theological examination, and there- 
 fore never held pastoral office. He became a humani- 
 tarian in 1730, but did not preach this doctrine till 1747, 
 nor publish it till 1759 (^^"^ \hQx\. anonymously), in a 
 ZsLtjIiL-Mli th£_ Lpgos^-wx'xVitn in 1730 to ' Papinian,' i.e., 
 Viscount Barrington. Lardner's judgment naturally 
 carried weight, both from the immense patristic know- 
 ledge apparent in his Credibility of the _Jxi2sj>e.l. History 
 1727-1757), and from the prevailingly conservative lean- 
 ing of his cautious conclusions. Lardner affirmed, from 
 inspection of his papers, that Isaac Watts, D.D. (1674- 
 1748), was, in his last thoughts, of the same opinion. 
 
 Of Presbyterian writers belonging to this school, the 
 most important was Paul Cardale (1705-177 5), of 
 Evesham, whose anonymous Jjne Doctrine of the J Slew 
 Testarnent_joncer7iing jfesiis Christ (1767) was very 
 influential in the Midlands, where consequently the 
 humanitarian doctrine took root earlier than in other 
 parts of the country. John Seddon (17 19-1769), of 
 Manchester, advocated the doctrine in sermons preached 
 in May-July 1761, but not published till 1793. Priestley 
 tells us that his brethren in the ministry ' all wondered at 
 him.' 
 
 A fascinating and influential book by an Anglican , 
 layman, the -Li^ht ofj Nature (i 765-1 768), by Abraham 
 TCucker (1705-1774), belongs essentially to this school of i 
 Christology. 
 
 The last of the erudite Clarkeans was Henry Taylor 
 (d. 1785), vicar of Portsmouth, author of The Apology of
 
 English Unitarian History 39 
 
 Benjamin Bpi Mordecai (1771-1777); he abandoned 
 the vicarious atonement. 
 
 [See Diet. Nat. Bioij. for Fleinins', Lanliier and Cardale.] 
 
 22. Wesley. 
 
 Meanwhile England was experiencing the stirrings of 
 a new religious life, under the missionary zeal of John 
 Wesley (i 703-1 791). If the Methodist movement was 
 disastrous to many of the staid and sleepy congregations 
 of liberal Dissent, that was not Wesley's fault. A Non- 
 conformist on both sides of his ancestry, Wesley never 
 had any quarrel with Dissenters, as such, and least of all 
 with Dissenters who had anticipated him in his protest 
 against Calvinism. He wrote of Serveto as ' a good and 
 holy man,' of Firmin as ' truly pious ' ; and he bade his 
 converts not desert an Arian ministry for a Calvinistic, 
 since good works are good things, and, for the rest, chaff 
 is better than poison. It had been well if the liberal 
 Dissenters had caught from Wesley some of his enthusiasm. 
 Strange to say, when Theophilus Lindsey, M.A. (1723- 
 1808), full of his new Unitarian gospel, gave himself to 
 his parish work at Catterick with fresh fervour and 
 fidelity, his people said that he had turned Methodist. 
 They meant that the man was alive, that the love of souls 
 had awaked within him. Be it never forgotten that 
 Lindsey at Catterick was a pioneer (1764) of the Sunday 
 school movement, on its purely religious side. 
 
 23. Priestley. 
 
 The hinge between this period and the next is Joseph 
 Priestley, LL.D. (1733-1804). The history of his mind 
 carries us step by step from Calvinism to a type of 
 Unitarianism which is marvellous for its frank freedom 
 from prepossession. Starting in life as an Independent, 
 by 175 1 he was an Arminian, by 1754 an Arian and a
 
 40 English LhiitariaJi Hisiorv 
 
 determinist; before 1758 he had rejected the ideas of 
 atonement, of inspired books, and of any immediate 
 action of God upon the human mind; by 1768, Lardner's 
 Letter had convinced him of the simple humanity of 
 Christ; in 1784 he startled his friend Lindsey by reject- 
 ing the Virgin birth, and by maintaining that Christ was 
 neither impeccable nor infallible, and in particular that 
 Christ was under illusion respecting demoniacal posses- 
 sion, and had misconceived the import of some of the 
 prophecies. He still, and always, held resolutely to the 
 reality of miracles and their evidential value, especially to 
 the physical fact of the resurrection; and he expected 
 Christ's second coming. 
 
 His best and most original work was done in the 
 history of doctrine. His Hislnry of Early Opinions 
 coticerning Jesus Christ (1786), the fruit of his con- 
 troversy with Samuel Horsley, LL.D. (1733-1805), was 
 an endeavour to fix the meaning of the New Testament 
 by ascertaining what it meant to the age for which it was 
 written. The end of his investigation was not a mere 
 acquaintance with the speculations of the Fathers ; he 
 sought, through their writings, to penetrate to the un- 
 sophisticated mind of the common Christian people. 
 Thus, while Christopher Sand (i 644-1 680), in his 
 Nucleus Historice Ecclesiasticce (1669) had ransacked the 
 Ante-Nicene period for the footprints of Arianism among 
 the learned, Priestley pursued the same track in search 
 of the vestiges of a primitive humanitarian Christology. 
 
 It should be noted, as some have treated his heresies 
 as the outcome of a mind warped by attention to science, 
 that his first chemical experiments were not made till he 
 became a Socinian. 
 
 I^riestley frankly called himself a Socinian; he did 
 not originally project the formation of a Unitarian sect, 
 and, left to himself, might have preferred for Unitarians 
 the position of a liberal leaven in the churches. He 
 criticised the application to Parliament which resulted
 
 English Unitarian History 41 
 
 (1779) in the erasure from the Toleration Act of the 
 subscription to the Anghcan articles. lie thought a 
 subscription no longer enforced was better than the new 
 declaration (of belief that the Scriptures contain the 
 revealed will of God), which might be pressed in the 
 interests of intolerance. He advised Lindsey not to resign 
 his living, but to alter the liturgy, as several clergymen 
 did (<f.^., William Chambers, D.D., d. 1777), and wait till 
 he was ejected, which he thought unlikely. But when 
 Lindsey (on the failure of the attempt, Feb. 1772, to 
 obtain a relaxation of Anglican subscription) embarked 
 on his new enterprise, Priestley acknowledged his ' better 
 judgment,' and entered warmly into his plans. 
 
 [See appended lecture 011 Priestley ; consult also his Memoirs (clieap 
 edition, 1893), the essay by Martineau (1833, reprinted 1890) and the addresses 
 by Professor Huxley (1874) and J. E. Thorpe (1874). For Horsley, Diet. Nat. 
 Biog.]
 
 PERIOD III. 
 
 24. Lindsey. 
 
 William Robertson, D.D. (1705-1783), had preceded 
 Lindsey by resigning his Irish preferments in 1764; and 
 to Robertson, with characteristic modesty, Lindsey always 
 referred as 'the father of Unitarian nonconformity.' He 
 did not re-enter the ministry, and Lindsey was himself 
 the father of Unitarian churchmanship. 
 
 The moral effect of Lindsey's resignation of Catterick 
 (1773) was exceedingly great. Job Orton (1717-1783) 
 the Independent, an old-fashioned liberal evangelical, 
 quite out of touch with the Priestley school, wrote with 
 enthusiasm of Lindsey as ' a glorious character ' ; and, 
 while disclaiming sympathy with his opinions, declared 
 that, were he publishing an account of the Ejected 
 Ministers, he would add Lindsey to the list, 'if I brought 
 him in by head and shoulders.' 
 
 On Sunday, 17th April 1774, Lindsey opened the 
 first Unitarian Chapel, in Essex Street, London. It was 
 a room holding three hundred people, and nearly two 
 hundred were present. Benjamin Franklin (i 706-1 790) 
 y was there, with Priestley and other distinguished people 
 (including a lord), the majority being members of the 
 established church. The service-book was reformed on 
 the basis of Clarke's revision ; it retained (till 1793) ^^^
 
 English Ciiiiarian History 43 
 
 Apostles' Creed. This service-book was the pivot of 
 Lindsey's plan. 
 
 First, his object was to set up a distinctively Unitarian 
 worship ; and by Unitarian in this connection he under- 
 stood a worship expressly limited to God the Father. 
 He was apparently the very first to confine the term 
 Unitarian to this use, as he was also the first to deny 
 that in Scripture the term God is in any sense applied to 
 Christ. Guaranteeing that the worship should be thus 
 Unitarian, he disclaimed the intention ' ever to treat of 
 controversial matters ' from the pulpit, and it was with 
 some difficulty that his friends overcame his reluctance to 
 deviate from his plan of purely practical discourses. 
 
 Secondly, his hope was to initiate a Unitarian seces- 
 sion from the Established Church. He had no wish to 
 amalgamate with existing Dissent ; hence, though he 
 doifed his surplice, he retamed the structure and, as 
 far as possible, the details of Anglican worship. His 
 idea, in short, was to exhibit the model of a reformed 
 English Church. Thus his aim differed from that of 
 previous liturgical experiments among Dissenters ; of 
 which the Liverpool Octagon (i 763-1 776) furnishes the 
 most conspicuous example. Lindsey's expectation was 
 but poorly fulfilled. There was indeed a considerable 
 secession of Cambridge men ; including, among others, 
 John Jebb, M.D. (1736-17S6), Gilbert Wakefield (1756- 
 1801), Edward Evanson (1731-1805), and "William 
 Frend (1757-1841). Their services to the movement 
 were of much controversial value; but only Thomas 
 Fyshe Palmer (1747-1802) founded a new congregation 
 (at Dundee, 1785); nor did any others devote themselves 
 to the Unitarian ministry, excepting John Disney, D.D. 
 (1746-1816), who became Lindsey's colleague and 
 successor ; and, at a later date, Theophilus Browne 
 (1763-1835). Lindsey opened (27th April 1791) a Uni- 
 tarian Chapel at Plymouth Dock. He had advanced 
 money towards its erection, but the scheme originated
 
 44 English Unitarian History 
 
 among Dissenters, the prayer-book was of local manu- 
 facture, and the first minister was John Kentish (1768- 
 1853), then a student fresh from Daventry. The Uni- 
 tarian ministry has never been without important recruits 
 from Trinitarian churches ; but they have rarely come 
 from the Establishment. 
 
 [For Lindsey consult, besides the 3feriwirs by Belsliam, 1812 (reprinted 
 1S74), the Autobiography of Catherine Cappe, 1822, Robert Collyer's Theophi- 
 lus Lindsey, and Miss Cooke's Lindsey and his Frieiuls. See also Diet. Nat. 
 Bioj. for Biowne, Disney, Evanson, Frend, Jebb, Kentish ; and Turners Lives 
 or Spears' Unitarian Worthies, for Fyshe Palmer, Robertson and Wake- 
 field.] 
 
 25. Restriction of the Unitarian Name. 
 
 The new restriction of the term Unitarian, to a 
 devotional sense, contributed to the isolation of Lindsey's 
 movement in more ways than one. The doctrine of the 
 simple humanity of Christ was proclaimed as the only 
 true Unitarian Christology. An inclusive term, con- 
 noting, since its introduction in 1682, all believers in the 
 Unipersonality of the Godhead, was pressed in 1774 as 
 a sectional name. 
 
 Arians complained that it was sought to rob them of 
 a title to which they had rendered distinction, and which 
 had always been theirs. It was grudgingly allowed to 
 some of them, on proof that they did not worship Christ ; 
 the reluctance being the less called for, inasmuch as the 
 public worship of Christ by Arian Dissenters was at this 
 time almost unknown ; perhaps the last to retain it (at 
 the communion) was Micaijah Towgood (1700-179 2). 
 And Belsham allows the Unitarian name to Lindsey's 
 great convert, the Duke of Grafton (1735-18x1), who, 
 while restricting ' divine worship ' to the Father, yet held that 
 'Jesus Christ in his present state can hear and help us.' 
 
 Against Arianism, as against IVinitarianism, a contest 
 was waged, with equal aggressiveness and with better 
 opportunities. Liberal Dissent was weakened, quite as 
 much as the particular cause was advanced. It was
 
 English Unitariaji History 45 
 
 thought good policy to place a Unitarian Chapel of the 
 new sort in competition with a meeting-house, Unitarian 
 already, in the older sense. Of these efforts, the only one 
 that lived was Mosley Street (now Upper Brook Street), 
 Manchester (1789). 
 
 26. Belsham. 
 
 In 1788, Thomas Belsham (1750-1829) left the 
 Independents to join the movement, which secured a 
 divinity chair by his appointment (1789) as theological 
 tutor in the short-lived Hackney College (i 786-1 796). 
 He educated Charles Wellbeloved (1769-1858), who for 
 thirty-seven years (from 1803) was theological tutor at 
 Manchester College, York. Without the genius and the 
 transparent lucidity of Priestley, Belsham was a man of 
 massive powers and commanding style. Late in life (1821) 
 he took up a position well in advance of most of his co- 
 religionists, by rejecting the Mosaic account of creation 
 as irreconcilable with science. He had already (1807) 
 drawn attention to the composite character of the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 [See Williams' Menioirn of Belsham, also Spears' Unitarian Worthies, and 
 Diet. Nat. Biog.] 
 
 27. The Unitarian Societies. 
 
 ^^ J^arly in 1791 was founded the Unitarian Society for 
 \v^ Pjomoting Christian Knowledge, which followed the ' 
 lines of an earlier (17S3) society, without denominational 
 name. Belsham drew the preamble, meant to exclude 
 Arians and to stigmatise the worship of Christ as 
 'idolatrous.' Disney and Michael Dodson (1732-1799) 
 pleaded in vain for comprehension; Richard Price, D.D. 
 (1723-1791), the most distinguished' of London Arians, 
 -, sent in his guinea, saying that he could not allow a 
 Unitarian Society to exist without his name. But the 
 provincial Unitarian Societies pursued the exclusive
 
 46 English Unitarian History 
 
 policy, excepting the Southern Unitarian Society (1801), 
 founded by Joshua Toulmin, D.D. (1740-18 15), and 
 Robert Aspland (i 782-1 845), both Baptists. It took 
 Lant Carpenter, LL.D. (i 780-1 840J, twenty years (181 1- 
 1831)10 get 'idolatrous' and 'mere man' struck from 
 the preamble of the Western Unitarian Society, founded 
 by Timothy Kenrick (i 759-1 804); the 'exclusive 
 worship ' of the Father was still retained. 
 
 [See Lindsey's MetnoirH, Aspland's Memoirs, and Diet. Nat. Biog. for 
 Carpenter, Dodson, Kenrick and Price.] 
 
 28. Birmingham Riots. 
 
 On 14th July, 1 79 1, the Birmingham Riots began. 
 They were attended by the usual results of such persecu- 
 tion, great personal sympathy shown to the sufferers, and 
 much additional odium attached to their opinions. After 
 a sojourn at Hackney (1791-1794), where he succeeded 
 Price as co-pastor, Priestley withdrew to America, urged 
 by his spirited wife to try ' a fresh soil.' All his first-rate 
 work was now done ; but in Pennsylvania he crowned 
 his theology by adopting the belief in universal restoration. 
 
 [For the Birmingham Riots consult Priestley's Appeals to the Public, 1791 ; 
 and the Narrative by William Hutton, in his Life, 1816.] 
 
 29. Paine. 
 
 » In 1794 appeared the Age of Reason, by Thomas 
 Paine (i 737-1 809). This masculine treatise exercised 
 
 \i a deeper influence on the Unitarian laity than is generally 
 recognised. It is often said that Bishop Watson answered 
 it ; he seems not even to have read it ; he answered the 
 Secotid Part (1795), a different matter. The importance 
 of the Age of Reason was shown by the answers it 
 received from Unitarian scholars of the calibre of 
 Priestley, Wakefield and Thomas Dix Hincks, LL.D. 
 (1767-1857); its vogue, by the quantity of Unitarian 
 sermons of which it furnished the topic. Paine's later
 
 English Unitarian History 47 
 
 writings show that he was driven from some of his original 
 positions ; in..jLSo^- he ventured, on the expedient of 
 denying altogether the real existence of Jesus Christ. 
 
 "^ From this time, the pulpit had to meet doubts of the 
 miraculous origin of Christianity arising among the 
 Unitarian laity. The first, and long the solitary, instance 
 of the rejection of miracle by a Unitarian minister was in 
 1797, when Thomas Martin (y/. 1792-1814) resigned his 
 co-pastorship at Great Yarmouth, in a remarkable Letter. 
 Of lay publications in this sense, the earliest, and not the 
 least impressive, is Apehutherus (1799) by William 
 Sturch ( 1 753-1 838), an original member of Essex Street 
 congregation. 
 
 [For Paine see Bid. Nat. Biog.] 
 
 30. Periodicals. 
 
 Priestley had published a Theological Repository at 
 intervals between 1769 and 1788 ; and there was a mild 
 liberal organ, the Protestarit Dissenter's Magazitie (1794- 
 1799] ; but there was no regular Unitarian periodical till. 
 Robert Aspland, in 1806, established the Monthly 
 Itepository, on the cessation of a Universalist magazine, 
 exiled' (179 7- 1 805), under various titles, by William 
 Vidler (1758-18 16). Along with the Mo7ithly Reposi- 
 tory from 181 5, and as its Unitarian successor from 
 1834, Aspland also edited the Christian Reformer, ^\v\q\\ 
 was continued (i 845-1 863) by his son Robert Brook 
 Aspland (1805-1869). The Christian Pioneer (1826-4.'^) 
 and Christian Pilot (1849-51) were edited by George 
 Harris (i 794-1 859). Of later magazines, the most 
 important was the Prospective Review (1845-1854), 
 which was a continuation of the Christian Teacher 
 (183 5-1 844), and, under the joint editorship of John 
 James Tayler (i 797-1 869), Charles Wicksteed, B.A. 
 (1810-1885), James Martineau, D.D. (b. 1805), and 
 John Hamilton Thom (i 808-1 894), reached the high
 
 48 English Unitarian History 
 
 watermark of Unitarian journalism ; it had a successor in 
 the National Review (i 855-1 864). Next in importance 
 was the Theological Review (i 864-1 879), edited by 
 Charles Beard,*^ LL.D. (i 827-1 888). The Inquirer 
 newspaper was established in 1842; the Christian Life 
 in 1876; with the latter is incorporated the Unitarian 
 Herald (i 861-1889). 
 
 31. Unitarian Fund and Missions. 
 
 In 1806 was also established the Unitarian Fund, a 
 mission society, with Aspland as its secretary, and 
 Richard Wright (1764-1836) as its first itinerant 
 missionary, a man of real pith and popular power, who 
 carried Unitarian doctrine from Land's End to John 
 o'Groats, and stimulated lay preaching. 
 
 The missionary spirit, thus generated, was sustained 
 by the remarkable eloquence of George Harris (1794- 
 1859), whose best work was done in Scotland, where, 
 and in the north of England, his enthusiasm communi- 
 cated itself to those about him, many of them men of 
 subsequent mark in the ministry. 
 
 Outside the Unitarian body, parallel movements 
 added strength to the cause. In 1806, Joseph Cooke, 
 (1775-1811), of Rochdale, was expelled from the 
 Wesleyan ministry for heresy ; the result was the forma- 
 tion of several Lancashire congregations, long known as 
 Methodist Unitarians. This has been called the first 
 doctrinal secession from Methodism; but in 1789 there 
 was an earlier secession in Manchester, headed by John 
 Laycock, whose street-preaching of Unitarian doctrine 
 attracted the notice of Priestley. The Rochdale seceders 
 were brought into relations with the Unitarian body by 
 John Thomson, M.D. (1783-1818), the founder (1816) of 
 the Unitarian Fellowship Funds for mission purposes. 
 
 A later secession, following the expulsion (1841) of 
 Joseph Barker (1806-1875) from the Methodist New
 
 English Unitarian History 49 
 
 Connexion, originated several congregations in the North 
 of England. Barker, to whom the Unitarians, headed by 
 Sir John Bowring (i 792-1 872), gave a printing press 
 (1846), was a pioneer of cheap literature; his eightpenny 
 volumes sowed the works of Channing broadcast. 
 
 [See Wright's Missionartf Life and Labourg, 1824 ; J. Gordon's memoir of 
 Harris, in Christian Reformer, 1S60 ; Asliworth's Jiise and Progress of Uni- 
 tarian Doctrine, 1817 ; Diet. Nat. Biog. for Barker.] 
 
 j2. Legalising of XJnitarianism. 
 
 Till 2 1 St July i8i3,the profession of Unilarianism was 
 puiiTsliable in JLngland by forfeiture of citizenship and by 
 imprisonment, while in Scotland it was a capital crime. 
 Cliarles James Fox (i 749-1 So6), the Whig leader, had 
 vainly endeavoured (1792) to procure the repeal of the 
 persecuting Acts ; this was accomplished by William 
 Smith (1756-1835), M.P. for Norwich, the grandfather 
 of Florence Nightingale (b. 1820). 
 
 Unitarians now (18 1 3) had civil rights; and in 1819 
 the Unitarian Association was founded to maintain them 
 against assailants, as well as to promote the reform of the 
 marriage law, and the removal of the Test Acts. 
 
 I n 1 825, this association was amalgamated with the 
 Unitarian Society and the Unitarian Fund, as the British 
 and Foreign Unitarian Association, with a preamble, 
 ■which specifies simply ' the principles of Unitarian 
 Christianity,' leaving their application to individual dis- 
 cretion. A proposal (1866) for a closer definition, by 
 Samuel Bache (1804-1876), was met by carrying the 
 previous question. 
 
 [For Smith, see Sijcars' Unit. Worthies; forBaclie, Diet. Nat. liiog.] 
 
 33. Channing, Tiickerman, and Rammohun Roy. 
 
 By 1825, the influence of the writings of William 
 Ellery Channing, D.D. (i 780-1 842), had begun to tell 
 decisively on the minds of English Unitarians. The 
 
 D
 
 50 English Unitarian History 
 
 spiritual philosophy, which he had learned from Price, 
 was welcomed from his suasive lips, though, as enunciated 
 by English Arians, it had been rejected in favour of the 
 so-called materialism of Priestley and Belsham. His 
 golden dictum, ' all minds are of one family,' reduced 
 the question of the superhuman rank of Christ to a 
 technicality ; while his conception of miracle, as the 
 highest illustration of the dominance of mind over 
 matter, stayed the crude scepticism which the ordinary 
 treatment of the evidences had induced. 
 
 Almost as great, though in another way, was the 
 influence of the work of Joseph Tuckerman, D.D. 
 (i 778-1 840), dating from his English visit in 1B33. In 
 that year, the Manchester Domestic Mission was founded, 
 followed by those of London (1835), Liverpool (1836), 
 and others. Moreover, it was Tuckerman who roused 
 the spirit of philanthropy in the heart of Mary Carpenter 
 (i 807-1 877), as it was the contact, in 1833, with 
 Rammohun Roy (i 780-1 833) which turned her benefi- 
 cent energies in the direction of India. 
 
 (See Life of Channing, centennial edition, 1880 ; Life of Mary Carpenter, 
 1878 ; Spears' Unit. Worthies for Tnckernian and Kammohun Roy.] 
 
 34. Arianism. 
 
 No party organizations were effected by the Arian 
 section. In 1789, an abortive effort for concerted action 
 was made by Hugh Worthington (1752-1813), the 
 eloquent preacher at Salters' Hall. The Arians were 
 averse to controversy, as accentuating their own minor 
 differences; and their congregations disliked doctrinal 
 preaching. In Lancashire, Arianism held the field till 
 the death of Thomas Barnes, D.D. (1747-18 10), the 
 first theological tutor (i 786-1 798), in the Manchester 
 Academy; later it was powerful in the West of England. 
 A monthly periodical, the Christian Moderator (1826- 
 1828J, was started in London, with Irish support, in the
 
 I'Jnglis/i UnHarian Ifislory 5 1 
 
 Allan interest, its chief English writer being John Kitcat, 
 minister (1S05-1827) at Ne\v[)ury. Probably the last 
 English Unitarian minister who advocated this type of 
 doctrine was Joseph Calrow Means (i 801 -1879), a 
 General Baptist. The Arian laity were in part absorbed 
 by the Lindsey movement, in larger part they fell away 
 to other denominations; those who, among English 
 Unitarians, still hold this view are few and scattered. 
 
 35. Controversies. 
 
 Among the denominational polemics most memorable 
 for ability and breadth may be mentioned the controversy 
 in Glasgow, between James Yates, M.A. (1789-1871), 
 and Robert Wardlaw, D.D. (i 779-1 853), which pro- 
 duced Yates' Vindication of Unitarian ism (18 15; fourth 
 edition, 1850); the Manchester lectures, Evangelical 
 Christianity (1813), by John Grundy (1782-1843I; the 
 York controversy (i 823-1 824), between Charles Well- 
 beloved ( 1 769-1 858), and Francis Wrangham, D.D. 
 (1769-1842J; and the Unitarian Disciissiofi in Belfast 
 between John Scott Porter (i 801-1880), who began his 
 ministry in London, and Daniel Bagot, D.D. (d. 1891), 
 remarkable as the only discussion of the kind in which 
 both sides are given in the same publication (1834; 
 fourth edition, 1870). The Liverpool Unitarian con- 
 troversy, in which James Martineau, John Hamilton 
 Thorn (1808-18941, and Henry Giles (i 809-1 882) re- 
 pelled the attack of thirteen clergymen, produced 
 Unitarianism Defended {1% 7,9) > which raised controversial 
 writing on this topic to a higher level of literary expres- 
 sion and intellectual eminence than it had previously 
 attained in Great Britain. 
 
 35. Dissenters' Chapels Act. 
 
 From literary contests the Unitarians were drawn, 
 lirst by the Wolverhampton case in 181 7, to a struggle 
 
 D 2
 
 K2 Unglish Unitaria7i History 
 
 for the tenure of the meethig-houses which had descended 
 to them from the old Dissent. Their chief assailants 
 were the Independents, led by George Hadfield (1787- 
 1879), whose Manchester Socinian Controversy (1825) 
 was a gage of battle. Several chapels were attacked, 
 and when the Hewley Trust, founded (1705) by Dame 
 Sarah Hewley, of York, for 'poor and godly ministers 
 of Christ's holy Gospel,' ministering north of the Trent, 
 was removed from Unitarian management by litigation 
 (1830-1842), it was felt by the legal adviser of the 
 Unitarians, Edwin Wilkins Field (1S04-1871), that the 
 only remedy was an Act of Parliament. The Dissenters" 
 Chapels Act became law on 19th July 1844. It made 
 retrospective the legalisation of Unitarian doctrine effected 
 in 1813; and it provided that, so far as trusts did not 
 specify doctrines, twenty-five years' tenure was enough to 
 legitimate existing doctrinal usage. The trusts of the old 
 meeting-houses, whether erected by Presbyterians or by 
 Congregationals, were usually free from specific doctrinal 
 provisions. Except as regards endowments, closer 
 doctrinal trusts, whether Trinitarian or Unitarian, are, 
 as a rule, comparatively modern, and they have been 
 disused by Unitarians since 1855. 
 
 [See appended lecture on Priestley ; Debates on the Dissenters' Chapels 
 Bill, 1844 ; Diet. Sat. Blog. for Hadfield, Hewley and Field.] 
 
 37. Decline and Revival of Unitarian Zeal. 
 
 One effect of this long contest was to check for a time 
 the dogmatic assertiveness of Unitarians. Their studies of 
 history, somewhat rearranged for legal purposes, chiefly by 
 Joseph Hunter ( 1 7S3- 1 8 6 1 ), convinced them that their true 
 lineage was to be found in Presbyterianism ; though the 
 Presbyterian name, towards the close of the last century, 
 was mainly a revival, without much reference to history, as a
 
 English Unitarian History 53 
 
 protest, first against the Calvinistic doctrine retained by 
 Independents, secondly against the exclusive Unitarianism 
 of the Lindsey movement. A scheme of Presbyterian 
 organization, with a General Assembly and so forth, had 
 been projected (1833) by James Yates, M.A.; a magazine, 
 the English Presbyterian, was started (1834). But after 
 the old chapels were made safe, the Presbyterian idea 
 was chiefly in evidence when denominational zeal was to 
 be discountenanced. 
 
 A noteworthy result of the Dissenters' Chapels Act 
 was the rebuilding of the greater number of the old 
 chapels, either in situ or in some improved locality. 
 Some few had been rebuilt shortly before, the first of 
 these being at Bury, Lancashire (1837). The first to be 
 rebuilt in Gothic architecture was at Dukinfield (1840); 
 though an earlier specimen of this architecture is at Upper 
 Brook Street, Manchester (1839). 
 
 To replace the lost Hewley 'I'rust, a new endowment, 
 applicable to the same area, and known as the Ministers' 
 Stipends Augmentation Fund was organised (1856) on 
 the initiative of Christopher Rawdon (1780-1858) ; it is 
 not applicable to congregations bound by express doc- 
 trinal stipulations (with an exception permitting the 
 requirement of belief of revelation as contained in Scrip- 
 ture). Its operations have been supplemented (1882) 
 by the Sustentation Fund, applicable to the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 In 1853 the Hibbert Trust, founded by deed of 19th 
 July 1847, and originally designated the Antitrinitarian 
 Fund, came into operation. Its object was to improve 
 the status of the Unitarian Ministry. Its founder, Robert 
 Hihbert, B.A. (1770-1849), left to the trustees a wide 
 discretion, and the fund has furnished various scholar- 
 ships and fellowships, has supported (i 878-1 894) an 
 annual lectureship, known as the Hibbert Lecture, and 
 now maintains (from 1894) a chair of ecclesiastical history 
 at Manchester College, Oxford.
 
 54 English U?iiian'an Ifislory 
 
 The recurrence of a distinctively Unitarian zeal is 
 largely due to the labours of John Relly Beard, D.D. 
 (1800-1876), founder (1854) of the Unitarian Home 
 Missionary Board (College since 1889), with the co- 
 operation of William Gaskell, M.A. (1805-1884), and 
 the support of laymen of the first culture, such as Henry 
 Arthur Bright (1830- 1884), author of the Lay of the 
 Lhiitarian Church (1857) and Samuel Sharps (1799- 
 1881), the merits of whose Translation of the Bihle 
 (1840-1865; last edition 1881), are not superseded by 
 those of the Revised ]^ersion (1881-85). 
 
 [See Diet. Nat. Bioij. for Beard, Bright, Guskell, Hibbert, Hunter; 
 Spears' Unit. Worthies for Rawdoii ; Clayden's Memoirs of Samuel Sharpe, 
 1883.] 
 
 38. Newer Biblical Criticism. 
 
 Coincident with the increase of Unitarian zeal was a 
 gra'Iual revolt from the older supernaturalism, stimulated 
 by the writings of Theodore Parker (i 810-1860); by such 
 works as The Creed of Christendom (1851) by William 
 Rathbone Greg (i 809-1 881) ; and perhaps even more by 
 the publication of Essays attd Revieitn (1861). From 
 this epoch-making book dates the introduction of the 
 newer biblical criticism, originated by continental 
 scholars, as a permanent factor in Anglican theology. 
 Unitarians, it has been said, accepted in an Oxford dress, 
 heresies which had been frowned down in their own 
 household. The removal of Manchester College to 
 Oxford (1889) has established there an independent 
 school of theological preparation, faithful to the en- 
 lightened traditions of Barnes and Wellbeloved, of John 
 Kenrick (1788-1877) and Robert Wallace (179 1 -18 50), 
 of the saintly John James Tayler and the ever-young 
 James Martineau. 
 
 [See Martineau's In Memurlam .J. .1. Tayler, and In Memoriam John 
 Kenrick, reprinted 1890.]
 
 English Unitarian History 55 
 
 39. Conclusion. 
 
 This may well be made the stopping-point; for here 
 we touch questions of modern development which 
 scarcely yet belong to history. It is certainly easier to 
 write of the dead than of the living; and possibly wiser to 
 speak of the past than of the future, to offer the pro- 
 visional results of research than to hazard the experiments 
 of prediction. Yet one may surely dare to say that a 
 great future lies before those churches which have 
 grouped themselves, since 1882, in a National Confer- 
 ence. Never, perhaps, was purpose in their leading men 
 more earnest, never was munificence more ready to sup- 
 port their efforts. 
 
 To save misapprehension, it should be added that the 
 history of Unitarianism in Ireland is a distinct subject of 
 study, running on different lines from the above. That 
 of Wales follows England ; the Carmarthen College, m 
 which Unitarians and Independents are trained for the 
 ministry together, is a living representative of the Unions 
 begun in 1690.
 
 BAXTER AS A FOUNDER OF LIBERAL 
 NONCONFORMITY. 
 
 Synopsis. 
 
 40. Baxter's Personality. 41. Mellowing of his 
 Character. 42. Early Training. 43. Ordination. 44. 
 Nonconforming Puritans. 45. Success at Kidderminster. 
 46. Baxter and Cromwell. 47. Need of an Ecclesiastical 
 Settlement. 48. The Parliamentary Presbyterianism. 
 49. Baxter never a Presbyterian. 50. The Worcester- 
 shire Agreement. 51. Cromwell's Triers. 52. The 
 New King. 53. Baxter at the Restoration. 54. The 
 Sequestered Clergy. 55. Comparative Statistics. 56. 
 Charles' Olive Branch. 57. Feeling of the Nation. 58. 
 Savoy Conference. 59. Kelyng's Bill. 60. Uniformity. 
 61. Puritan Objections. 62. Bel and the Dragon. 63. 
 Contrast of England and Spain. 64. Baxter's Farewell 
 to Conformity. 65. Number of the Ejected. 66. Classi- 
 fication of the Ejected. 67. Their Ecclesiastical Politics. 
 68. They wanted Elbow-room. 69. Baxter against 
 Separation. 70. The Crown and the Commons. 71. 
 Puritan Patriotism. 72. The 'Presbyterian Separation.' 
 73, The Merchants' Lecture. 74. Fresh Persecution. 
 75. Liberty of Conscience. 76. Life of the Ejected. 
 77. Terms of Toleration. 78. Baxter on Essentials. 79. 
 Errors of Rome. 80. Meaning of Toleration. 81. Non- 
 conformist Unions. 82. Catholicism against Parties. 
 83. Baxter's Calvinism. 84. Theology and Reason. 85. 
 Baxter's Candour. 86. Spirit of the Ejected. 
 
 [Two lectures in connection with the summer meeting of University 
 Extension Students, at Oxford, 3rd and 4th August, 1894 ; printed in the 
 Christian Life, i^ovember and December, 1S91.]
 
 RICHARD BAXTER. 
 
 [Born 1615; ordained 1638; at Kidderminster, 
 1641-43 and 1647-60; framed the Worcestershire 
 Agreement, 1652; rejected Conformity, 1662; accepted 
 Indulgence as a Nonconformist, 1672; qualified as a 
 Protestant Dissenter, 1689; died 1691.] 
 
 40. Baxter's Personality. 
 
 The industrious author of the ' Sufferings of the 
 Clergy' (1714), speaking of Calamy's 'Account' (1713) 
 of the extruded Nonconformist divines, remarks that 
 Calamy has made Baxter 'the hero of the tragedy,' and 
 that 'the lives of the other ejected ministers are as 
 episodes grafted upon his.' It was a true instinct which 
 led the biographer of the Bartholomean confessors to 
 group their portraits around the central personality of 
 Richard Baxter. Whether for the interest attaching to 
 the man himself, or for the position he held with his 
 contemporaries, or still more, perhaps, for the moral 
 interest and the religious attraction of his example and 
 his writings, Baxter rises unique among the men of his 
 time, a great gaunt figure of independence. 
 
 Within a sinewy frame, battered by constant sickness 
 and tortured with incessant quackery, he carries an intel- 
 lect keen as a lancet, and a heart burning with the 
 evangelist's passion. Zeal is but a tame word for the 
 intense eagerness of his nature. If he seem a restless 
 man, it is because the pain of an ideal unreached stings 
 him to the quick, leaving him not a moment's ease while 
 a single scruple remains unsatisfied, a single act of
 
 58 Baxter 
 
 devotion incomplete. His ready tongue and facile pen 
 are flexible to his thought, yet too tardy for his wishes. 
 No man is more transparently offered to the gaze of a 
 curious world ; for in his writings, while all is argument, 
 all is likewise autobiography. Before us is the very 
 Baxter himself ; here are his infirmities, here is his great- 
 ness. His undrest style, cumbrous with syllogism almost 
 to a crime, moves at the high speed of his intelligence. 
 He never stops to blot, to piece, to curtail, to enhance, to 
 refine ; yet he prints his meaning clear upon the minds 
 he addresses, and when he reaches eloquence, it is the 
 native diction of a soaring and majestic soul. 
 
 41. Mellowing of his Character. 
 
 The thorny maze of his ' Reliquios ' (1696) is a living 
 portraiture of the controversies of his age. But to under- 
 stand its most elevated passages, to know what Baxter 
 grew unto and why, you must read the still quivering 
 pages of that little biography (1681) in which he reveals 
 the gracious image of his Margaret. With a deeply 
 tender pathos he has written the memorial of the 
 delicately nurtured royalist gentlewoman who, in the 
 freshness of her vivid powers, gave her once giddy heart 
 to the outcast invalid of forty- seven, and having married 
 him when his fortunes were at the lowest, identified her- 
 self with every interest of his, at first in a trembling diffi- 
 dence, at length with an angelic courage. He has not 
 told us the whole story ; grave friends bade him forbear; 
 for what has a Puritan to do with the sweetness of life's 
 romance .'' Yet no romance may vie with the simple, 
 half unconscious touches of longing love which at once 
 hallow and humanise his broken record of Margaret's 
 closing days. For nineteen years of his ejection siie had 
 been the mellowing influence on his character, and there- 
 by on the whole complexion of his religious speculation. 
 As his affections warmed, the reserves of his theology
 
 Baxter 59 
 
 melted. Like Wesley, he learned to measure men by 
 their goodness rather than by their orthodoxy. Hence 
 he became, in a real sense, a founder of the liberal 
 traditions of Nonconformity, and it is in this light that I 
 propose to review his public career and his permanent 
 work. 
 
 42. Early Training. 
 
 Richard Baxter sprang from a family of freeholders, 
 settled within five miles of the picturesque town of 
 Shrewsbury, who had handed down this name of Richard 
 Baxter for at least three generations. The two ancestral 
 Richards had diminished their estate at the gaming table, 
 entangling a respectable patrimony in an accumulation 
 of debts. This is probably the reason why the boy, born 
 in November 16 15, under the roof of his mother's father, 
 was allowed, though an only child, to remain there till he 
 was ten years of age. By the time the lad was brought 
 home, his father had earned on somewhat easy terms the 
 title of a Puritan, a Precisian, a Hypocrite, synonymous 
 expressions in the mouths of the Shropshire villagers. 
 His changed deportment was observable in these par- 
 ticulars; he read the Scriptures when others were dancing 
 on the Lords day; he prayed by a form which he found 
 in his common prayer book ; he reproved drunkards and 
 swearers ; he set his son to read the historical parts of 
 the Bible; and he now and then quoted Scripture, in 
 regard to the life to come. The historical Scriptures, 
 thus offered to him, laid firm hold of young Richard's 
 mind. So did a whole heap of ' romances, fables, and 
 old tales,' for there was nothing over-strict about his 
 home training. In early years he was committed to the 
 charge of an odd medley of tutors, each of them in- 
 competent, excepting John Owen, master of Wroxeter 
 grammar school ; and Owen was a scholar without judg-
 
 6o Baxter 
 
 ment. Baxter was anxious to proceed to the university. 
 As he says, in his rugged verse : 
 
 ' My young desire 
 To academic glorj^ did aspire.' 
 
 Owen persuaded him to put himself under a tutor at 
 Ludlow ; as he would be the only pupil, it would be 
 better for him than a university. This tutor, Richard 
 Wickstead, used him kindly and supplied him with 
 books, but neither taught nor tried to teach him anything. 
 Somewhat later he was indebted to him for his brief 
 introduction to a Court life. A single month at White- 
 hall, in his eighteenth year, was all the stay young Baxter 
 would make. With some help from neighbouring 
 divines, Puritan in theology, yet all of them advocates 
 for exact conformity, he plunged deep into metaphysics, 
 mastered all the schoolmen he could get, and, in his own 
 phrase, taught himself to ' anatomise ' the subjects of his 
 thought. 
 
 43. Ordination. 
 
 So sickly a youth was he that, by the time he attained 
 his majority, his friends hardly expected him to live out 
 the year. This condition of his health became with him 
 an overwhelming reason for gaining entrance to the 
 ministry. Feeling that he had but a short while before 
 him, though dreading the consequences of his insufficient 
 apparatus, he seized the first opportunity for qualifying as 
 a preacher. The bishop of Worcester, John Thorn- 
 borough, gave him orders (1638), when he subscribed 
 without scruple. He was appointed, not to a living, but 
 to the mastership of Dudley school, with licence to preach. 
 
 44, Nonconforming Puritans. 
 
 Here began his first thorough examination of the 
 position of the nonconforming Puritans, with results that
 
 Ba.xter 6 1 
 
 are worth tabling. The form of subscription he found 
 he could not repeat. But of things scrupled by Puritans 
 the only one which he held to be certainly unlawful was 
 the promiscuous giving of the Lord's supper. The 
 cross in baptism he thought unlawful, but was not sure ; 
 he never used it. The surplice he thought lawful, with 
 some doubts, not enough to make its disuse a point of 
 conscience ; though, in fact, he never wore it. Kneeling 
 at the eucharist he thought lawful, but not imperative ; 
 he often received thus. About the ring in marriage he 
 had no scruple. Nor had he about the lawfulness either 
 of forms of prayer in general or of the Anglican forms in 
 particular ; he often read the common prayer, though he 
 judged it open to much improvement, and preferred free 
 prayer. To all these positions he adhered through life. 
 Nor did he diverge further from the Anglican system in 
 any important point save one, namely, in the demand for 
 the restoration of a more primitive episcopacy, in lieu of 
 the existing diocesan prelacy, which he regarded as sub- 
 versive of true ecclesiastical discipline. In his own 
 ministry, prior to the Restoration, Baxter never had 
 personal experience of episcopal control. Bridgnorth, 
 where he held his first curacy (1639-41), was exempt 
 from episcopal jurisdiction, excepting the archbishop's 
 triennial visitation. At Kidderminster he did not settle 
 in his lectureship till April 1641 ; and from this time till 
 the Restoration episcopal authority was in abeyance. 
 
 45. Success at Kidderminster. 
 
 He became at Kidderminster the master spirit of the 
 place, the master spirit of the whole country round. It 
 was necessary to line the noble church with five large 
 galleries, in order to accommodate his many hearers. 
 Still do they show his pulpit, discarded from the parish 
 church in 1785, purchased for the Unitarians, and by 
 them preserved with loving care. It is older (1621) than
 
 62 Baxter 
 
 his ministry, but has a characteristic addition which is 
 his : the carved image of the royal crown, resting on its 
 cushion above the preacher's head. 
 
 46. Baxter and Cromwell. 
 
 The civil war broke into his labours. For two years 
 (1643-45) he sheltered at Coventry. Here he took the 
 covenant, and gave it to one other person. But he very 
 speedily discovered that he had subscribed under a mis- 
 apprehension, and heartily repented of having had any- 
 thing to do with it. It was while here that Cromwell and 
 the officers of his regiment, forming themselves at Cam- 
 bridge into a gathered church, unanimously called him 
 to be their pastor. But Baxter, who was not for gathered 
 churches, sent a reproof in place of an acceptance. 
 Finding afterwards that the war was not for the king 
 against evil counsellors, as he had imagined, but for a 
 commonwealth against the king, he obtained an army 
 chaplaincy, with the express intent ' to save Church and 
 State,' as Cromwell's friends put it. It took two years, 
 of fruitless endeavour, to convince him of his inability to 
 stem the tide of current politics. He returned to Kidder- 
 minster (1647) in broken health, to enjoy the sole repose 
 he knew, the repose of anxious, earnest work ; this only, 
 while he lived, was his Saint's Rest. 
 
 47. Need of an Ecclesiastical Settlement. 
 
 And now begins the permanently influential period of 
 Baxter's public career, the period of his constructive 
 dealing with the ecclesiastical situation. Hitherto he had 
 been the disputant against sectaries of all sorts. A 
 typical illustration of his prowess in that line is the 
 famous discussion at Amersham (October, 1645) against 
 a host of sectaries and soldiers, and in presence of a 
 crowded congregation. ' I took the reading-pew, and
 
 Baxter 63 
 
 Pitchford's cornet and troopers took the gallery.' The 
 Anabaptist leader, who apparenth- occupied the pulpit, 
 began, and afierwards Pitchford's soldiers set in, Baxter 
 alone disputing against them all from morning till almost 
 night. ' For I knew their trick, that if I had but gone 
 out first, they would have prated what boasting words 
 they listed when I was gone, and made the people 
 believe that they had baffled me, or got the best ; there- 
 fore I stayed it out till they first rose and went away.' 
 Such scenes were often repeated, and they furnished the 
 best of all proofs of the urgent need for an ecclesiastical 
 settlement. But what was the settlement to be .' 
 
 48. The Parliamentary Presl)yterianism, 
 
 In 1641 the main body of the English Puritans had 
 been willing to compose their differences with the bishops 
 by retaining a modified episcopacy, as presented in the 
 scheme of Archbishop Ussher, of which more anon. 
 That this accommodation failed, though it had the 
 countenance of the House of Lords, was due to the 
 opposition of the Court, and of a section of the hierarchy 
 who preferred chaos to concession. In 1646, Parliament 
 made an attempt to end chaos, by promoting, for political 
 reasons connected with the Scottish alliance, the re- 
 organisation of the national establishment on a Presby- 
 terian basis of its own device, differing at once from 
 the older English Presbyterianism and from the Scottish 
 model. 
 
 In the old English Presbyterian theory, the theory of 
 Travers, Cartwright, and Bradshaw, no jurisdiction was 
 admitted beyond that inherent in the presbytery of the 
 particular congregation (kirk-session, the Scots call it), 
 subject only to the prerogative of the Crown. Classes 
 and Synods were purely advisory bodies. Under the 
 Scottish model equal representation was accorded in 
 theory to the clerical and the lay element in all superior
 
 X 
 
 64 Baxter 
 
 church courts, and from the supreme church court there 
 was no appeal. But the English Parliament gave a 
 largely preponderant representation to the lay eldership 
 in every church court, nominated a proportion of the 
 members (following the precedent of the co?ige d'elire), 
 and constituted itself a final court of appeal. The 
 minutes of the Manchester Classis are accessible in 
 print ; they show that at every meeting of that body the 
 laity considerably outnumbered the clergy. Hence the 
 Parliamentary Presbyterianism was never popular with the 
 clergy. The Westminster Assembly, which had been 
 sitting from 1643, ^^^^ in the main for Ussher's system, 
 if that could be had ; and for the Scottish system as 
 the next best thing in the circumstances. It protested 
 and petitioned against the action of Parliament, as 
 ' virtually superseding the S3nod.' The petition was 
 voted to be a breach of privilege. The Parliamentary 
 establishment was never carried out in its integrity as 
 a national institution. In spite of the general Ordinances 
 in its favour, it was a quasi-voluntary system ; that is to 
 say, it was settled in those counties that petitioned for 
 it; when thus settled, it had jurisdiction. There was 
 never a General Assembly ; there were Provincial 
 Assemblies only in Lancashire and for a time (till 1655) 
 in London. But about half of the English counties 
 adopted the Parliamentary Presbyterianism, so far as the 
 Classes went, i.e., the courts having jurisdiction over 
 smaller districts. Thus in Essex there were fourteen 
 Classes in operation, but there was no joint action in 
 a Provincial Assembly. Lancashire had its nine Classes, 
 London its twelve, united in its Provincial Assembly. 
 
 49. Baxter never a Presbyterian. 
 
 Why did not the Parliamentary Presbyterianism 
 prevail in other counties } Because Richard Baxter was 
 never a Presbyterian, of any type ; though his enemies
 
 Baxter 65 
 
 called him one by way of disparagement, and his friends 
 have done the like as a mark of their favour. And 
 because Richard Baxter, in his best days, was a stronger 
 power with the religious people of England than either 
 the Westminster Assembly or the Parliamentary leaders. 
 
 50. The Worcestershire Agreement. 
 
 In effect, Baxter said : ' The covenant shall not be 
 taken in my county ; 1 mean to organise the religion of 
 Worcestershire.' And he did so. On 22nd December 
 1652, the Worcestershire petition was his manifesto for 
 the retention of tithe, and of the parochial system. The 
 Worcestershire Agreement, entered into earlier in the 
 same year (May 1652), was based on the rectoral rights 
 of the parish clergyman. It was the clergyman's business 
 to rule his parish, as well as to teach it. He might order 
 his parish on the Presbyterian model, or on the Congre- 
 gational, or on the old system of churchwardens, which 
 Baxter himself preferred ; but this was at the rector's 
 choice, he being the person responsible for these things. 
 The county clergy. Episcopalian, it might be, in theory, 
 Presbyterian, Congregational, even Baptist if they would, 
 were to meet together. There were to be no lay as- 
 sessors ; the clergy, mutually bound by a doctrinal 
 profession, which, so far as it went, was of strict ortho- 
 doxy, were to meet for religious exercises and mutual 
 advice, without jurisdiction one over another. I know 
 no previous precedent in England for a mixed organisa- 
 tion of this kind. There was one in Ireland, the Antrim 
 Meeting, established (1626) by John Ridge, vicar of 
 Antrim, an Oxford graduate. And of this Antrim Meet- 
 ing, a strong Presbyterian witness, John Livingstone, 
 affirms that it was ' sometimes as profitable as either 
 presbyteries or s)'nods.' 
 
 Thus Baxter organised Worcestershire. On its 
 northern fringe, there was one good covenanting Presby- 
 
 E
 
 66 Baxter 
 
 terian (Thomas Hall), who joined the Kenilworth Classis, 
 the representative of the Parliamentary Presbyterianism 
 in the adjoining county of Warwick. Lancashire had 
 adopted the Parliamentary Presbyterianism in 1647, 
 though there were some Congregationals, as at Gorton, 
 Birch, Altham, who would not fall in with it. Cheshire 
 had put forth, in 1641, a protest against the coming 
 Presbyterianism, of which there were rumours in the air. 
 In 1648, Cheshire issued an attestation, signed by fifty- 
 nine of its clergy, who feared the Independent principle 
 of toleration, and dreaded the Independent drift towards 
 heresy. Yet Cheshire never had anything to do with 
 the Parliamentary Presbyterianism. Immediately on the 
 publication of the terms of the Worcestershire Agreement 
 (1653), Cheshire followed Baxter (October 1653). under 
 the leadership of Adam Martindale. So did Cumberland 
 and Westmoreland, on the other side of Lancashire. 
 Northumberland went with the Parliament, as did Derby- 
 shire, on the off-side of Cheshire. All over England, w^e 
 find contiguous counties religiously organised, here on 
 the Parliamentary, there on the Baxter model. And it 
 was the Baxter model which gained ground. Norfolk, 
 Essex, and Devonshire, for example, began with the 
 Parliamentary system, and, after trying it. came over to 
 Baxter. The South of Ireland, which had resisted Pres- 
 byterianism, fell into line with the Baxterian principle of 
 association in 1655. 
 
 51. Cromwell's Triers. 
 
 Ay, and before that date Cromwell had fallen very 
 much into line with Baxter's principle of association. 
 For Cromwell's Triers (1654), whose work is highly 
 commended by Baxter, though he disowned their 
 authority, were selected on Baxter's plan of Union. Most 
 of them were clergy, and clergy of as many denomina- 
 tions as would consent to act. Presbyterian, Congre-
 
 Baxter 6 J 
 
 gational, Anabaptist, all were represented. And they 
 ' admitted,' says Baxter, ' of all that were able and serious 
 preachers, and lived a godly and sober life, of what 
 tolerable opinion soever they were.' On three occasions 
 only did Baxter give certificates on which the Triers for 
 Worcestershire acted ; and this was to secure approval 
 for three Episcopalian and Royalist divines. Once 
 admitted on the approval of the Triers, the clergy held 
 rectoral rights in their parishes. If they connected them- 
 selves with any outside ecclesiastical organisation, it was 
 purely at their own choice. 
 
 Hence the power of the Parliamentary Presbyterianism 
 was broken. Even in Lancashire, there was a movement 
 (1659) for union with Independents, a movement fostered 
 by Henry Newcome, who, before becoming a Lancashire 
 Presbyterian, had been a hearty member of the Cheshire 
 Baxterian association. It came to nothing, because 
 Newcome and his Presbyterian friends were bent on 
 restoring the monarchy ; whereupon the Independents, 
 who saw clearly what this would mean, held aloof. 
 Baxter also saw what the Restoration would mean. ' Yet,' 
 said he, ' I am for restoring the King ; that when we are 
 silenced, and our ministry at an end, and some of us lie 
 in prison, we may in that condition have peace of con- 
 science in the discharge of our duty, and faith, patience, 
 and charity in our sufferings.' 
 
 52. The New King. 
 
 In truth, the motive of the Civil War, the motive of 
 the Caroline Restoration, was one and the same. A free 
 Parliament, a constitutional government under a consti- 
 tutional governor, that was the grand necessity in both 
 cases. The new king turned out an unexpectedly 
 serviceable person. His father had been a peril to the 
 State, alike living and dead. Despairing of any other 
 remedy for an incurable disease, Cromwell decapitated 
 
 E 2 
 
 ^
 
 68 Baxter 
 
 him. His lying thus stopped, his legend began. It was 
 found that the worst possible use to which a Stuart could 
 be put was to make him a martyr. Supple to the 
 Commons, the second Charles, by his mode of life, 
 extinguished forever in this country the fatuous notion of 
 the royal Claudius that ' divinity doth hedge a king.' 
 
 From Breda, on 4th April 1660, Charles issued a 
 declaration, proclaiming ' a liberty to tender consciences, 
 and that no man shall be disquieted, or called in ques- 
 tion, for differences of opinion, in matters of religion, 
 which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom.' He 
 pledged his royal assent to any Act, on these lines, which 
 should be passed in a free Parliament. Baxter under- 
 stood this promise rightly enough, as ' but a profession of 
 his readiness to consent to any Act which the Parliament 
 should offer.' Others reading it in blind haste, recalled 
 it in after years with the bitterness of disappointed hopes. 
 In reality, it was all that the constitutional Puritans could 
 ask of a monarch, or desire at his hands; for the present, 
 a religious amnesty, for the future, a constitutional settle- 
 ment. When the deputation of preachers at Breda 
 (Baxter was not one of them) further pressed the king to 
 discard the use of prayer-book and surplice in the Royal 
 Chapel, Charles told them, with justice and dignity, that, 
 ' whilst he gave them liberty, he would not have his own 
 taken from him.' 
 
 53. Baxter at the Restoration. 
 
 With the return of the monarchy came the return of 
 sequestered clergy, smarting under the sense of their 
 grievances. Baxter's own situation was peculiar. In 
 1641, George Dance, vicar of Kidderminster since 1627, 
 had avoided sequestration by giving a bond of .^500 to 
 pay ^60 a year for a lecturer, and Baxter was chosen to 
 the post. The living was sequestered in 1647, after 
 which Baxter was paid £()Q and the rent of his lodging,
 
 Baxter 69 
 
 and got two assistants. He declined any position except 
 the lectureship ; but some years later, and without his 
 knowledge, he was made the nominal holder of the 
 living. Dance always retained the vicarage house and 
 got his fifths. By an Act of the Convention Parliament 
 (September 1660) the titles of all intruded incumbents 
 were expressly made good, provided that the previous 
 incumbent was dead or had resigned. This was not the 
 case at Kidderminster ; Dance was re-instated (he held 
 the living till his death in 1677) and Baxter lost his 
 lectureship. 
 
 In one of the few passages of his autobiography 
 which disclose a vein of humour, Baxter narrates the 
 fruitless issue of his plea for a continuance at Kidder- 
 minster in some post or other ; as vicar, Dance being 
 otherwise provided for; as lecturer, at a nominal sum; 
 well then, as Dance's curate without pay. All parties 
 were eager to accommodate him; no one was able to 
 bring it about. 'And should not a man,' he exclaims 
 at length, ' be content without a vicarage or a curateship, 
 when it is not in the power of the King and the Lord 
 Chancellor to procure it for him, when they so vehemently 
 desire it .' But O, thought I, how much better a life do 
 poor men live who speak as they think, and do as they 
 profess.' 
 
 54. The Sequestered Clergy. 
 
 It is a favourite device of church historians to plead 
 the sequestrations of the twenty years preceding the 
 Restoration as fairly accounting for the subsequent 
 ejections. I do not dwell upon the fact that of the 
 sequestered clergy many were obviously unfit, and many 
 were pluralists. For 1 hold with Calamy that ' he that 
 should undertake to justify what either the Parliamen- 
 tarians did against the Episcopalians . . or the Episcopal 
 men did against the Dissenters . . would . . have an 
 hard task of it, and come ofT but poorly.'
 
 7© Baxter 
 
 Yet I cannot help observing that this policy of ejection 
 was long anterior to the rise of the Puritan supremacy. 
 It was not initiated by the Ordinances of the Long 
 Parliament. It was taught and practised by the High 
 Commission, by the Star Chamber, and above all by 
 Archbishop Laud. Further to quote Calamy again, 'As 
 for those that were dispossessed of their benefices by 
 violence, plundered and sequestered, it was in a time of 
 war and confusion. Whereas the sufferings of Noncon- 
 formists were in a time of peace, after the most solemn 
 assurances that all things past should be forgotten.' 
 
 55. Comparative Statistics. 
 
 A point, however, is sought to be made of the alleged 
 fact of the larger number of the sequestered, as compared 
 with the ejected clergy. Walker has carefully collected 
 the names of clerical sufferers during the ' rebellion.' 
 Let us see what their numbers amount to in a given 
 district. The first fatal shot in the Civil War was fired at 
 Manchester on 15th July 1642; the final triumph of 
 Cromwell after his crushing victory at Preston, was the 
 surrender of the Scottish army at Warrington, in Septem- 
 ber 1648. Eleven years later, the pioneer movement of 
 the Restoration was the royalist rising in Cheshire, under 
 Booth, the Puritan magnate. Foremost then in action, 
 earliest in reaction, were the Puritans in the district 
 formed of the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, 
 united at the Reformation to constitute (1541) the new 
 diocese of Chester ; a district by modern Unitarians once 
 more treated for their ecclesiastical purposes as a single 
 province. 
 
 Now the statistics for this district are as follows : — 
 {a) Of the cathedral dignitaries of Chester, nine, includ- 
 ing the bishop, were dispossessed ; possibly also some 
 petty canons, of whom there is no record. One of 
 those nine was transferred to a rich living, became a
 
 Baxter 71 
 
 member of the Westminster Assembly, and was a Trier 
 under Cromwell. Three lived to be restored, ij)) In the 
 county of Chester, nineteen incumbents were sequestered, 
 add three doubtful cases, thus making twenty-two. 
 Seven of these lived to be restored, and one was made a 
 bishop, (c) In the county of Lancaster, fourteen were 
 sequestered, add one doubtful case, and say fifteen. 
 One of these was a bishop already, and retained his 
 diocese (Sodor and Man); another received other livings, 
 and ultimately became a bishop ; three more lived to be 
 restored, and of these also one became a bishop. The 
 total number, then, of sequestrations in the district was 
 46, counting the four doubtful cases. Let us be liberal, 
 and, throwing-in the six unrecorded petty canons, reach 
 a high-water mark of 52 ; out of whom 16 retained or re- 
 gained preferment. But of the Puritan clergy disabled 
 in the same district by the Act of Uniformity, we have 
 the names of 62 for Cheshire alone, and 95 for Lanca- 
 shire; that is, a total of 157. Of these, in Cheshire 8, 
 in Lancashire 13 (in all 21) by subsequently conforming, 
 recovered their ecclesiastical status. 
 
 56. Charles' Olive Branch. 
 
 The Convention Parliament was dissolved on Decem- 
 ber 29th 1660, having made good the Puritan titles as 
 aforesaid, but not having taken any step towards a per- 
 manent ecclesiastical settlement. Two months before its 
 dissolution, Charles had issued (25th October 1660) a 
 Declaration from Whitehall embodying a comprehensive 
 scheme of Church order ; confirming episcopacy, but 
 enlarging the number of bishops ; depriving bishops of 
 arbitrary authority ; associating presbyters with them in 
 every official act, including ordination ; appointing local 
 synods ; leaving all ceremonies optional ; abolishing sub- 
 scription ; promising a revision of the prayer-book, and 
 meanwhile making its use discretional ; lastly, renewing
 
 72 Baxter 
 
 the pledge of liberty to tender consciences. It was a 
 document on the well-known lines of Ussher's scheme 
 for church government, which in 1641, as we have seen, 
 had been proffered by a committee of English bishops, 
 had then been accepted by the Puritan leaders, and was 
 now again put forward by them. Passed into law it 
 would, as Marsden well says, have been ' the Magna 
 Charta of the Puritans.' That it was not so, was mainly 
 due to the Puritans themselves. From one point of view, 
 they made the greatest blunder of their history. From 
 another, their failure was the greater opportunity of 
 history : ' God having provided some better thing con- 
 cerning us, that apart from us they should not be made 
 perfect.' 
 
 As an earnest of royal good faith, four of the vacant 
 sees were now offered to Puritan divines, Baxter (Here- 
 ford), Calamy (Coventry and Lichfield), Gilpin (Carlisle), 
 and Reynolds (Norwich). Three deaneries were simi- 
 larly assigned. Reynolds alone accepted. The others 
 resolved to wait till the October Declaration was con- 
 firmed by Parliament. In this they were perfectly right ; 
 but under Baxter's leadership, the Puritan party pro- 
 ceeded to aggravate the difficulties of passing the 
 Declaration into law, by criticising its provisions to the last 
 detail, both in draft and after publication ; and by draw- 
 ing up schedules of suggested improvements, as if it were 
 a mere Bill in committee, whereas it was an olive branch 
 such as had never been offered to religious parties by 
 any English sovereign. The Puritan divines had not a 
 statesman's head among them. Baxter was their battle- 
 axe; and to Baxter's mettlesome intellect, every point of 
 logic was a point of conscience. The episcopal con- 
 servatives, Sheldon and Morley, grasped the situation at 
 once ; nothing, they urged, can satisfy these men. On 
 28th November 1660, the Convention Parliament refused 
 to ratify the Declaration, leaving the whole matter to the 
 issue of the forthcoming general election.
 
 Baxter 73 
 
 57. Feeling of the Nation. 
 
 Meanwhile, two events occurred, which worked 
 strongly upon the feelings of the nation, and decided 
 the temper of the next Parliament. One was the rising 
 of the Fifth Monarchy Men under Venner on Sunday, 
 6th January 1661. This was a trumpery business, yet it 
 frightened the country with the alarm of a recrudescence 
 of fanatical disorder, and occasioned the proclamation of 
 loth January against conventicles, defined as meetings 
 for worship on the part of persons 'known as Anabaptists, 
 Quakers, Fifth Monarchy Men, or some such like ap- 
 pellation.' These were forbidden, except in parochial 
 churches and chapels, or in private houses by persons 
 there inhabiting. Power of search for suspected con- 
 venticles was added. 
 
 The other event was the king's coronation on St. 
 George's Day, when the nation again ran wild, as at the 
 Restoration itself in the previous year. And there was 
 this new whet for the popular imagination; at the very 
 core of the most impressive of national spectacles, the 
 episcopal order now discharged the venerable function of 
 anointing and crowning the nation's head. ' Angels look 
 down,' wrote a grave divine, William Fuller, afterwards 
 bishop of Lincoln, in words which were solemnly sung in 
 St. Patrick's Cathedral, 
 
 'Angels look down with joy, to see, 
 Like that above, a Monarchie ! 
 
 Angels look down with joy, to see, 
 Like that above, an Hierarchic ! ' 
 
 58. Savoy Conference. 
 
 On the failure of his October Declaration, Charles 
 fulfilled his promise ' to appoint an equal number of 
 divines of both persuasions, to review " the prayer-book. 
 He convened the Savoy Conference, which got to work
 
 74 Baxter 
 
 on 15th April and expired on 24th July 1661. The 
 tactics of the bishops were admirable. They proposed 
 nothing, but waited for the Puritan objections to the 
 prayer-book. They saw the various items of scruple 
 accumulating day after day, with a perfect knowledge 
 that this was the way to deepen the public conviction that 
 these were not men who could be satisfied. They drew 
 from Baxter an alternative liturgy, the work of a fortnight 
 spent in his study. And this, forsooth, said they, is to 
 be taken in substitution for the prayers of our fathers and 
 the saints of old, arranged by the confessors and martyrs 
 of our Reformation, and consecrated by immemorial 
 usage. Stout churchman as he was. Dr. Johnson told 
 Hawkins that Baxter's office for the communion was one 
 of the first {i.e., finest) compositions of the ritual kind he 
 had ever seen. But the preparation of a new prayer- 
 book was beyond the terms of the commission ; and in 
 yielding to the temptation thus to exhibit his marvellous 
 powers, Baxter was simply giving his cause away. 
 
 Hence the new Parliament, when it met on 8th May 
 (the anniversary of the proclamation of the king), did not 
 treat the Savoy deliberations seriously. Neither did it 
 wait to hear the voice of the Convocation, which opened 
 concurrently with the Parliament. To this Convocation 
 both Baxter and Calamy were elected as clerks for the 
 city of London; Sheldon, in the exercise of a discre- 
 tionary power, passed them by, leaving the city of 
 London unrepresented in Convocation. Striding over 
 Conference and Convocation alike, the House of 
 Commons on 25th June 1661 appointed a committee to 
 bring in a Bill for uniformitv. 
 
 59. Kelyng's Bill. 
 
 The Bill was drafted by Sir John Kelyng, afterwards 
 chief justice; notorious in his earlier life as a brow-
 
 Baxter 75 
 
 beating advocate, in his later career as an arrogant judge; 
 brought up once before the Commons for imprisoning a 
 jury, and again before the Lords for libelHng a peer from 
 the bench. A good churchman, he was not devoid of a 
 certain salutary element of rationalism, for he had the 
 courage to denounce, as ' a mere imposture,' the East 
 Anglian cases of witchcraft, by Baxter devoutly believed 
 in, solemnly tried by Sir Matthew Hale, and issuing in 
 the pitiless execution of aged men and women. In body 
 and substance, the Act of Uniformity, as ultimately 
 passed, is essentially Kelyng's Bill. 
 
 But the standard of uniformity adopted was not that 
 originally intended by the Commons. The committee 
 had been instructed to 'make search for the original copy 
 of Edward VI. 's second prayer-book,' the most Protestant 
 of the service books, strongly Protestant in its eucharistic 
 forms, and prohibiting the use of alb, vestment or cope. 
 It was, indeed, the prayer-book prescribed in the former 
 Act of Uniformity (Elizabeth's Act of 1559). The older 
 Puritans had often maintained that it was the only legal 
 standard ; that they were prosecuted by bishops and 
 brought before the Star Chamber for not conforming to a 
 later prayer-book, the use of which had never been 
 legalised, but simply imposed on arbitrary authority. If 
 the original copy of Edward VL's book could be found, 
 it was to be annexed to the Bill, and made once more 
 the standard of uniformity. It was not found. Probably 
 even a printed copy was not easily procurable. Accord- 
 ingly there was appended to the Bill a printed copy of 
 the prayer-book of 1604, Elizabeth's prayer-book, with 
 the slight alterations made by James I., after the Hampton 
 Court Conference. This bore none of the Laudian 
 impress of later editions ; and from this the Commons 
 struck out two prayers.
 
 76 Baxter 
 
 60. Uniformity. 
 
 Sent to the Upper House on loth July 1661, the 
 Uniformity Bill was not read there a first time till 14th 
 January 1662. Tliis was due to the prorogation; but, in 
 spite of the frequently expressed impatience of the 
 Commons, the subsequent progress of the Bill was slow. 
 It has been held that the Lords were reluctant to pass the 
 Bill. Doubtless some of them were ; but this was not 
 the main reason of the delay. The Lords were deter- 
 mined to wait till Convocation had completed a new 
 revision of the prayer-book, that they might make this 
 new revision, not the old prayer-book, the standard of uni- 
 formity. If some of them thought the Commons would 
 not swallow the new book, they were entirely mistaken. 
 Absolute uniformity was far more important in the eyes 
 of the Commons than this prayer-book or that. King 
 Edward's, for choice ; Elizabeth's, as that was not forth- 
 coming. Sooner than lose the Bill, let it be the Con- 
 vocation's book, and have done with it. So the prayer- 
 book, exactly as it had passed the Convocation, was 
 adopted by both Houses without debate. The Commons 
 resolved that they had an inherent right to discuss, if 
 they pleased, the alterations made in Convocation. This 
 right they did not exercise. Even a slip of the pen, 
 detected in the Commons, was not rectified without the 
 express authority of Convocation, when the correction 
 was made with due solemnity by three bishops at the 
 clerk's table in the Lords. 
 
 As to the general attitude of the Lords, it is true that 
 on some points they were averse to the stringency of the 
 uniformity insisted on by the Commons. But the firm- 
 ness of the Commons prevailed ; the Lords gave way in 
 every particular. The statement that, after all, the Bill 
 was only carried by six votes, is due to a misapprehension. 
 There was no division at all on any reading of the Bill in 
 either House. Divisions were taken only on amend-
 
 Baxter ^7 
 
 ments in committee. The majority of six carried the 
 resolution against discussing the work of Convocation. 
 
 The Act of Uniformity received the Royal Assent on 
 19th May 1662, and was to take effect on the Feast of 
 St. Bartholomew, a speedy date fixed by the Lords. It 
 anticipated the Michaelmas tithe, and left no time for the 
 new prayer-book to reach most parts of the country, for 
 the book did not in fact issue from the press till a few 
 days before 24th August. 
 
 61. Puritan Objections, 
 
 The objections of the Puritans to the provisions of 
 the Act may be reduced to these three'heads : 
 
 (a) Necessity of Episcopal Ordination. This, for 
 example, was Philip Henry's leading objection; it was 
 the main objection also of Henry Newcome. It did not 
 touch Baxter, who, as we have seen, was episcopally 
 ordained. In Cheshire and Lancashire, George Hall, 
 then bishop of Chester, made the reception of episcopal 
 ordination as obnoxious as possible. Bramhall, the Irish 
 primate, had won many Presbyterians by devising a form 
 for orders in which he simply professed to supply any 
 canonical deficiency. Hall insisted that Puritan incum- 
 bents, applying for orders, should set their hands to the 
 words : ' I renounce my pretended letters of ordination.' 
 
 {b) Rejiunciation of the League and Covenant as in 
 itself an unlawful oath. Let it be remembered that less 
 than twenty years before, this Covenant had been sub- 
 scribed by whole parishes up and down the country. 
 We speak sometimes of non-subscribing congregations, a 
 meaningless distinction in these days, when no congrega- 
 tions subscribe, although clergymen do. But during the 
 Civil War, congregations did subscribe ; and all who had 
 done so were henceforth to be charged with the sin of an 
 unlawful oath. Many, even of those who had taken the 
 Covenant, could not in conscience so describe it.
 
 78 Baxter 
 
 Baxter, who had resisted the imposition of the Covenant, 
 could not do this. 
 
 {c) Subscription of assent and consent to all and 
 everything contained in arid prescribed by the new Prayer- 
 book. This was the objection which, in the controversial 
 literature of that period, we find drawn out in every 
 minute detail, even to the point that the Act compelled 
 men to subscribe to a wrong mode of calculating Easter. 
 Needless to say with what voluminous elaboration Baxter 
 set himself to prove the utter impossibility of forcing his 
 conscience, which had revolted against the old subscrip- 
 tion, to accept the new one. One of the most touching 
 things in his account of the parties affected by the Act is 
 his allusion to the Old Conformists, as he calls them ; 
 men who had never been Nonconformists in any sense, 
 who had subscribed to the old prayer-book, and were 
 ready to do so again, but who could not subscribe to the 
 new book, and who therefore went out. 
 
 62. Bel and the Dragon. 
 
 I am afraid it must be admitted that many of the six 
 hundred alterations in the prayer-book were expressly 
 conceived and devised with the express object and de- 
 termination of keeping the Puritans from subscription. 
 Among these alterations is sometimes reckoned the intro- 
 duction of Bel and the Dragon as a Scripture lesson ; its 
 place was changed, but Bel and the Dragon was in the 
 old lectionary, where it figured as Daniel xiv. The 
 animus of the revision is revealed in the saying reported 
 of Sheldon, ' Now we know their minds, we'll make them 
 all knaves if they conform," and in the declaration of 
 another dignitary : ' If we had thought so many of them 
 would have conformed, we would have made it straiter.' 
 Did the past history of that fatal day, black already in the 
 annals of Protestantism, suggest no lesson ? Ninety
 
 Baxter 79 
 
 years before, a papal medal had borne the exulting 
 legend : ' Ugonottorum Strages.' Now a cavalier astro- 
 loger wrote down in his diary, with a merry smile : ' Exit 
 Jack Presbyter.' Had some prescience of the real issue 
 invaded his complacency, he might have described the 
 rending asunder of the religious life of England in terms 
 of a wiser sadness. For if the sorrows of freedom lay 
 heavy for a season on those outside, it was within the 
 Anglican fold that the buiden of evil fell, the weight of 
 evil rested. 
 
 63. Contrast of England and Spain. 
 
 Uniformity in religion, which in this country was the 
 aim of the Tudors, the ideal of Laud, the vain hope of 
 the Restoration Parliament, was in Spain the accom- 
 plished fact of Philip 11. And in Spain we may see 
 what would have been, had the dream of uniformity been 
 realised in our land. A solemn office, dignified and 
 impressive, a stagnant clergy, a grave unemotional pulpit, 
 a people divided between the inherited instincts of the 
 devotee and the mere civility of respect for an ancient 
 national institution : such is the religious condition which 
 Anglicans still deem too sacred to be vexed by the 
 intrusion even of their own apostolical grace, in response 
 to native appeal. Whereas in England, so full of 
 importance and vitality are the modern developments of 
 church organisation, that the older history of religion in 
 the land seems almost to belong to another realm than 
 that in which we live. And the body which was to have 
 absorbed the religious life of the nation is simply, as the 
 Church Times, 3rd August 1894, has quite correctly 
 called it, ' a great provincial Church.' That this is so is 
 in the first instance due to the men who accepted ejec- 
 tion, rather than surrender themselves to a conformity at 
 once hard and hollow.
 
 8o Baxter 
 
 64. Baxter's Farewell to Conformity. 
 
 Baxter, being unbeneficed, preached his farewell 
 sermon on the 25th May, three months before the 
 doomsday specified in the Act. Among his reasons, one 
 was this, that he would let all ministers in England know 
 in good time whether he meant to conform or not. Had 
 he stayed to the last day, he thought it probable some 
 would have conformed, expecting Baxter to do the like. 
 Baxter's farewell to conformity was, therefore, in the 
 nature of a designed manifesto, a call to his brethren, to 
 which the response was the impressive spectacle of the 
 Bartholomew ejections. 
 
 65. Numher of the Ejected. 
 
 As to the resultant number of the Nonconforming 
 clergy of 1662, we have consecrated the figure of 2000, 
 which Calamy says was ' mentioned from the first.' His 
 own volumes record the names of 2465, including after- 
 conformists. Palmer has added others. Neither Calamy 
 nor Palmer is exhaustive. In every county where the list 
 has been tested by modern research, it has been extended. 
 Thus, in Cheshire, Calamy and Palmer give fifty-two 
 names ; Urwick produces authority for sixty-two. For 
 Norfolk and Suffolk, Calamy and Palmer supply one 
 hundred and eighty-two names ; Browne, while removing 
 two (one ejected in another county), adds fourteen, on 
 the authority of ecclesiastical registers. On the whole, 
 Oliver Heywood may be right in estimating those per- 
 manently disabled by the Act of Uniformity at 2500; 
 while Baxter is probably justified in saying that about 
 1800 of them entered on active work in the Nonconformist 
 ministry. 
 
 66. Classification of the Ejected, 
 
 I use the term ' disabled,' for the Nonconformists of 
 1662 fall into three distinct classes, with some sub- 
 divisions, which I here set down, with samples.
 
 Baxter 8i 
 
 {a) Those ousted by the Restoration itself, as holders 
 of sequestered livings of which the incumbents survived 
 to 1660. (a) To this class we have seen that Baxter 
 belonged. Some of these got other livings, and were 
 again ejected under the next head. (/;) To the same 
 class belonged such as Richard Cjilpin (the nominee for 
 the See of Carlisle), though in his case the sequestered 
 incumbent did not claim till 1661. 
 
 [h) Those deprived by the Act of Uniformity, being 
 either {a) beneficed clergymen, or {U) endowed school- 
 masters in 1662. Adam Martindale, Oliver Heywood, 
 and Richard Frankland (whom Manchester College 
 venerates as its founder) are samples of this class, 
 which was far and away the largest. These are the 
 Bartholomeans proper. 
 
 (c) Those not ousted from J)enefices, since they did not 
 hold any in 1662, being ia) discharged lecturers or 
 curates, who, in common with the preceding classes, 
 were disabled from preferment till they conformed; such, 
 for example, were Henry Newcome and Philip Henry. 
 (//) In this class Calamy places a few who, like Increase 
 Mather, were already licensed preachers, but not as yet 
 ordained. 
 
 In making any controversial use of the somewhat 
 ambiguous term ' ejected,' it is necessary to observe very 
 carefully the distinction of these three classes. The term 
 ' silenced ' properly applies to all, at least in the intention 
 of the law, which proposed to prohibit them from any 
 further exercise of their ministry. 
 
 67. Their Ecclesiastical Politics. 
 
 It may be useful to say a word on the classification of 
 the Ejected (as, with this explanation, I shall now call 
 them) in another respect, namely, with reference to their 
 ecclesiastical position. What were they ? Moderate 
 Episcopalians ? Presbyterians ? Congregationals .'' The 
 
 F
 
 S2 Baxter 
 
 very few ejected Anabaptists, all of them, I think, ousted 
 at the Restoration, we need not specially deal with. 
 
 It is impossible to meet this question intelligently, if 
 we fail to call to mind the previous history of the Puritan 
 party under the Commonwealth, with which I have 
 already attempted to deal. The great point to be 
 remembered is that, as in 1641 the main body of 
 English Puritans was willing to adopt Ussher's scheme 
 of modified Episcopacy, so in 1660 this was the scheme 
 which they themselves put forward as the basis of a 
 national settlement. Accordingly it seems to me vain, in 
 speaking of the Ejected, to attempt to class them de- 
 nominationally in terms derived from any one of the 
 intermediate series of experiments in church politics. 
 Certainly they did not go out on the ground either of 
 attachment or of antipathy to any theory of church 
 government. Not one of them said, 'I am a Presby- 
 terian, and therefore I cannot conform,' or, ' I am a 
 Congregational, and therefore I cannot conform.' It 
 was not episcopacy which they refused to sanction ; it 
 was the setting up of new, arbitrary, and tyrannical terms 
 of episcopalian conformity which excluded them. Had 
 Charles' October Declaration [i.e., Ussher's scheme) been 
 made law, Baxter thought the whole number of Noncon- 
 formist divines would not have exceeded three hundred. 
 
 68. They wanted Elbow Room. 
 
 Neither had they, I believe, the smallest idea of 
 leading any organised revolt against the established order 
 of things. They must not be confounded with the 
 Separatists (who, even during the Commonwealth, stood 
 aloof from any national church) though eventually they 
 had to make common cause with them. They only 
 wanted elbow room. They believed they had Christ's 
 own mandate to preach his Gospel. Suffer them to do 
 this, and they would interfere neither with the hours of
 
 Baxter 83 
 
 church worship, nor with the organisation of parishes, 
 nor with the duty of every parishioner to communicate at 
 his parish church (unless the corrupt character of the 
 incumbent invalidated to his conscience the ministration 
 of the ordinance). Hence they did not seek to go 
 beyond occasional and subsidiary services, and ' repeti- 
 tions ' on Sunday evenings. Theirs was a home mission, 
 an accessory work for the spiritual benefit of their old 
 flocks. The first exception to this, in London, is only 
 apparent. In 1666, when the city churches were lying in 
 ruins after the Great Fire, the Nonconformists erected 
 temporary wooden preaching places (called tabernacles), 
 in defiance of the law. Thomas Doolittle was bold 
 enough to take the stride from a shed in Bunhill Fields 
 to a permanent brick building in Mugwell Street. This 
 the authorities soon laid hold of, and turned into a Lord 
 Mayor's Chapel. 
 
 69. Baxter against Separation. 
 
 Baxter himself was especially strong, not only at this 
 period, but all the way along to the passing of the 
 Toleration Act, against the formation of Nonconformist 
 churches. He wished to be allowed to preach, he 
 repudiated the idea of holding any pastoral relation. 
 Even after Toleration he declined any pastorate for him- 
 self. He frequented services, and habitually communi- 
 cated, in the established church. At Kidderminster, 
 where his influence was paramount, he restrained all 
 tendency to secede from the parish church, constantly 
 exhorted to unity, and kept back the start of a Noncon- 
 forming congregation for nearly a generation. He held 
 Sheldon's licence to preach in the diocese of London ; 
 his wife fitted up for him a meeting-place, and afterwards 
 built him a chapel. Not suffered to use it himself, he 
 made it available, through Tillotson, for the services of 
 the established church. ' Be it by Conformists,' he said, 
 
 F2
 
 84 Baxter 
 
 ' or Nonconformists, I rejoice that Christ is preached to 
 the people in that parish.' I shall not affirm that all the 
 Ejected were as free of heart as Baxter, in this instance, 
 showed himself to be. But this I say, as a body of men 
 their first thought was for the welfare, the spiritual wel- 
 fare, of the church of their fathers, the church of their 
 baptism, the church of the land they loved. It was fresh 
 and fierce persecution which turned them at length from 
 the attitude of auxiliaries, to the]*position of competitors 
 with the establishment. 
 
 70. The Crown and the Commons. 
 
 In the administration of the Uniformity Act, four 
 distinct policies were, from time to time, resorted to by 
 the authorities. There was the policy of Indulgence, 
 several times renewed on the part of the Crown. By the 
 Commons recourse was had successively to the policies 
 of Enforcement, Comprehension, Toleration. 
 
 Shortly after the coming into effect of the Uniformity 
 Act, namely, on 26th December 1662, Charles issued a 
 declaration of Indulgence, 'so far forth as in us lies, with- 
 out invading the freedom of Parliament.' The policy of 
 the Uniformity Act had been the policy of Clarendon ; that 
 of Indulgence was the policy of Arlington, who died a 
 Papist. And the fear of letting in Popery, by way of an 
 Indulgence, was always present to the Commons. I use 
 the term's Papist and Popery, not because I think them 
 fair, but because I am using the terms of that age ; terms, 
 moreover, which present the old religion in the aspect 
 then most feared, the aspect, namely, of a prospective 
 foreign usurpation. 
 
 In the following February (1663), the Commons 
 addressed the Crown, absolutely declining to ratify any 
 Indulgence, or to tamper with the Uniformity Act. In 
 subsequent years they proceeded to strengthen the out- 
 works of Uniformitv. The Acts against conventicles
 
 Baxter 85 
 
 (1664, 1670) limited under stringent penalties the attend- 
 ance at Nonconformist worship to four persons besides 
 those of the same household. I'he Oxford Act (1665) 
 prohibited residence by Nonconforming ministers within 
 five miles of their old livings or of any corporation, 
 unless, indeed, they took an oath, as some did, to 
 endeavour no alterations in Church or State. Further, 
 the Act enforcing a eucharistic test for public officials 
 was renewed and extended (1673). 
 
 In vain did Charles recommend to Parliament (loth 
 February 1668) the policy of a general Toleration. In 
 vain did he set the great seal to an Indulgence (i 5th March 
 1672) permitting Nonconformist worship in licensed 
 places. The Lord Keeper, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, is 
 said to have declined to affix the seal to an instrument 
 which contravened the constitution, and it was done by 
 deputy. But the Commons would, on the one hand, 
 permit no dispensing power to mitigate the severity of 
 legislative enactment; on the other hand, they absolutely 
 refused to ' establish schism by a law.' 
 
 71. Puritan Patriotism. 
 
 The restrictive Acts are sometimes regarded as 
 specimens of merely vindictive legislation. It must not 
 be forgotten that they were partly carried, and wholly 
 maintained, in the teeth of the opposition of the Lords, 
 by help of the strongly Protestant attitude of the Non- 
 conformist representaUves in the Commons. The Par- 
 liamentary leader of the Nonconformists was William 
 Love, alderman of London, who sat for the City twenty 
 years (1661-1681), and who in 1673, in the debate on 
 the Test Act, declared, in reference to the system of 
 Indulgence, that ' he had rather go without his own 
 desired liberty, than have it in a way destructive of the 
 liberties of his country, and of the Protestant interest,' add- 
 ing that 'this was the sense of the main body of Dissenters.'
 
 86 Baxter 
 
 Love's pronouncement deserves careful attention, for 
 more reasons than one. It brings up to the surface that 
 steady and resolute undercurrent of self-sacrificing 
 patriotism, without which, as an overpowering motive, 
 the apparently tame endurance of the ejected and perse- 
 cuted Puritans would be, as it has often seemed, wholly 
 unaccountable. Why did they never rise in revolt, as 
 their contemporaries evidently lived in continual expecta- 
 tion of seeing them do .'' I believe the answer is that they 
 had witnessed enough during the Commonwealth of the 
 failure of unconstitutional methods to secure permanent 
 gains of good government. Hence they resolved to rely 
 exclusively on constitutional remedies and bide their 
 time, though the meanwhile was desperately hard and 
 heavy. We may remember Richard Frankland's motto, 
 Libe7-a terra, Hberque animus. Immediately after Love's 
 speech, the Commons remonstrated with Charles on the 
 subject of his recent Indulgence. Charles broke the seal 
 with his own hand, thus voiding the instrument. On the 
 other hand, the Commons at this time (March 1673) 
 passed a Bill for the relief of Nonconformists, but, as it 
 ignored the Roman Catholic case, it was thrown out in 
 the Lords. 
 
 72. The 'Presbyterian Separation.' 
 
 However, the Nonconformist clergy had largely 
 availed themselves of the temporary provisions of the 
 abortive Indulgence of 1672 ; registering themselves, with 
 rare exceptions, under denominational names. Most 
 conspicuous among these exceptions was Baxter, who 
 declined to receive a licence under any designation save 
 that of Nonconformist pure and simple. Some few fol- 
 lowed his example. At least one was licensed as an 
 Episcopalian. The far greater number chose Presby- 
 terian as their designation; I find even some Baptists 
 licensed under this title.
 
 Baxter 87 
 
 From this act of denominational registration Bishop 
 Stillingfleet dates what he calls the ' Presbyterian Sepiara- 
 tion,' and with some reason. Henceforth a number of 
 the Ejected began to ' gather churches,' just as the 
 Separatists, their old enemies, had done before them. 
 How far they did so we do not certainly know. The 
 example of Baxter would probably restrain many. Philip 
 Henry still abstained from holding services at the usual 
 hours of worship. He and his friends were still merely 
 lecturers, not pastors of separated flocks. In Manchester, 
 under the Indulgence, the Nonconformist divines began 
 (29th October 1672), to perpetuate the succession of their 
 ministry by ordination, which, more than any other 
 measure, looks like the formation of a separate com- 
 munion. Baxter, of course, took no part in any such 
 step ; nor had he ever had any hand in ordaining any. 
 Such ordination he held to be valid, and in extraordinary 
 cases justifiable; but it was irregular, since to ordain 
 belonged properly to the bishop, with or without the con- 
 junction of presbyters. On this last point he would not 
 speak confidently. The Anglican ritual, it may be ob- 
 served, prescribes the conjunction of presbyters in the 
 act of manual imposidon ; though in practice this im- 
 portant rubric seems neglected, thus discrediting Anglican 
 ordination in the eyes of a strict Presbyterian. 
 
 73. The Merchants' Lecture. 
 
 A noteworthy consequence of the acceptance of In- 
 dulgence was the establishment (November 1672) of the 
 London Merchants' Lecture at Pinners' Hall. Its pro- 
 jectors were laymen, and it offered a common pulpit to 
 leading divines both of the Ejected and of the older 
 Separatist party. In this joint lectureship Baxter gladly 
 took his part. It fell in with the spirit of the appeal he 
 had made in 1668 to John Owen to bear a share in pro- 
 moting a practical concord and communion between
 
 88 Baxter 
 
 theoretical Presbyterians and theoretical Independents. 
 Unfortunately, Baxter's tenure of the lectureship was not 
 a success in the direction of his wishes. His subtle 
 examination of points of difference excited the temper of 
 debate rather than of forbearance ; while the mediating 
 attitude of his own theology struck opponents as incom- 
 patible with soundness. Popery was the bugbear of the 
 time, and some of the zealots for hyper-Calvinism called 
 cut that, by the moderation of his sentiments in regard to 
 the freedom and power of the human will, Baxter had 
 ' done more to strengthen Popery than any Papists.' 
 
 74. Fresh Persecution. 
 
 That, in proposing his measures of Indulgence, 
 Charles at any rate had the interests of Popery at heart 
 was made plain by his action in 1681. A Bill for Com- 
 prehension of Nonconformists had got into committee in 
 the Commons (i8th November 1680), but was rejected. 
 Thereupon a Bill for relief of Protestant Dissenters from 
 penalties intended for Popish recusants passed both 
 Houses, and was expected to receive the Royal Assent. 
 But on 14th January 1681 Charles prorogued Parliament 
 without taking any notice of this Bill. 
 
 The five following years covered the sorest period of 
 suffering which the Ejected were called to experience. 
 The feeling of the Commons had turned ; but justices 
 looked for their cue, not to the Commons, but to the 
 Court. The repressive laws were put in force with 
 added severity, and with a malignant barbarism which 
 culminated in the baiting of Baxter by Jeffreys in May 
 1685, followed by his eighteen months' incarceration. It 
 would seem that both Charles and James now fostered 
 the persecution of Nonconformists, in the expectation 
 that they might ask, or Parliament offer, a toleration in- 
 clusive of Papists.
 
 Baxter 89 
 
 75. Liberty of Conscience. 
 
 It is not quite easy to see the ground of principle on 
 which many of those who had availed themselves of the 
 Indulgence of Charles, repudiated altogether James' sub- 
 sequent claim (1687) to the exercise of dispensing power. 
 James' determination to find elbow-room, and a little 
 more, for Popery was certainly far more pronounced than 
 anything that could be deduced from Charles' action, 
 save in the way of obvious inference. James proclaimed 
 an unconditional liberty of conscience, and a suspension 
 of all penal laws in matter of religion. And, in the 
 interim, the alleged Popish plot had stimulated the anti- 
 Popery feeling of England to fanatical fury. 
 
 There were Nonconformists, indeed, who saw no new 
 principle involved in the measures of James, as com- 
 pared with those of Charles. Oliver Heywood, who 
 seems really to have understood what Toleration meant, 
 and had no fears about it, thought that the opening of 
 meeting-houses by Roman Catholics would do nothing 
 but good in the long run, though for the moment some 
 weak heads might be taken by their ' fopperies,' as he 
 called them. This was certainly not Baxter's view. The 
 national sentiment, however, was roused against the 
 Declaration, not by the holding aloof of the majority of 
 Nonconformists, but by the action of the seven bishops. 
 
 76. Life of the Ejected. 
 
 What was the life of the Ejected during their period 
 of Paradise Lost, between the Uniformity Act and the 
 legalised Toleration of 1689.? How did they live.? 
 Some of them quitted the ministry altogether, going into 
 trade, medicine, or law. Those who continued their 
 vocation as preachers had to suffer every conceivable 
 species of hardship. Unless they had private fortunes, 
 which was not the case with rnany, they existed in a
 
 90 Baxter 
 
 condition so precarious that, especially in country dis- 
 tricts, they were constantly on the margin of destitution. 
 Royal bounty was extended to them. Charles gave 
 privately sums amounting to a thousand guineas at a 
 time, for distribution through the London brethren. Let 
 it be said to his honour, for it meant much more from 
 a thriftless king than the easy flinging of places to his 
 favourites. Funds were raised also among the wealthy 
 Nonconformist laity, but these were soon spent. 
 Preachers got customary doles from their hearers, a 
 most uncertain provision for immediate necessities ; 
 these were not days of stipulated salaries, however 
 moderate. Baxter fared better than most, and had no 
 family to provide for. In June 1670, he received, 
 through Lauderdale, an offer of preferment in Scotland ; 
 a bishopric, the headship of a college, or a living, at 
 his option. I do not know a letter more perfect in its 
 courteous dignity than the one in which he declines 
 this overture, and simply asks ' the liberty every beggar 
 hath, to travel from town to town,' and ' leave to preach 
 for nothing, and that only where there is a notorious 
 necessity.' In 1672 he rejected a pension. Yet after 
 his wife's death he was often in pitiful straits. It is 
 impossible to read any Nonconformist clerical diary of 
 that age without admiring the faith of men who had 
 to plod their way from shilling to shilling, from bag 
 of corn to bag of peas, the wolf always at one door, 
 the constable at the other, the brave resolution ever 
 choking down despair, and stimulating new trust in 
 God. It should be noted that a very large proportion 
 of the Ejected clergy had sons brave enough to follow 
 them into the Nonconformist ministry ; though some, 
 like Henry Newcome, brought up their sons to the 
 ministry of the Established Church. Of existing claims 
 to lineal derivation from the Nonconformists of 1662, 
 the larger number are based on descent from a clerical 
 ancestor.
 
 Baxter 9 1 
 
 77. Terms of Toleration. 
 
 The surviving Ejected accepted Toleration in 1689 
 on exclusive terms. I do not refer merely to their 
 agreeing to subscribe the Articles (with some specified 
 omissions). For I remember what Philip Henry said, 
 when the Nonconformists of Shrewsbury scrupled at 
 subscription : ' Without a candid construction [the 
 Articles] would somewhat scruple me; so would the 
 Bible itself taken strictly and in the letter, in those 
 places which seem contradictory.' I remember also, 
 that Baxter's published Explication of the sense in 
 which he subscribed the Articles, practically amounted 
 to the upsetting of some of them, and to a suspense 
 of judgment about others. But I refer to the fact that 
 Toleration was accepted on the express condition that 
 Popery should remain without the pale of sufferance, 
 and that the expression of Antitrinitarian views should be 
 placed under the same ban with the practice of Popery. 
 
 78. Baxter on Essentials. 
 
 The mind of Baxter in regard to these disqualifica- 
 tions has been strangely misconceived. He has been 
 cited as an advocate for terms of church communion 
 broad enough to embrace both Papists and Socinians. 
 It is surprising that it should have been imagined that 
 any sound intelligence could have deemed this possible. 
 The opinion is based on the position he took in 1654, 
 when a member of the Committee of Divines entrusted 
 by Parliament with the duty ot defining the fundamentals 
 of religion, as a test for Toleration. At that very time, 
 curiously enough, a proposal for a sweeping comprehen- 
 sion was actually put before him, in private, by Nicholas 
 Gibbon, D.D., whose wish was to ' unite all Christians 
 through the world.' Baxter thought him 'a jugler,' and 
 his scheme ' a Socinian Popery.' Gibbon ultimately
 
 9 2 Baxter 
 
 mended his hand; for in 1663 he added 'the Theist, 
 Atheist, and all mankind ' to his programme of con- 
 ciHation. 
 
 Baxter maintained that ' I believe in God the Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost,' expresses all the essentials, if 
 intelligently held. In matter of public profession he 
 proposed to limit requirements to the Apostles' Creed, 
 the Lord's Prayer, and the Decalogue. It was urged 
 that ' A Socinian or a Papist will subscribe all this.' 
 ' So much the better,' said Baxter. He told the Com- 
 mittee that, if they feared that Papists and Socinians 
 would creep into the church, the right way to deal 
 with them was not by bringing forward some new test 
 which they would not subscribe, ' but by calling them to 
 account, whenever in preaching or writing they contradict 
 the truth to which they have subscribed.' In other words, 
 he proposed to rely, for the purity of the church's 
 doctrine, upon discipline rather than upon subscription ; 
 and the best subscription was that which drew the 
 largest number, by the act of their own voluntary 
 adhesion, within the scope of the discipline of the 
 church. As he puts it in 1664, 'heretics who will 
 subscribe to the Christian faith, must not be punished 
 because they will subscribe to no more, but because they 
 are proved to preach or promote heresy, contrary to the 
 faith which they profess.' His chief opponent on this 
 point in 1654 was Owen; and the same difference of 
 principle came out in his later correspondence with 
 Owen (166S), respecting the terms of an accommoda- 
 tion between the various parties of Nonconformists. 
 Owen admitted that Baxter's plan, as then formulated, 
 would exclude Papists. ' But," said he, ' have you done 
 the same as to the Socinians .■' ' Baxter replied as 
 follows : ' If there be nothing against Socinianism in the 
 Scripture, it is no heresy. If there be, as sure there is 
 enough, and plain enough, judge them by that rule, and 
 make not new ones.'
 
 Baxter 93 
 
 Keenly alive to the ' sin and mischief of using men 
 cruelly in matters of religion,' Baxter was yet firmly 
 persuaded that bounds must be set to the liberty of 
 religious effort. And on every public occasion when 
 the question came up as to the limits of Toleration, 
 Baxter to the end of his days ranked Popery and 
 Socinianism as alike beyond the pale of the sects to 
 which Toleration could be extended. 
 
 79. Errors of Rome. 
 
 I am not aware that he has anything special to say as 
 to the grounds of this exclusion of Socinianism. He says, 
 indeed, that the followers of Bidle 'inclined much to 
 meer Deism and infidelity,' a judgment not founded on 
 their writings. But he makes in 1664 a remarkable 
 confession of a change in his estimate of the errors of 
 Roman Catholics. Originally he had reckoned that their 
 most dangerous mistakes were to be looked for in con- 
 nection with their dogmatic theology. But he had 
 arrived at the conclusion that their ' misunderstanding 
 us, with our mistaking of them,' had 'made the differ- 
 ences in these points to appear much greater than they 
 are, and that in some of them it is next to none at all.' 
 'Great and unreconcilable differences' he still finds; 
 and this in three directions, which he thus specifies : 
 'their church tyranny and usurpations;' 'their great 
 corruptions and abasement of God's worship ; ' ' their 
 befriending of ignorance and vice.' These are strong 
 charges ; but they hardly amount to the allegation of 
 inseparable or irreducible characteristics. And Baxter 
 goes on to say that whereas he had previously endorsed 
 the opinion which he had learned from Perkins, that to 
 be a Papist was to be a reprobate, he now entertained no 
 manner of doubt but that among them God has his 
 children who love him truly. 'And,' he adds, 'I can 
 never believe that a man may not be saved by that
 
 94 Baxter 
 
 religion which doth but bring him to the true love of 
 God and to a heavenly mind and life.' How then, one 
 may say, was it possible for him still and persistently to 
 refuse Toleration to their creed ? The reasons, which 
 with him were conclusive, have just been given. But, 
 before we pass from this matter, there is something to be 
 said, not so much in defence of Baxter's position, as in 
 order to an intelligent appreciation of it. 
 
 80. Meaning of Toleration. 
 
 What was it that, in withholding Toleration from 
 Papists and Socinians, Baxter refused to confer upon 
 them ? We hear the case sometimes, nay often, put thus: 
 ' Every man should be allowed to worship God according 
 to the dictates of his own conscience.' I cannot suppose 
 that Baxter would have denied this. Were this the whole 
 substance of the demand, there would never have been 
 felt any great difficulty in conceding it. So far as I 
 know, the law of the land has never prohibited any man 
 from worshipping God according to the dictates of his 
 conscience. Even the Conventicle Acts expressly re- 
 cognised and ratified this right. They permitted every 
 man to have what worship he pleased within his own 
 household, and to invite four extraneous persons to 
 participate in such worship. But the demand for 
 Toleration meant a good deal more than this, both in the 
 way of relief and of privilege. 
 
 To begin with, Toleration is not reached until, to the 
 right of worshipping God in one's own way, is joined 
 the right of forsaking the established forms. This the 
 Toleration Act expressly guaranteed to certified members 
 of the tolerated bodies ; but to no other person. I have 
 very little doubt that Baxter would have thought it a 
 legitimate thing to summon a Papist or a Socinian to his 
 parish church, for the purpose of receiving religious 
 instruction, by which, presumably, he might be bene-
 
 Baxter 95 
 
 fited. And with all our talk of religious liberty, it is 
 still the law of the land that to attend the services of 
 the Established Church is an obligation, under penalty, 
 upon all who are not members actually resorting to the 
 worship of some tolerated religious body. 
 
 Further, in addition to the individual right of worship, 
 Toleration meant the collective right of propaganda ; the 
 free right of using the press, as well as the pulpit, for the 
 purpose of making proselytes. Toleration is not merely 
 incomplete, it is felt to be futile, unless and until it 
 conveys the whole right of dissemination and extension. 
 Now this Baxter would concede neither to Papists nor to 
 Socinians. It is easy for us in these days to say he 
 should have known better; as we may say that John 
 Locke should have known better, when he proposed 
 similarly to exclude Papists and Atheists. There were, 
 indeed. Independents, of the school of Philip Nye, who 
 would have given liberty to both of Baxter's inadmissible 
 extremes, and who actually complained to him that the 
 refusal to tolerate Papists deprived Protestants of their 
 liberty. 
 
 81. Nonconformist Union. 
 
 The tolerated Nonconformists of 1689 had no sooner 
 received their liberty than they turned their thoughts 
 towards schemes of Union. Most of them by the very 
 terms of the Toleration, were pledged to identity in 
 doctrinal confession. Quakers, it is true, had a special 
 Trinitarian formulary allotted to them, and for the 
 Baptists subscription was diminished by an Article. But 
 the rest of the Nonconformists were put precisely on a 
 par in point of doctrine. Nor were they distinguished 
 by denominational titles, as had been the case under 
 Indulgence. By statute they were all amalgamated 
 under the one designation of Protestant Dissenters. 
 There was already in London, as we have seen, a
 
 96 Baxter 
 
 common lectureship at Pinners' Hall. Its promoters now 
 established (1689) a common fund for the aid of neces- 
 sitous congregations in various parts of the country. 
 This was followed by a project of Union, effected in the 
 following year, of which the terms and conditions, known 
 as Heads of Agreement, were printed in 1691. These 
 terms present a close approximation to those of Baxter's 
 Worcestershire Agreement of 1652. They were drafted 
 by John Howe, who had himself enjoyed some ex- 
 perience of the working of such a union ; for he had 
 been a member (1671-1675) of the Antrim INIeeting, 
 already referred to as a precursor of Baxter's plan. 
 Comparing the London with the Worcestershire scheme, 
 we note these salient points of likeness. The Union was 
 to be purely clerical ; and there was the same effort of 
 comprehension. The names Presbyterian and Congre- 
 gational were to be laid aside. The concert of members 
 was secured by subscription to a doctrinal formulary, the 
 London Union offering a choice among five such. The 
 objects of association were religious exercises, mutual 
 advice, ordination, precisely as in the Worcestershire 
 model. Following the London example, similar Unions 
 were formed in nearly every county in the kingdom. 
 
 It has been too customary to lose sight of this move- 
 ment for Union, to undervalue its importance, and to 
 ignore its permanent effects. In London itself, it is quite 
 true that the Union was short-lived ; it died within four 
 years of its birth. It died because some of the quondam 
 Presbyterians insisted that some of the quondam Inde- 
 pendents went to too great extremes in doctrine, and the 
 Independents retaliated. Baxter himself was within an 
 ace of being the actual destroyer of the London Uuion. 
 He had written a fierce attack on sundry of his brethren 
 for the countenance they apparently gave to 'antinomian' 
 tendencies, which he discovered in the posthumous 
 works of Tobias Crisp. Howe held him back from 
 publishing this paper, and he substituted a milder
 
 Baxter 97 
 
 critique, conciliatory in its personal allusions. Daniel 
 Williams, a younger man, almost the only theoretical 
 Presbyterian of his day, took up the cudgels against 
 antinomianism pretty warmly. Hence the rupture; 
 which Baxter, dying on 8th December 1691, did not live 
 to see. But the Baxter principle of association survived 
 this rupture at headquarters. The Union, though broken 
 in London, endured in the counties. In some cases, as 
 in Lancashire, the county Union was not formed till 
 (1693) after the London breach. From Northumberland 
 to Cornwall, from Cheshire to Norfolk, we find these 
 Unions. At least two of them have maintained a con- 
 tinuous existence to this day, the Exeter Assembly (still 
 purely clerical), and the amalgamated (1764) Assembly 
 of Lancashire and Cheshire (which admitted laymen in 
 1826, and lay delegates in 1856). 
 
 82. Catholicism against Parties. 
 
 In short, the Old Dissent, so far as it had any 
 corporate association, was organised on the Baxter 
 model, never upon Presbyterian lines. And those who, 
 in the latter half of the last century, revived and, as they 
 thought, resumed the Presbyterian name, unquestionably 
 did so because to them it meant Baxterian, in the broad 
 sense of the word. They remembered with what shrewd 
 discrimination Baxter had scanned the four great parties 
 of his day, Erastians, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, In- 
 dependents; how he had found great fault with each, 
 yet owned that each held some peculiar truths by the 
 others overlooked. They recollected that, after making 
 this survey, he had confessed his personal love for a 
 section of his contemporaries who, as he says, ' addicted 
 themselves to no sect or party at all, though the vulgar 
 called them by the name of Presbyterians.' ' I am loth,' 
 he adds, 'to call them a party, because they were for 
 Catholicism against parties. 
 
 G
 
 98 Baxter 
 
 83. Baxter's Calvinism. 
 
 Taken as a divisive appellation, Baxterian, even within 
 the present century, was employed as a term of theo- 
 logical reproach, to denote a kind of halfway house 
 between Calvinism and Arminianism. I cannot here 
 discuss the question, but I have no hesitation in express- 
 ing the conclusion that Baxter's Calvinism differed from 
 that of the Westminster divines, simply by the purity of 
 its adhesion to the original type, unaffected by the anti- 
 Arminian reaction. His Calvinism, like that of the 
 framers of some of the Anglican formularies, admitted, 
 nay insisted, that our Lord by his death had redeemed 
 all mankind ; a position not endorsed by the divines of 
 Dort or of Westminster, yet never without its advocates 
 among holders of Calvinistic doctrine, nor of itself cal- 
 culated to bring Baxter under suspicion of looking in the 
 Arminian direction. What did generate this suspicion 
 was the fact, honourable alike to Baxter's good sense and 
 to his charity, that he was prepared to treat the differences 
 between Calvinist and Arminian not only as fair matter 
 for honest debate and intelligent discussion, but as in- 
 volving hard and deep questions, in attempting to solve 
 which, the disputants on neither side could steer clear of 
 difliculties. The partisan way, of course, is to be very sure 
 of the immaculateness of your own tenet, and especially 
 to be warmly persuaded that your adversary's position is 
 an immoral one; as the Calvinist says of the'Arminian, 
 and the Arminian retorts on the Calvinist. Baxter's way 
 was to abstain from the casting of prejudices, and try the 
 case in the court of argument alone. 
 
 84. Theology and Reason. 
 
 Unquestionably the spirit of Baxter is, in one point of 
 view, the spirit of theological precision. Baxter admired 
 the Syfubolum Quicumque, not indeed for its dogmatism, 
 but for its definition. It appealed to his reasoning
 
 Baxter 99 
 
 faculty ; it satisfied his love of close analysis, subtle dis- 
 tinctions, finely balanced statement. This instance of his 
 satisfaction may to some persons seem grotesque. Yet 
 his sense of the homage due from theology to reason 
 vindicates for Baxter a position of the first moment 
 among the Christian teachers of his time. He is a 
 pioneer in that whole class of studies whose object is to 
 elucidate and demonstrate the reasonableness of Chris- 
 tianity, the precursor of Locke in this respect, as in some 
 others. His work is to substitute the argument of evi- 
 dence and experience for the argument of prescription 
 and authority; and he sets about the collecting and 
 weighing of evidence in a manner the most absolutely 
 frank and candid. 
 
 Take, for illustration, a typical passage, written in 
 1664. 'Among truths, certain in themselves, all are not 
 equally certain unto me. I am not so foolish as to pre- 
 tend my certainty to be greater than it is, merely because 
 it is a dishonour to be less certain ; nor will I, by shame, 
 be kept from confessing . . infirmities which those 
 have, as much as I, who hypocritically reproach me with 
 them. My certainty that I am a man is before my 
 certainty that there is a God. . . My certainty that 
 there is a God is greater than my certainty that He 
 requireth love and holiness of his creature. My certainty 
 of this is greater than my certainty of the life of reward 
 and punishment hereafter. My certainty of this is greater 
 than my certainty of the endless duration of it, and of the 
 immortality of individuate souls. My certainty of the 
 Deity is greater than my certainty of the Christian faith. 
 My certainty of the Christian faith, in its essentials, is 
 greater than my certainty of the perfection and infalli- 
 bility of all the Holy Scriptures. My certainty of that is 
 greater than my certainty of the meaning of many par- 
 ticular texts; and so of the truth of many particular 
 doctrines, or of the canonicalness of some certain 
 books. . . My certainty differeth as the evidences differ. 
 
 G 2
 
 \y 
 
 loo Baxter 
 
 . . And they that have attained to greater perfection 
 and a higher degree of certainty than I, should pity me, 
 and — produce their evidence to help me.' 
 
 85. Baxter's Candour. 
 
 Here speaks a man in whom is no self-deceit. 
 Baxter, in theology, is always the sincere man, never 
 saying anything because it was conventional to do so, 
 never shrinking from saying anything because it was 
 contrary to the text-books. Out of the sincerity of 
 his self-questioning grew his power to make allowance 
 for others ; to gain a clear perception of their difficulties ; 
 to understand, and through understanding, by degrees 
 to respect their spirit. Lithe as a serpent in his swift 
 polemics, he learned at length to bear the olive branch 
 as a dove. ' Greater light,' he confesses, ' and stronger 
 judgment are usually with the reconcilers, than with 
 either of the contending parties.' 
 
 Two of his admissions at this stage are especially 
 worth noting. ' I now see more good, and more evil, in 
 all men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are 
 not so good as I once thought they were, but have more 
 imperfections. . . And I find that few are so bad as 
 [the] . . censorious . . do imagine. . . Even in the 
 wicked usually there is more . . to testify for God and 
 holiness than T once believed there had been.' And 
 again : ' That is the best doctrine . . which maketh 
 men better, . . As the stock of a tree afTordeth timber 
 to build houses and cities, when the small, though 
 higher . . branches are but to make a crow's nest, 
 or a blaze : so the knowledge of God and of Jesus 
 Christ, of heaven and holiness, doth build up the soul 
 to endless blessedness . . when a multitude of school 
 niceties serve but for vain janglings and hurtful diver- 
 sions.
 
 Baxter loi 
 
 86. Spirit of the Ejected. 
 
 In conclusion, the question very naturally and 
 properly arises, how far the broad principles and liberal 
 doctrines of modern Nonconformists can approve them- 
 selves as a trust inherited from Baxter, and his com- 
 panions in ejection. I answer that, in the best of these 
 men, there were germs of enlightened conviction, which 
 time and experience have since fructified to greater 
 issues than were dreamed of in the seventeenth century. 
 Only by slow degrees, for example, did the theology of 
 the tolerated Nonconformists become more intelligently 
 biblical, less anxiously scholastic. Only step by step 
 did the full rights and the true methods of religious 
 liberty become discernible. But if we turn from percep- 
 tions of truth, which are variable, to the formative 
 principles of judgment and conduct, which stand fast 
 in the fidelity of conscience and in the paramount 
 obligation of religious sincerity, then I think that modern 
 liberals, of whatever school, may gratefully own the spirit 
 of the Ejected, as a salt of our English history, which 
 hath not lost its savour.
 
 PRIESTLEY AS A PIONEER IN 
 THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE. 
 
 [Joseph Priestley, born 1733; at Daventry, 1751-55; 
 at Needham, 1755-58; at Nantwich, 1758-61; at 
 Warrington, 1761-67: at Leeds, 1767-73; with Lord 
 Shelburne, 1773-80; at Birmingham, 1780-91; at 
 Hackney, 1791-94; in America, 1 794-1 804 ; died 1804.] 
 
 Synopsis. 
 
 87. Two Sides of Unitarianism. 88. History of 
 Priestley's Mind. 89. Path to Heterodoxy. 90. Con- 
 temporaries Left Behind. 91. Break of Ten Years. 
 92. Socinian Zeal. 93. Religion and the State. 
 94. Organisation of Congregations. 95. Religious 
 Training of the Young. 96. Philosophy of the Human 
 Mind. 97. Controversy with Horsley. 98. Advancing 
 Thought. 99. Influence on Liberal Dissent. 100. 
 Service to Theological Science. loi. Key to the New 
 Testament. 102. Success of the Historic Method. 
 103. Nemesis. 104. Removal to America. 105. Uni- 
 versalism. 106. Dissenting Trusts. 107. Dissenters' 
 Chapels Act. 108. An ' Open Trust' as the Law now 
 stands. 109. Principle at Issue. no. Priestley and 
 Unitarian Chapels. in. The Priestley Spirit. 112. 
 Programme of Studies. 113. Closing Words. 
 
 [Address on opening the session of tlie Unitarian Home Missionary 
 College, 3rd October 1894.]
 
 Priestley 103 
 
 87. Two Sides of Unitarianism. 
 
 Conversing, a short time ago, with an intelligent 
 Roman Catholic, I was gratified to learn that he owned 
 his debt to certain of our authors, though at the same 
 time he expressed himself as repelled by what he found 
 in others. ' Ah,' said he, ' you Unitarians have two 
 sides.' ' Well,' I replied, 'you wouldn't have us as one- 
 sided as your people are, would you ? ' My friend's re- 
 mark was an improved echo of what we have sometimes 
 heard nearer home, namely, that of Unitarians there are 
 two schools ; a preposterous division. In the proper 
 sense of the term school, all Unitarians in this age and 
 country are, so far a$ I am aware, of one school ; for 
 they are practically one in their principles, largely one in 
 their methods, prevailingly one in their spirit (so far as 
 they have got any). It is true, and it would be a sorry 
 state of things were it otherwise, that they vary in their 
 conclusions. And the limits of variation are not so in- 
 considerable that we can bisect the denomination on the 
 score of opinion. For all Unitarians are more or less 
 eclectic; all Unitarians are more or less individual. I 
 do not know, within so small a compass, so large an 
 amount of healthy divergence ; or, on the other hand, so 
 fixed an allegiance to the common principles which 
 justify the individual independence. 
 
 Nevertheless it is the case, as my friend said, that 
 Unitarians have two sides. They have their side of 
 purity (if doctrine and their side of catholicity of fellow- 
 ship. To each they are, in principle, equally committed, 
 and this not of choice; for neither individual men, nor 
 bodies of men, can select their own antecedents, or 
 choose the history of which they are at once the outcome 
 and the continuators. We have indulged ourselves of late 
 in historical reminiscence, perhaps almost to satiety, many 
 of our older congregations having locally commemorated 
 the goodly share taken by their ancestors in that chapel-
 
 I04 Priestley 
 
 erecting period, which owed its stimulus and its protec- 
 tion to the Toleration Act of 1689. Let me be permitted, 
 for it is very pertinent to my purpose, to avail myself 
 once more of the assistance afforded by the anniversary 
 spirit, and recalling to your recollection these two facts, 
 that the year of grace 1894 is the centennial of the exile 
 of Priestley, and is also the jubilee of the Dissenters' 
 Chapels Act, let me find warrant for a study of the two 
 sides of Unitarianism, in the career of a great man and 
 the story of a memorable measure. Fearing it may prove 
 a dry piece of disquisition, I have put a few pins and 
 needles into it, just to keep attention awake. 
 
 88. History of Priestley's Mind. 
 
 The history of Priestley's mind exhibits, within the 
 stretch of a single biography, the mental pilgrimage of 
 our denomination. By 1794 the history of Priestley's 
 scientific exposition was practically concluded. He was 
 then a little over sixty years of age. The shock of his 
 expulsion from Birmingham, three years before, had 
 affected him, I think, far more deeply than he was him- 
 self aware. It left him capable still of a rich abundance 
 of industrious investigation, but it was investigation on 
 the old lines, and with a little new movement of origin- 
 ating genius. This is curiously the case with his scientific 
 activity, fertile as this was in persistent and valuable 
 experiment to his latest day. He reminds us of the al- 
 chemists of old, who sought the philosopher's stone and 
 found chemistry, and did not know what they had found. 
 In looking for his imaginary ' phlogiston ' he had come 
 upon his capital discovery, which makes the ist of 
 August 1774 a turning point in the development of 
 modern science. He lived to see the whole scientific 
 world interpreting his work, under the guidance of
 
 Priestley 105 
 
 Lavoisier, as the dispersion of phlogistic dreams, and the 
 opening of a new era in chemistry. Refusing to be con- 
 vinced of the gist of his own discovery, to the last he 
 toiled hard to demonstrate that he had indeed obtained 
 ' dephlogisticated air,' though the Frenchman perversely 
 called it oxygen, and thought it an element in the com- 
 position of water. His theological activity was spread 
 over a much longer period than that occupied by his 
 chemical labours, which did not begin till his thirty-fifth -y 
 year. And at that age he had already advanced further 
 in theological heresy than any contemporary English 
 divine. 
 
 89. Path to Heterodoxy. 
 
 Bred in a family of Nonconformists by conviction, 
 for his grandfather was a Churchman, and principally 
 owing his Christian training to a relative whose Calvinism 
 was as sound as the charity of her religious heart was 
 expansive, he began his life in the bosom of a robust and 
 wholesome Puritanism. His first religious difficulty was 
 one which does not appear to disconcert Mr. Gladstone, 
 the difficulty, namely, of experiencing a due compunction 
 for his personal share in the guilt of Adam's transgres- 
 sion. Finding that he could not 'feel a proper repent- 
 ance ' for man's first act of disobedience, he came to the 
 conclusion that this primal sin was not, of itself, sufficient 
 to doom the human race to 'the pains of hell for ever.' 
 And as this seemed ' not quite orthodox,' he was rejected 
 a communicant by the sturdy Calvinistic elders who 
 ruled the local Independent church, still, I believe, one 
 of the largest in Yorkshire. His eyes were further 
 opened by the chance visit to Heckmondwike of an 
 unsuccessful candidate for the vacant pulpit, John 
 Walker, a native of Ashton-under-Lyne, a convert from
 
 ic6 Priestley 
 
 the Establishment, and a pupil of Doddridge. ' Ah, 
 Walker," he said, when they met again, on the eve of 
 Priestley's departure for America, 'Ah, Walker, it was 
 you that first led me asiray from the paths of orthodoxy.' 
 Yet Walker was heretical only in being strictly conserva- 
 tive. He was a Calvinist of the primitive type ; not the 
 type created by the reaction against Arminianism, and 
 crystallised in the confession of the Westminster divines ; 
 but the type presented in the Anglican formularies, and 
 revived among Nonconformists by Baxter. It was, how- 
 ever, but too true that the original Calvinism, before it 
 was mended and moulded by the Dutch divines at Dort, 
 offered but an imperfect resistance to the Arminian 
 attack. Thus Walker, though no Arminian, became the 
 cause of Arminianism in Priestley. Hence it was im- 
 possible for him to comply with the entrance test exacted 
 of all students in Zephaniah Marryatt's London Academy 
 at Plasterers' Hall, to which his relatives were anxious to 
 consign him. He went, therefore, to Daventry (175 1), 
 as an Arminian and a believer in free will ; he came 
 out of it an Arian in theology, and in philosophy a 
 determinist. 
 
 This was not the fault of Ashworth, his family 
 connection and divinity tutor, who ' was earnestly de- 
 sirous to make ' him ' as orthodox as possible.' But 
 there was a sub-tutor, Clark, of another turn of mind ; 
 and there was plenty of free discussion in class and out 
 of it, the lectures having ' often the air of friendly con- 
 versations.' Be it noted that both tutors were pupils of 
 Doddridge, and by him selected for tutorial office. 
 There was no other Academy in the country marked by 
 similar interchange of thought. In the upshot, Priestley, 
 though a favourite with Ashworth, ' saw reason to 
 embrace what is generally called the heterodox side of 
 almost every question.'
 
 Priestley 107 
 
 90. Contemporaries left behind. 
 
 The mild and, in the main, conservative type of 
 heterodoxy, brought from the studies and discussions of 
 their academic period, was for many, nay most, of 
 Priestley's contemporaries the furthest reach of theo- 
 logical speculation which they were able to attain. For 
 Priestley, it was the starting point, whence his own ideas 
 developed in quick succession. Settled in his first 
 charge, he at once exhibited the resolve to be entirely 
 free, and the determination to make a good use of his 
 freedom. He never qualified under the Toleration Act, / 
 
 since this involved a doctrinal subscription. I have 
 never qualified ; and, as the law now stands, it is open to 
 Mr. Beard, or any other magistrate, to require me in 
 writing to do so, and, if I fail, I am prohibited from 
 teaching in any religious assembly, under a penalty of 
 not more than £10, or less than los., for each occasion. 
 He declined an annual subsidy, which would have 
 improved his handsome stipend of ^^30 a-year, as he 
 ' did not choose to have anything to do with the Indepen- 
 dents.' What did this mean.? In London there were 
 two funds which made grants to ministers of smaller 
 congregations, one known as the Presbyterian, the other 
 as the Congregational Fund. Neither fund raised any 
 question about church government ; but while the 
 managers of the former were satisfied with the recom- 
 mendation of neighbouring ministers, those of the latter 
 expected some personal assurance of a man's doctrinal 
 position. Their nominal standard was the Assembly's 
 catechism, a manual originally drawn up for ' such as 
 are of weaker capacity.' They asked for no subscription, 
 nor were their requirements very rigid, but they did need 
 a personal avowal of ' evangelical sentiments.' And 
 Priestley was determined to be hampered in his course 
 neither by the doctrines of the State nor by the senti- 
 ments of trustees. This was in 1755, and the date
 
 io8 Priestley 
 
 deserves commemoration. To Priestley's action in that 
 year is due, as its ultimate result, the ostracism of Uni- 
 tarianism, as not belonging to the fellowship of Evan- 
 gelical Dissent. 
 
 The vigour and the pace of his theological advance 
 were in many respects surprising. During his three years 
 of patient obscurity at Needham Market, while he left 
 untouched the problem of the person of Christ, he ran 
 ahead of all the Arians of his day. He became as un- 
 orthodox on the Atonement as a certain great statesman 
 is now. He rejected the inspiration of the Sacred Text ; 
 maintained that there is no such thing as direct divine 
 action upon the human soul ; and criticised the reason- 
 ings of the Apostle Paul in a manner which took away 
 the breath of that most learned of Independents, 
 Nathaniel Lardner. Lardner was with him on the 
 Atonement, and beyond him in the matter of Arianism ; 
 but to question the dialectic of an Epistle was, with 
 Lardner, to endanger the foundations. Publish your 
 essay, said Kippis, ' under the character of an unbeliever.' 
 Little did he understand the man when he thus advised 
 him. From first to last Priestley wrote and wrought as a 
 believer. There was no reserve of scepticism in the 
 frank sincerity of his mind. His attitude towards the 
 religion of Jesus Christ was void of any trace of am- 
 biguity. With him it was a primary conviction that to 
 test Christianity by reason could only free it from alloy ; 
 its purity regained, its supremacy was assured. 
 
 91. Break of Ten Years. 
 
 For ten years after leaving Needham, Priestley had 
 no time for theology. He had tried to get away to 
 Sheffield, but the magnates of the Upper Chapel thought 
 him 'too gay and airy.' So he migrated to Cheshire. 
 At Nantwich he was teaching all day, from seven in the 
 morning till seven at night. At Warrington, as he was
 
 Priestley 109 
 
 afflicted with a hereditary stammer, they set him to teach 
 rhetoric ; but he struck out a Une of his own, converting 
 a tutorship in the belles lettres into a chair of constitutional 
 history. 
 
 92. Socinian Zeal. 
 
 At Leeds he was once more free for experiment and 
 for speculation. His old friend Lardner had just died ; 
 and it was due to this circumstance, I have little doubt, 
 that Priestley now took up with reverent interest a certain 
 famous Letter on the Logos, which Lardner had kept by 
 him for nine-and-twenty years, and had published at last 
 under the cautious veil of the anonymous. A careful 
 study of this piece abated the wonder he had formerly 
 shared at the conclusions reached by John Seddon, of 
 Manchester, who lived long enough to be made aware 
 that Priestley loo had become ' what is commonly called 
 a Socinian.' 
 
 Priestley was never one of those persons who fuss 
 and fret about names. There are Unitarians who make 
 themselves quite unhappy about these little points. 
 When Agrippa sneered at St. Paul, flinging upon him 
 the new-fangled name Christian, the invention of the wits 
 of Antioch : 'I sincerely wish I could make your majesty 
 one, without more ado, and then there might be a gaol 
 delivery,' replied the ready Apostle, for once reasoning 
 right. So when Priestley fell among Socinians, it did 
 not occur to him to split hairs about the term. Pie 
 rejoiced in the truth he had got. He hailed Joshua 
 Toulmin's proposal to write a life of Socinus ; not 
 wanting a critical life, but one ' calculated to give a 
 favourable idea of his principles, and to inspire the luke- 
 warm freethinkers among us with a greater zeal for truth, 
 and more serious endeavours to promote it.' He issued 
 his Appeal to the Serious and Candid Professors of 
 Christianity (1770), the most successful of his tracts.
 
 I lo Pi-iestley 
 
 How much we owe to that Appeal it is difficult to say. 
 It was the first of all our popular tracts, clear, plain, 
 simple and weighty; and it is by no means obsolete. 
 Written for a practical purpose, to stem the tide of 
 Methodism, which was washing away many Dissenting 
 congregations, in a few years 30,000 copies of it were 
 printed, 'which,' says an opponent, 'with unparalleled con- 
 trivance he has caused to be spread over, I believe, most 
 parts of England.' He started the Theological Reposi- 
 tory, an intermittent magazine of biblical research, con- 
 ducted on the broadest lines. Any scholar who could 
 write a good paper was offered a place in its pages ; from 
 the Roman Catholic to the Deist, all were welcome. 
 And this was no mere superficial courtesy. ' If I be in 
 company,' he said, ' with truth and good sense, I always 
 think myself in good company, whoever else be of the 
 same party' {Works iv. 253). I know no man, equally 
 sure of his own opinions, who was more ready to respect 
 the honest opinions of others, or more anxious to bring 
 out, for the common good, all they had in their minds. 
 You would, perhaps, hardly have surmised that he would 
 write of St. Thomas Aquinas, 'it is probable that the 
 world never produced a greater man' [ib. iv. 201); but 
 you might have guessed that while Lardner, Kippis, and 
 all the great Dissenting leaders, were. afraid of conceding 
 liberty to Roman Catholics, Priestley argued, without the 
 slightest misgiving, for their complete emancipation. 
 
 93. Religion and the State. 
 
 During his Leeds period came the successive applica- 
 tions on the part of the Established and the Dissenting 
 clergy for relief from subscription. Priestley was no 
 advocate for what is called a ' national ' church ; and ] 
 was ' for increasing the number of sects, rather than ( 
 diminishing them.' At the same time he wished to see 
 existing establishments reformed rather than dissolved.
 
 Priestley in 
 
 In this spirit he advised Lindsey, on the failure of the 
 apphcation for relief, not to resign ; but to defy the law 
 within the Establishment, as he himself defied it outside ; 
 to alter his prayer-book, as several churchmen did, and 
 wait till he was ejected, which he thought unlikely to 
 happen. When, however, Lindsey resigned his benefice 
 (just after Priestley left Leeds), he acknowledged his 
 friend's ' better judgment,' and heartily endorsed his 
 plan of initiating a new religious movement under the 
 Unitarian name. As for the Dissenting petition for relief, 
 he thought it a paltry endeavour. It did not demand the 
 removal of Dissenting subscription, but the modification 
 of its terms. ' You have hitherto,' he writes in a striking 
 pamphlet (1773), 'preferred your prayer as Christians; 
 stand forth now as men, and ask at once for the repeal 
 of all the penal laws which respect matters of opinion.' ^ 
 ( Works xxii. p. 442.) However, on the principle that a 
 first step is a move towards a second, he did consent to 
 sign the petition. ' If we be compelled to believe only 
 thirty-four and a half instead of thirty-five and a half of 
 the thirty-nine Articles, something will be gained, and we 
 shall have one evil less to complain of; and if we thus 
 move on at the rate of an Article, or only half an Article, 
 a year, the years will count more pleasantly than they 
 have done.' {ib. p. 455). 
 
 94. Organisation of Congregations. 
 
 It was in Leeds that Priestley began to prove his power 
 in the constructive work of church building. In principle 
 he was a thorough Independent, more thorough than the , 
 Independents, with whom he chose to have nothing to 
 do. He upheld the absolute autonomy of the particular / 
 congregation ; with a high ideal of the duty of each con- 
 gregation to maintain the character of a living church. 
 The decay of church organisation, the neglect of the 
 sacraments, the disuse of catechising, deeply concerned
 
 112 Priestley 
 
 him. He revived among liberal Dissenters the spirit of 
 congregational cohesion, protesting earnestly against the 
 substitution of a mere pulpit for a church. His account 
 of the contemporary discharge of the ministerial office 
 reminds one of a piece of satire ascribed to Thomas 
 HoUis, when asked what was the difference between 
 orthodox and liberal Dissenters. ' Well,' he said, ' you 
 know what Strickland Gough says of the orthodox Dis- 
 senters : they worship God for twenty minutes, and 
 dictate to men for sixty.' 'And are the liberal Dissenters 
 any better } ' ' Not much,' said Hollis ; ' they dictate to 
 God for twenty minutes, and worship men for sixty.' 
 Priestley organised his congregations, to some extent at 
 Leeds, still more thoroughly in Birmingham, laying his 
 plans before them, and being rewarded by the heartiness 
 of their adoption. He liked the old titles of elders and 
 deacons ; but would give to these officers only advisory 
 powers, all measures requiring the confirmation of ' the 
 people at large.' His great point was this (and here his 
 Independency came into collision with the relics of 
 Presbyterian feeling), that a congregation should be so 
 organised internally that all its work and all its duties 
 should go on naturally when, for any reason, the services 
 of a regular minister were not available. ' It was suffi- 
 cient for Christianity to have been first established by 
 miracles ; it must now support itself by its own evidence, 
 and by the wise constitution of churches.' If a minister 
 were ill, or needed a holiday, he thought it mere super- 
 stition to engage the services of another minister, or close 
 the doors. His plea for the maintenance of services by 
 the members themselves, with the assistance of printed 
 sermons, is amusing. ' I am far from denying the use of 
 . . ministers. . . I wish there were more than there 
 are. . . For living instructors are in many respects pre- 
 ferable to dead ones. But the living instructions of dead 
 men are certainly preferable to none. What are the 
 Scriptures but the writings of men who are now dead .? '
 
 Priestley 113 
 
 I may add that his chief objection to extempore preach- 
 ing was, that its range would be narrow if it were made 
 the rule ; extempore prayer he preferred. Of his own 
 preaching a good judge remarked, ' His voice and man- 
 ner are those of one friend speaking to another.' 
 
 95. Keligious Training of the Young. 
 
 He educated his fiock by means of graduated classes 
 for systematic religious training, in which he was not the 
 mere preceptor driving in doctrine, but the patient and 
 sympathetic pastor, with an ear for every difficulty, and a 
 welcome for every expression of young minds. Here is 
 the account of his method, rendered by one who never 
 adopted his opinions, and who had dropped in, one Sun- 
 day afternoon, having heard that he was a ' deluded 
 visionary.' It illustrates not merely his pains, but his 
 irresistible personal charm. ' When we entered the place, 
 we found a man of about the middle stature, slenderly 
 made, remarkably placid, modest and courteous, pouring 
 out, with the simplicity of a child, the great stores of his 
 most capacious mind to a considerable number of young 
 persons of both sexes, whom, with the familiarity and 
 kindness of a friend, he encouraged to ask him questions, / 
 either during the lecture or after it, if he advanced any- ' 
 thing which wanted explanation, or struck them in a 
 light different from his own. The impression made upon 
 us was so strong that we never failed afterwards to attend 
 . . in order to profit by his lessons. . . He was the 
 most unassuming, candid man I ever knew ; and 
 never did I hear from his lips . . one illiberal senti- 
 ment or one harsh expression.' (Rutt i. 162.) 
 
 Young men who are eager for work, may think of 
 this : Priestley, at the age of sixty, conducted three classes 
 of this kind every Sunday, besides his public service. I 
 remember one of his old catechists, a man rude of speech. 
 ' The curse of sham Sunday schools,' he said, 'had not 
 
 H
 
 114 Priestley 
 
 then blighted onr congregations ; we did not rush forth, 
 to sit like boobies among a pack of outsiders, having 
 nothing to teach them.' This obsolete calumny was 
 uttered by a laudator temporis acti, between thirty and 
 forty years ago ; I repeat it, simply as witnessing to the 
 emphatic impression, left by Priestley's work, that the 
 best service a congregation can render to society is the 
 efficiency of its internal life and training. But I must add 
 that Priestley was an earnest promoter of Sunday schools, 
 of the type in vogue in his day, namely, for giving 
 elementary education to those who had no week-day 
 opportunities. Now, I do not think this account of his 
 organising side is a digression from my theme. Theo- 
 logical science with Priestley was for practical use, and 
 not for intellectual curiosity. Theology was valuable to 
 him as the purified thought of a living church. 
 
 96. Philosophy of the Human Mind. 
 
 Six years at Calne and London, as librarian and 
 literary companion to Lord Shelburne, gave him leisure 
 to complete his philosophy of the human mind. Here 
 his great master was Hartley, whose Observations on 
 Man (1749) he ranked next to the Bible. From Hartley 
 he had got his determinism, based on the doctrine of 
 the association of ideas. He called his psychology by 
 the name of materialism, which is a little misleading, 
 for he had adopted, from Boscowich, the theory that 
 matter consists but of points of force. As Channing in- 
 terprets him, he changed matter ' from a substance into 
 a power.' His resultant doctrine of the homogeneity of 
 man was execrated as atheism. Yet surely to affirm that 
 the Creator of all can elevate physical force to thinking 
 power, is to raise rather than to depress the conception 
 of the marvels of omnipotence. A Welsh poet, David 
 Davis, distrusting the resources of that heavenly language, 
 though he had produced in it a version of Gray's Elegy
 
 Priestley 115 
 
 which Welshmen think far superior to the original, 
 penned an inscription for Priestley's coffin, in what he 
 seems to have mistaken for English rhyme : 
 
 ' Here lie at rest, 
 In oaken chest, 
 
 Together packed most nicely, 
 The bones and brains, 
 Flesh, blood, and veins. 
 
 And soul of Dr. Priestley.' 
 
 Priestley is said to have been ' much pleased ' with 
 this composition ; he was himself a poet. His doctrine 
 of the functional origin of the soul, while not entirely 
 new, had never before, I think, been advanced by a 
 divine. But its consequence, the sleep of the soul 
 between death and the resurrection, had been advocated 
 on independent grounds, not merely by sundry Fathers 
 of the church, but by such respectable modern authorities 
 as Luther, Milton, Dodwell, and Edmund Law, and was 
 no uncommon opinion among Priestley's contemporaries. 
 Bishop Hampden, of Hereford, was, I believe, the last 
 prominent divine who upheld it. It is still an article of 
 faith with some of the minor sects, e.g., the Christa- 
 delphians. 
 
 97. Controversy with Horsley. 
 
 Priestley's Birmingham ministry was distinguished by 
 his eight years' controversy with Horsley, in which the 
 archdeacon was the aggressor. Horsley's father had 
 been a Dissenting minister; his mother, a Scottish Presby- 
 terian. He was, with Priestley, a fellow of the Royal 
 Society, and they had already come, amicably enough, 
 into controversy on the doctrine of necessity. Their 
 greater controversy arose out of Priestley's History of the 
 Corruptions of Christia^iity (1782), and culminated in 
 his History of Early Opinions concerning fesus Christ 
 (1786), to which Dr. Martineau has assigned a place on 
 
 H 2
 
 1 1 6 Priestley 
 
 'the choicest shelves of every theological library,' and 
 which Horsley, with great wisdom, never read. It is 
 remarkable, that Horsley's own theology had grown by 
 a process the exact reverse of Priestley's. Butler's 
 Analogy (1736) had convinced him that there are 
 mysteries in religion ; the first he accepted was the 
 Atonement ; then followed the pre-existence of Christ ; 
 at length the Platonists brought him, as he says, ' to 
 a right mind;' and he Vvas converted into 'a firm and 
 decided Trinitarian ' by perusing that heretical master- 
 piece, Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Triftity (171 2), 
 though he candidly owns that he does not recommend 
 the book as likely to have the same effect on others. 
 
 As a pure polemic, Horsley was beyond question by far 
 the stronger man. No controversialist, or would-be con- 
 troversialist, can afford to neglect the study of Horsley's 
 marvellous Tracts (1789 ; cf. pp. iv, 88, loi, 233). Yet 
 when we have a polemic who declines, as Horsley did, 
 to enter on the main argument, and deliberately avows it 
 as his one purpose to ' destroy ' his adversary's ' credit, 
 and the authority of his name,' we are fully prepared to 
 find, as indeed is the case, that a triumph of brilliant and 
 commanding style, of matchless sarcasm, and of micro- 
 scopic critical pungency, carries with it no victory of 
 temper or of substance. ' His point is the antiquity and 
 the truth of the Unitarian doctrine ; mine is Dr.- Priestley's 
 incompetence.' Certainly Horsley demonstrated that 
 Priestley's mind, impervious to Platonic ideas, was, so 
 far, not constructed for a sympathetic estimate of the 
 theology of the Greek Fathers. His repugnance to their 
 underlying philosophy may be proof of the limits of his 
 mental digestion ; at the same time it sharpened his 
 sensitiveness to the introduction of a new and foreign 
 element in the patristic exposition of the Gospel. 
 Horsley had twitted him with being in Platonism ' a 
 child.' ' This does not, I hope,' responded Priestley, 
 * prevent me from being a man in Christianity.'
 
 Priestley 1 1 y 
 
 I do not commend him as a tactical controversialist. 
 He took his tone, invariably, from his opponent for 
 the time being; hence to the froward he sometimes 
 showed himself froward. In reply to Horsley, he was, 
 perhaps, too eager to lling back the nonsensical 
 charge of incompetence. Yet I confess I enjoy his 
 attitude. The calm imperturbability of his smiling in- 
 sistance, unfaltering and unflagging, was something new 
 in a Dissenting scholar ; and we need not wonder that it 
 upset the equanimity of the mighty Gibbon, as well as of 
 the owners of episcopal wigs, little used to be told that 
 they had much to learn. Even better than his determina- 
 tion to teach was his constant readiness to be a learner 
 himself. 
 
 98. Advancing Thought. 
 
 Controversy is very often hurtful to him who engages 
 in it, as tending to fix his mind in positions from which 
 \).\s amour propre forbids him to retreat. But Priestley 
 had no self-love of this kind. Controversy did him 
 service ; it quickened instead of retarding the frankness 
 of his investigation, and the advance of his thought. 
 Those eight years of intellectual activity, under virulent 
 attack, were not years of anxious self-defence, they were 
 years of progressive theological development. Lindsey 
 was alarmed by Priestley's rapid strides. For what did 
 he come to ? He rejected the doctrine of the Virgin 
 birth as without historical basis. He expressed the con- 
 viction that the place of Christ's nativity was Nazareth. 
 He reached the jjosition that onr Lord was neither 
 naturally impeccable nor intellectually infallible, had 
 been under illusion respecting demoniacal possession, 
 had misconceived the import of certain of the prophecies, 
 and had sometimes recommended indisputable truths by 
 halting arguments. As for the doctrine that Christ made 
 the world, he saw no good proof of its apostolic origin;
 
 1 1 8 Priestley 
 
 but if otherwise, inasmuch as it was certainly no part of 
 Christ's own Gospel, he did not think we should be 
 * under any obligation to believe it, merely because it was 
 an opinion held by an Apostle.' ( ^'orks vi. 40.) What- 
 ever we may think of some of these conclusions, or any 
 of them (I am their chronicler, not their apologist), the 
 fact that they were enunciated by Priestley over a hundred 
 years ago, illustrates the extraordinary span of his mental 
 history. We are a long way from the theology of the 
 puritan household. Save in his tenacious adhesion to 
 the literal verity, and evidendal value, of the miraculous 
 element in the biblical narratives, and in his conservative 
 estimate of the dates and authorship of biblical books, 
 there is scarcely a point on which the most independent 
 of modern scholars can pride himself on having advanced 
 beyond the outposts of Priestley. The conception of a 
 Christianity without miracle hardly presented itself to his 
 mind ; though in a striking passage, he declares that, all 
 miracle apart, the life and teaching of Christ is ' so great 
 a thing . . that it could not but have been inspired 
 by God.' {ib.^\\. 213.) Pie never claims his as 'the 
 only view in which Christianity is credible . . but 
 as that in which it is by far the most credible.' 
 Further, he repeatedly maintains that religion itself is 
 but a means to an end, that end being the love of virtue 
 for its own sake, and affirms that, 'provided the great 
 end be gained . . the means are of no farther value.' 
 {ib. xvi. 24, 372.) 
 
 99. Influence on Liberal Dissent. 
 
 It is plain that he struck even the traditional liberals 
 of his day as a highly dangerous innovator. We plume 
 ourselves with a happy tradition of open-mindedness 
 attaching to the Presbyterian section of English Dissent. 
 I do not forget the splendid services of John Taylor, the 
 last of the Puritan schoolmen, and the coryphaeus of an
 
 Priestley 1 1 9 
 
 enlightened and influential type of conservative Arianism. 
 Nor do I undervalue the effect in the Midlands of the 
 anonymous writings of Paul Cardale, who became a 
 Socinian about the same time as John Seddon. Vet, on 
 the whole, the Presbyterians had done less for a progres- 
 sive theological science than any other section of Dissent; 
 their main work was in other directions. There is a 
 curious passage, written (1765) while Priestley was still at 
 Warrington, in which he estimates the sects around him, 
 in regard to their probable tolerance of a full latitude of 
 free inquiry. He decides for the Quakers, ' because, 
 different as my opinions are from theirs, I have so much 
 confidence in their moderation that I believe they w-ould 
 let me live, write, and publish what I please, unmolested, 
 among them. A.nd this, I own, is more than I could 
 promise myself from any other body of Christians what- 
 ever; the Presbyterians perhaps least of all.' In a later 
 edition (1771) this severe judgment was modified into 
 ' the Presbyterians by no means excepted.' ( Works xxii. 
 138.) He was not thinking here of men like Richard 
 Price, who, bred in Independency, became the ornament 
 of the Presbyterian name. Sharing not one of Priestley's 
 speculations, Price proved himself his true partner in a 
 common devotion to truth, at once the gentlest of con- 
 troversialists and the warmest of friends. Among 
 Priestley's most disparaging anonymous critics was 
 Percival, the virtual founder of the Manchester Academy. 
 On the other hand, among his staunchest supporters 
 \yere William Turner, of Wakefield, and Newcome 
 Cappe, of York. But it must be admitted that the more 
 conspicuous friends to his theological pursuits were 
 originally outsiders to the Presbyterian body ; men like 
 Lindsey, who represented a whole school of Cambridge 
 divines, and Belsham, who came over from the Indepen- 
 dents. The truth is, Priestley put a new spirit into the 
 community which he joined, and his friends brought new 
 blood into it.
 
 1 20 Pries f ley 
 
 100. Service to Theological Science. 
 
 If you ask me what I should reckon his greatest 
 service to theological science, I should say that it is to be 
 found in his adoption of the historical method of invesli- v 
 gating the problems of doctrine, and in his special 
 handling of that method. The pith of his argument is 
 well given in his letters to Geddes, the Roman Catholic 
 scholar, who, to his honour be it spoken, had thus 
 addressed him : ' I grant that you are a Christian as well 
 as I, and I embrace you as a fellow-disciple in Jesus.' 
 Priestley was the precursor of the modern theories of 
 theological development, though I do not think he used 
 the term. His term was 'corruption,' a term which, it 
 may be said, begs a very important question. At any 
 rate, it throws into strong relief the fact, on which all are 
 agreed, that there is, and must be, some primitive nucleus 
 whence developments proceed. Now it is the object of 
 all who, for any reason, are interested in the origin of 
 Christianity, to reach this primitive nucleus at its first, 
 undeveloped and uncorrupted stage. Where are we to 
 seek it.? By universal consent, we must go to the New 
 Testament. There, if anywhere, we shall come upon its 
 traces. Here the agreement begins and ends. The 
 New Testament is in all hands. But one man finds the 
 Trinity in it; another, the simplest Monotheism; a third, 
 the Papacy ; a fourth, the supremacy of the illuminating 
 Spirit. The same words yield opposite results, because 
 the principles of interpretation differ. The New Testa- 
 ment is to be interpreted by the voice of the Church ; or 
 by the testimony of the Creeds; or by the opinions of the 
 Fathers of the first centuries, before the age of dogmatic 
 creeds began at Nicsea. These had been the expedients 
 proposed by the Catholic, the Anglican, the Arian 
 respectively. Socinus had rejected them all. It cannot 
 matter to me (so, in effect, he contended) what any 
 Church, or any Creed, or any Father may have said ; I
 
 Priestley 1 2 1 
 
 go to the New Testament myself, to read it with my own 
 eyes, to understand it with my own mind. 
 
 101. Key to the New Testament. 
 
 This was not the position of Priestley. He thought 
 this as irrational a proceeding as any of those which it 
 superseded. Even if, by good luck, the true sense were 
 reached, there was no means of proving it to be such. 
 The New Testament, in Priestley's view, is not to be 
 construed as a book of enigmas, which might belong to 
 any age. It is not dropped straight out of heaven into 
 the hands of the man of to-day, for him to make what he 
 will of it. It belongs to a specific period ; it was written , 
 for a given class of persons ; it was written to be under- 
 stood. 'Therefore,' said Priestley, 'it will be an un- 
 answerable argument a priori against any particular 
 doctrine being contained in the Scriptures, that it was 
 never understood to be so by those persons for whose 
 immediate use the Scriptures were written, and who must '^ 
 have been much better qualified to understand them, in 
 that respect at least, than we can pretend to be at the 
 present day.' ( Works vi. 7.) 
 
 . Accordingly it is the whole object of Priestley's 
 histories of doctrine to get at the mind of the common 
 Christian people in the first age ; to make their primary 
 understanding of Scripture the norm for its true interpre- 
 tation ; and then to trace the process by which this first 
 impression, this real meaning, suffered transmutation by 
 the speculative genius of philosophising divines. Of the 
 Nicene Council, he quaintly says, ' there was no House 
 of Commons in that assembly.' It ' represented the 
 Christian Church in no other sense than the House of 
 Lords might be said to represent the English nation.' 
 He conceived that he could penetrate to this unsophisti- 
 cated sense of the primitive believers, through the very 
 waitings of the Fathers, whereby it had been overlaid and
 
 12 2 Priestley 
 
 obscured. Their admissions, their rebukes, their appeals, 
 their laboured arguments, their surviving conservatisms : 
 all were materials to his purpose. 
 
 102. Success of the Historic Method. 
 
 The plan was novel, the conception original, the 
 whole endeavour strictly scientific in its method and 
 basis. And I do not think that Priestley's work in this 
 department has received the full recognition which it 
 rightly claims from us, whether we regard its spirit or its 
 execution. The progress of biblical knowledge implies, 
 no doubt, a readjustment of his argument and a revision 
 of his conclusions. But the readjustment and revision 
 are effected by the use of principles which he was the 
 first to set forth and apply. We now go behind the New 
 Testament, just as he went behind the Fathers. The 
 New Testament itself is, to us, largely a record by help 
 of which we may reach the first impression, made by the 
 life, and work, and word of Christ. In so doing, we do 
 but carry out his suggestions and carry on his method. 
 \/ He is the genuine precursor of the properly historic 
 treatment of biblical and theological questions. 
 
 He did not anticipate immediate success for his 
 labours, or hope to make much impression upon nine out 
 of ten of those who deigned to read him. 'All I can do,' 
 he said, ' must be to make the most of my tenth man.' 
 ' My chief expectations,' he added, ' are from the young 
 and from posterity.' And on one point, of cardinal 
 moment, posterity has not only adopted his method, but 
 has largely confirmed his verdict. Up to his time, it 
 had been the contention of the leaders of liberal theology 
 that the primitive doctrine of the Church was Arian. 
 Socinianism, whatever foothold it might claim in Scrip- 
 ture, was judged to be a modern invention in the Church. 
 He reversed this judgment. The primitive Christianity 
 was Humanitarian. Arianism, be its Scripture warrant
 
 Priestley 123 
 
 what it may, was of later introduction, and as a Christian 
 creed it came into being as a reaction against a growing 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 103. Nemesis. 
 
 So far had he got, when the savage outburst of popular 
 violence intervened, which broke his career, and trans- 
 ferred him, after a short interval, to America. I confess 
 I am fond of the coincidences of chronology. Surely it 
 is a synchronism not to be forgotten, that the centennial 
 of Priestley's exile is also the centennial of Paine's pub- 
 lication of that temple-shaking work, The Age of Reason. 
 ' The patriarch of the sect is fled,' wrote Horsley, with an 
 arrogant joy. Fled was the harbinger of an incorrupt 
 Christianity ; what then ? Christianity itself was exposed 
 to the instant menace of a new and radical assault, which 
 the patrons of its corruptions had rendered themselves 
 utterly powerless to repel. 
 
 104:. Removal to America. 
 
 But I must tell you why he went ; and the rather, as 
 it allows me to pay my tribute of admiring affection to 
 one of the best wives a minister ever had. I have no 
 clear impression of Ruth Channing. Hannah Lindsey, 
 I think, was well hit off in her husband's mild remon- 
 strance, 'Are you not uncandid, my dear?' But Mary 
 Priestley I know and love. Married at the age of 
 eighteen, she proved herself an unequalled housewife ; 
 taught her maids to work with their heads as well as their 
 hands ; took from her husband every domestic care ; 
 could be tart of tongue, they say, but never to him ; drew 
 him punctually from his laboratory for that evening game 
 of skill, which was her bright hour and his, at the close 
 of every busy day ; stuck to her old-fashioned Arianism
 
 124 Priestley 
 
 through all his heresies, not from mere use and wont, for 
 she was a woman of culture and reading ; and with a 
 most dainty and incisive pen, wrote the best letter of any 
 woman of her time. Priestley told his brother Timothy 
 that his wife was very orthodox. So, on the first intro- 
 duction, Timothy began to deplore his brother's hetero- 
 doxy. The young matron speedily caused his ears to 
 tingle for his impudence. ' She orthodox ! ' cried 
 Timothy, ' Why, she's no dox ! ' If Priestley had set his 
 wife to answer Horsley, she would have made the bishop 
 go and drown himself. She had stitched with her own 
 hands every bed-curtain and window- curtain in their 
 Birmingham house, and she had seen her needlework m 
 ablaze. 'I do not think,' she wrote to Mrs. Barbauld, 
 'that God can require it of us as a duty, after they have 
 smote one cheek, to turn the other. I am for trying a 
 new soil.' And I can imagine the wifely dictum, 'fallible 
 as touching her human nature, infallible as touching her 
 female sex,' with which she thus defined the future : 
 ' Joseph, we pack for America.' He knew her worth, 
 and he obeyed. 'A noble and generous mind,' such 
 was his true estimate of her, 'feeling strongly for others, 
 little for herself, through life.' Strongly indeed did she 
 feel. ' Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth 
 on us, do we wipe off against you.' Never was counter- 
 stroke to persecution more eifective in its moral im- 
 pression. At the bidding of Mary Priestley all Europe 
 pointed at this recreant land with the finger of scorn. 
 When they had crossed the sea, she wrote to Belsham 
 with a gay heart, ' I never felt more at home.' 
 
 105. XJniversalism. 
 
 In his Pennsylvanian retreat, Priestley's theology 
 reached its final term ; and found its last reward, not by 
 the dry exercise of his understanding, but as the fruit of O 
 the pangs of his heart. The deepest tragedy of Priestley's >
 
 Priestley 1 2 5 
 
 life has never been written ; all but the obscurest vestige 
 of it is effaced from the pages of his biographer. Suffice 
 it here to say, that the most unfilial act of which a son 
 can be guilty, threw its shade upon the later years of his 
 exile. He had early rejected the doctrine of unending 
 torment, but had not replaced it by any settled alterna- 
 tive ; inclining perhaps to the theory of conditional 
 immortality, and the annihilation of the wicked. Univer- 
 salism, as then sometimes preached in America, pro- 
 claimed that, retribution being exhausted in this life, the 
 next world will be a scene of unmixed happiness for all. 
 This doctrine repelled Priestley, as it repelled Channing, 
 on moral grounds. But the problem of the ultimate 
 fate of the sinful had hitherto been to him but one among 
 abstract speculations ; it had come into his home, in the 
 train of an incommunicable grief. The measure of his 
 forgiveness as a father enlarged his perception of the 
 Infinite Pity, whence all human compassions flow ; and 
 by slow degrees, through hesitating hope and faltering 
 prayers, he reached at length a faith, as sure as it was 
 sweet, in the all-restoring power of Almighty Love. 
 
 ' Read this,' he said on his death-bed to his faithful 
 son, putting into his hand a small pamphlet on this topic, 
 'it contains my sentiments, and a belief in them will be a 
 support to you in the most trying circumstances, as it has 
 been to me. We shall all meet finally. We only require 
 different degrees of discipline, suited to our different 
 tempers, to prepare us for final happiness.' With a 
 quaint and touching reference to his cherished philo- 
 sophy, he bade them put upon his simple gravestone the 
 peaceful words : ' Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for 
 the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.' And yet, so 
 childlike in some respects was his speculation, he thought 
 the slumber could not be long. Within ten years he ex- 
 pected the return of the Master whom he loved, to claim 
 his own. In sooth his millennial prospect was a thrust of 
 nature, piercing the dead wall of his reasoned system.
 
 126 Dissenters Chapels Act 
 
 106. Dissenting Trusts. 
 
 I do not find that Priestley ever alludes to an ' open 
 trust,' that shibboleth of our modern platforms. And for 
 this good reason : that, until legislation opened retrospec- 
 tively the legal import of terms, no early trust for 
 Protestant Dissenters could be other than a trust for the 
 theology of the thirty-nine Articles. The Trinity Act of 
 1813 made Dissenting trusts, since created, applicable to 
 Unitarian use ; but it did no more. The litigation which 
 began with the Wolverhampton case in 18 17, and reached 
 its ultimate decision in the Hewley case in 1842, estab- 
 lished the fact that none of the older Dissenting trust 
 properties, even supposing them founded by Unitarians, 
 were applicable to Unitarian uses. Hence the appeal to 
 Parliament to rectify the position of those in actual and 
 hereditar}' possession. So far as trusts are ' open,' their 
 openness in a legal sense dates from 1844, though as a 
 matter of fact, the older chapel deeds, in all sections of 
 Dissent, rarely enter into details of doctrine ; much more 
 rarely than is the case with the trust-deeds of early 
 endowments. 
 
 107. Dissenters' Chapels Act. 
 
 Now, the Dissenters' Chapels Act, though short, 
 consists of two parts, which are quite distinct. The first 
 part evoked no opposition, save from Bishop Phillpotts, 
 of Exeter. It simply made retrospective the toleration 
 of Unitarian opinion and worship, effected by the 
 Trinity Act. This was a very substantial gain. One 
 effect of it was, that the Trinity Act no longer 
 exists. It was swept from the Statute Book on a 
 subsequent revision (1873), the clause excluding Anti- 
 trinitarians being at the same time removed from the 
 Toleration Act. This retrospective legalisation of Anti- 
 trinitarian opinion was all that was requisite for the 
 protection of Unitarian holders, wherever it could be
 
 Dissenters Chapels Act 127 
 
 proved that the founders of trusts held Antitrinitarian 
 views. But it would not protect them in the use of the 
 older chapels, since these were certainly not founded by 
 Antitrinitarians. James Owen, of Oswestry, who was 
 twice invited to Cross-street, Manchester, in a tract which 
 he wrote in 1699, in conjunction with John Chorlton, of 
 Cross-street, affirms that no Dissenting congregation, 
 within his knowledge, would admit a Socinian to com- 
 munion. And I believe this statement to be quite true, 
 if we except a few of the Baptist and Independent 
 congregations of that date. 
 
 The promoters, then, of the Dissenters' Chapels Bill 
 proposed that, wherever in trust-deeds the expressions 
 were general (' Protestant Dissenters,' ' worship of Al- 
 mighty God,' ' worship of God through Jesus Christ,' 
 and so on, without further specification of doctrine) 
 the usage of a term of years should be ' taken as con- 
 clusive evidence ' of the specific doctrines which the 
 chapels were established to inculcate. Practically this 
 would have amounted to refounding the chapels in the 
 interest of the existing holders, with the further effect of 
 tying them up, for all time, to the opinions of the 
 specified period. 
 
 And this was what the promoters of the Bill actually 
 asked. They soon had some misgivings. For in a petition 
 from Renshaw-street Chapel, Liverpool, presented more 
 than a month after the first reading of the Bill, I find 
 this caution : ' care being taken that its second clause 
 shall be so defined as to leave with each successive 
 congregation, throughout all time, that religious liberty 
 which your petitioners supposed themselves legally to 
 enjoy.' The remodelling of the Bill was due to Lord 
 Sandon, whose pedigree begins with an ejected minister. 
 He was the first to point out, in the House of Commons, 
 what the Bishop of Exeter had stated in the House 
 of Lords, namely, that the Bill would impose a new 
 test, binding congregations in perpetuity to particular 
 opinions.
 
 128 Dissenters Chapels Act 
 
 Hence, not the original Bill, but the amendment of 
 Mr. Cardwell, became law. And the Act, as it stands, 
 provides that the usage of twenty-five years, immediately 
 prior to a suit, shall be ' taken as conclusive evidence ' 
 that the opinions held during that period 'may properly' 
 be held. The usage of a quarter of a century protects 
 opinion in the present; it does not bind it upon the 
 future. Usage, under the Act, gives no right of posses- ] 
 sion ; it simply gives right of occupation, while the usage 
 lasts. 
 
 108. An ' Open Trust ' as the Law now stands. 
 
 So far, so good. But what protection is there for new 
 opinion which rises up to-day, and has not yet run its 
 course of twenty-five years .'* None whatever, that I can 
 see. Break your usage, either as regards religious 
 doctrine or mode of worship, and you have no defence 
 against a suit; unless, indeed, you are reverting to the 
 opinions and practices of the founders, which are always 
 legitimate. An ' open trust,' as the law now stands, is Y 
 a trust whose openness to new opinion any interested 
 objector may instantly close. In short, the Act recog- 
 nises no opinions as legitimate which are not at least 
 twenty-five years old. And, by an unaccountable omis- 
 sion, the act legitimatises no changes whatever in church 
 government. In this department, if the deed is silent, 
 the founders' norm must prevail, and can be modified [ 
 only by an absolutely unanimous vote, in accordance | ' 
 with recent decisions. 
 
 I do not, therefore, view the Dissenters' Chapels Act 
 as the perfection of legislation ; though I can well under- 
 stand and appreciate the deep emotion of gratitude which 
 it inspired, half a century ago, in those whose ancestral 
 houses of prayer were delivered from then present menace 
 by its means. The debates upon the Bill in 1844 are 
 admirable reading still. If the most fervid piece of
 
 Dissenters' Chapels Act 129 
 
 eloquence in support of the Bill is to be found in 
 the peroration of the Roman Catholic orator, Richard 
 Lalor Shell, yet the speech which most truly went to 
 the heart of the matter was by a statesman to whom 
 I have already made references ; described by the 
 Bishop of Exeter, the strongest opponent of the Bill, as 
 one 'whom no one knew in private without loving him, and 
 whom no one knew in public without respecting him.' 
 
 109. Principle at Issue. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone then, while characteristically declining 
 to say anything about the particular provisions of the 
 Bill, brought home to the House with great eflPect the 
 case of the Liberal Dissenters, as they themselves under- 
 stood it ; showing that the real question at issue was not 
 the protection of specific doctrine, but the freedom of 
 religious association. ' Here,' he said, ' were certain 
 persons who founded these chapels, entertaining one 
 creed ; and the present possessors of those chapels pro- 
 fess another creed. I admit that that sounds startling. 
 But if you take the pains to follow the course of events 
 from year to year, it is impossible to say that, at any given 
 period, the transition from one doctrine to another was 
 made. It was a gradual and an imperceptible transition. 
 .... The parties who effected it made a different use 
 of the principle of inquiry by private judgment from 
 those who had preceded them, but they acted on a 
 prmciple fundamentally the same, and though I may 
 lament the result, I do not see how their title is vitiated, 
 because they used it to one effect, and others to another.' 
 
 Thoroughly would Priestley have endorsed this state- 
 ment of the principle at issue. ' Were any man now 
 living,' he writes, ' to tell me he was going to prepare an 
 instrument, whereby he should bind himself and his heirs 
 for ever from changing their opinions, or from acting in 
 consequence of any change in them, I should not easily 
 
 I
 
 130 Dissenters Chapels Act 
 
 believe him.' And again : ' The wisdom of one genera- 
 tion will ever be the folly of the next. And yet, though 
 we have seen this verified in the history of two thousand 
 years, we persist in the absurd maxim of making a 
 
 preceding generation dictate to a succeeding one 
 
 Can we think that wisdom will die with us ? No ; our 
 creeds, could we be so inconsistent with ourselves as to 
 draw up any, would, I make no doubt, be rejected with 
 equal disdain by our posterity.' {Works xxii. 125.) For 
 himself he frankly declared, ' I will not pretend to say 
 when my creed will be fixed ' {ib. xviii. 41 4). 
 
 110. Priestley and Unitarian Chapels. 
 
 Nevertheless, dreadful to relate, Priestley approved 
 of calling unfettered places of worship by the style and 
 title of Unitarian Chapels ; and no more repented of this 
 as a man, than he did of the sin of Adam as a boy. 
 Shall I try to imagine his reasons ? In the first place, 
 then, he knew this could do no harm. For the name of 
 a building, even if printed on a board, or inscribed upon 
 a stone, is not ' an instrument declaring a trust,' but 
 simply a piece of current information. In the next place, 
 as a practical man, he conceived that this information 
 might be sometimes useful. One of his Unitarian 
 Chapels is now called a Free Church ; and I was amused 
 the other day when a young man, who had been lodging 
 literally next door to it for some time, asked me where 
 there was a Unitarian Chapel, and said he had thought 
 of dropping in at this place ; but he stopped when he 
 saw the notice-board, having had enough of the Free 
 Church, in Scotland. I advised him to try next door, 
 saying the minister might possibly go into fits if I called 
 it a Unitarian Chapel, but I believed he would find it an 
 admirable imitation. 1 added that there was a class of 
 persons known to me who, from a religious principle.
 
 Dissenters' Chapels Act 131 
 
 always call a spade an implement of agriculture (when 
 they remember to do so), for fear lest, in the prospective 
 evolutions of philosophy, the term spade should at some 
 future time come to mean a clog. Thirdly, and this is 
 the important thing, to Priestley the Unitarian name de- 
 noted a few primary theological ideas (the chief of which 
 was that only one person is to be worshipped as God), 
 mixed with a few salutary principles (the chief of which 
 was that religion is susceptible of improvement). It did 
 not call attention to the ideas only, but to the principles 
 as well, which permeated the ideas as their life and salt. 
 Hence, in his hands the term received its impress as the 
 name of a Christian community, equally committed to 
 purity and to progress. And this last element in its 
 meaning is perfectly well understood by our outside critics. 
 Many years ago I was kindly entertained by five Calvin- 
 istic bishops at Debrecen, known in Hungary as the 
 Calvinistic Rome. ' Unitdrius^ said one of them, ' I 
 don't like the name ; az Unitdrius is a man who hasn't 
 said his last word.' * I am glad to find you are aware of 
 that,' I replied. In a recent and very forcible article, it 
 is remarked that our ' churches are Unitarian because 
 they are free.' I grant this may be the order in indi- 
 vidual cases. But it reverses the historical situation of 
 our churches. Their insistance on a full freedom has 
 sprung from their Unitarianism. 
 
 111. The Priestley Spirit, 
 
 We cannot stand where Priestley stood, nor would he 
 expect us to do so. I am not a Unitarian of the Priestley 
 stamp, but I should like to think that I am a Unitarian in 
 the Priestley spirit. And though it may seem a paradox, 
 it is nevertheless true, that it was Priestley's perfect 
 candour that converted me to some of the opinions which 
 he most decisively rejects. The ambition of leadership 
 
 I 2
 
 132 Conclusion 
 
 he entirely disavowed. ' The man who takes the lead in 
 any body of men whatever, must,' he said, ' be a man of 
 
 more caution and prudence than I can boast He 
 
 must always speak and write with the greatest modera- 
 tion, so as to give the least offence that the case will 
 possibly admit of. Now, it is very proper that there 
 should be such men in the world. I esteem and value 
 them, thinking them very useful in several situations ; but 
 it is evident that I have not been one of them.' ( Works 
 xxii. 516.) No, his office was that of a pioneer, and well 
 he did that work. This was his spirit : ' I stand in need \ 
 of liberty myself, and I wish that every creature of God 
 may enjoy it equally with myself.' These were his I 
 maxims, and he commended them for universal adoption: 
 * To think with freedom ; to speak and write with bold- / 
 ness ; to suffer in a good cause with patience ; to begin 
 with caution, to proceed with vigour' {ib. 455-6). I 
 
 112. Programme of Studies. 
 
 And now gentlemen, brothers in the fellowship of the 
 studies of this College, we will take these last words, * to 
 proceed with vigour,' as our stimulating motto for this 
 new session. It is my happiness, and yours, that the 
 teaching power of the College is both varied and 
 strengthened by the accession of Mr. Manning, who has 
 already rendered no slight services to us as the coadjutor 
 of Mr. Philemon IMoore in the Visitorship. We have 
 put one in place of three, long enough to exhibit a patent 
 symbol of our Unitarianism ; reverting now to the 
 Daventry standard of equipment, we can boast of two 
 Tutors. The weak side of Daventry was the neglect of 
 languages, biblical criticism, and ecclesiastical history. 
 Its staple was dogmatics, and philosophy, including in 
 this category psychology, ethics, and physics. This last 
 we leave entirely to Owens, and from Owens we expect 
 for our ordinary students that grounding in Arts which
 
 Conclusion 133 
 
 must form the working basis of the scholarly divine. 
 Mr. Manning will take over the Old Testament depart- 
 ment of biblical study ; and will invite you to repair a 
 defect in our linguistic programme, by acquiring some 
 little knowledge of that ancient but still living speech, 
 which, sharing with Welsh the dubious honour of 
 being the language of the first beguilement, seems in 
 modern times to have somewhat exhausted its primeval 
 powers of temptation. Yet Priestley, before he was 
 twenty, had twice read through the Hebrew Bible, once 
 with points, and once without. Mr. Manning will also 
 give a course of lectures on Natural Theology ; and 
 another course upon the Philosophies of Ancient Greece, 
 introductory to the reading of Plato's Crito. My own 
 topics will be the New Testament department ; that of 
 Church History and the History of Doctrines ; the de- 
 partment of Biblical Theology ; and that of English 
 Literature ; with reading in the Greek Testament and 
 the Fathers. And I should like to say that I propose 
 to give, as there will be no others of that kind this 
 session, some few special lectures, to which the presence 
 of all friends of the College may be invited. 
 
 113. Closing Words. 
 
 Gentlemen, your Tutors will do their best ; and you 
 have that in you to-day which promises that you will do 
 yours. Remember that these are golden hours of oppor- 
 tunity, and days of self-discipline. Despise not drudgery. 
 When Dan Taylor, the Baptist, called upon Priestley at 
 Birmingham, he found him sweeping the floor of his 
 laboratory. ' That's condescension, Doctor ! ' said he. 
 ' No, sir,' was the characterisdc reply, ' it is no more 
 than duty.' Relax not diligence ; keep up to your own 
 mark, not wearily, but with bright resolve that makes its 
 own sunshine. ' The acquisition of learning,' said
 
 134 
 
 Coftclusion 
 
 Horsley, ' is indeed laborious, but its fruit is sweet.' 
 And amid the acquisitions of the mind, stand firm to 
 the high purpose of your calling, in singleness of soul ; 
 resisting temptation, making no terms with evil, keeping 
 conscience pure and true, ' as servants of Christ, doing 
 the will of God from the heart,' living as ever in his 
 sight, and laying bare to him continually your difficulties 
 and your hopes.
 
 INDEX OF NAMES. 
 
 The dates are those of birth and death, as nearly as has been ascertained. 
 The reference tisnres are to the sections. 
 
 ACONTIUS, see Contio 
 Aqninas. St. Thomas (1226?- 
 1274) 92 
 Arlington, .tee Beiniet 
 Ashworth, Caleb, D.D. (1722—1775)8 
 Aspland, Robert (1782—1845) 26 
 Aspland, Robert Brook, M.A. (1805- 
 
 1869) 30 
 Assheton, John (/. 1548) 3 
 
 BACHE, Samuel (1804—1876) 32 
 Bagot, Daniel, D.D. (d. 1891)35 
 Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, lu'e Aikin 
 
 (1743-1825)104 
 Barclay, Robert (1648—1690) 15 
 Barker, Joseph (1806—1875) 31 
 Barnes, Thomas, D.D. (1747—1810) 
 
 34, 38 
 Barrington see Shute 
 Baxter, Margaret, nee Charlton (d. 
 
 1681) 41 
 Baxter, Richard (1615—1691) 16, 40- 
 
 86,89 
 Beard, Charles, LL.D. (1827—1888) 30 
 Beard, John Relly, D.D. (1800—1876) 
 
 37 
 Belsham, Thomas (1750—1829) 16, 26, 
 
 104 
 Bennet, Henry, earl of Arlington 
 
 (1618—1685)70 
 Besse, Joseph (1083— 17.W) 15 
 Best, Paul, M.A. (1590?— 16.57) 6 
 Bidle, John, M.A. (1616—1662) 6 
 Booth, George, baron Delamer (1622 
 
 —1684) 55 
 Boscowich, Ruggiero Giuseppe (1711 
 
 —1789) 96 
 Bowring, Sir John (1792—1872) 31 
 
 Bradbury, Thomas (1677—1759) 17 
 Bradshaw, William, M.A. (1571— 
 
 1618) 48 
 BramhaU, John, D.D. (1594—1663)61 
 Bridgeman, Sir Orlando (1606—1674) 
 
 70 
 Bright, Henry Arthur, M.A. (1830— 
 
 1884) 37 
 Browne, John, B.A. (1823—1886) 65 
 Browne, Theophilus, M.A. (1763— 
 
 1835) 24 
 Bunyau, John (1628—1688) 8 
 Burns, Robert (1759—1796) 20 
 Butler, Joseph, D.D. (1092—1752) 97 
 
 CAFFYN, Matthew (1628—1714) 15 
 Calamy, Edmund, B.D. (1600— 
 
 1666) .56, 58 
 Calamy, Edmund, D.D. (1671—1732) 
 
 19, 40, 65 
 Calvin, John (1509—1564) 9 
 Cappe, Newcome (1733—1800) 99 
 Cardale, Paul (1705—1775) 21, 99 
 Cardwell, Edward, viscount (-'ard- 
 
 well (1813—1886) 107 
 Carpenter, Lant, LL.D. (1780—1840) 
 
 26 
 Carpenter, Mary (1807—1877) 33 
 Cartwright, Thomas, M.A. (1535?— 
 
 1603) 48 
 Cary, Lucius, viscount Falkland 
 
 ■(1610—1643) 5 
 Cassiodoro de Reyna, Juan (d. 1594) 2 
 Chambers, William, D.D. (li. 1777) 23 
 Channing, Ruth, nee Gibbs (Jl. 1814 
 
 —1870) 104 
 Channing, William EUery, D.D. (1780 
 
 —1842) 33, 96
 
 136 
 
 Index 
 
 Charles I. (1600—1649) 52 
 
 Charles II. (1630—1685) 52-58, 67, 70, 
 
 71, 74, 75, 76 
 Chewney,Nicholas,D.D.(1610— 1685)6 
 Cheynell, Francis D.D. (1608—1665)6 
 Chillingworth, William, B.A. (1602— 
 
 1644) 5 
 Chorltoii, John (1666—1705) 107 
 Chubb, Thomas (1679—1747) 11 
 Clarendon, nee, Hyde 
 Claridge, Richard (1648?— 1723) 15 
 Clark, Samuel (1727—1769) 89 
 Clarke,Samuel,D.D.(167 5— 1729)11,97 
 Cole, Peter (d. 1587) 4 
 Collier, Thomas (Jl. 1634—91) 6 
 Contio, Giacomo (1520?— 1565) 2 
 Cooke, Joseph (1775—1811) 31 
 Cooper, John (1620—1682) 7 
 Coppin, Richard {}l. 1646—1659) 6 
 Crisp, Tobias, D.D. (1600—1643)12,81 
 Cromwell, Oliver (1599—1658) 46, 
 
 51, 52 
 
 DANCE, George (cL 1677) 53 
 Davis, David (1745—1827) 96 
 Disney, John, D.D. (1746—1816)24, 26 
 Doddridge, Philip, D.D. (1702—1751) 
 
 19 
 Dodson, Michael (1732—1799) 26 
 Dodwell, Henry (1641—1711) 96 
 Doolittle, Thomas, M.A. (1632—1707) 
 
 EDWARD VI. (1537—1553) 59, 60 
 Edwards, Jonathan, D.D. (1642 
 —1712) 12 
 Elizabeth (1533—1603) 59, 60 
 Elwall, Edward (1676—1744)15 
 Emlyn, Thomas (1663-1741) 10, 17 
 Erasmus, Desiderius (1465 — 1536) 4 
 Estwick, Nicholas, B.D. (/. 1633— 
 
 1656) 6 
 Evanson, Edward, M.A. (1731—1805) 
 24 
 
 FALKLAND, see. Cary 
 Farmer, Hugh (1714—1787) 19 
 Field, Edwin Wilkins (1804—1871)35 
 Fimiin, Thomas (1632-1697) 10 
 Fitzroy, Augustus Henry, duke of 
 
 Grafton (1735—1811) 25 
 Fleming, Caleb, D.D. (1698—1779) 21 
 Fox, Charles James (1749—1806) 32 
 Fox, George (1624—1691) 15 
 Frankland, Richard, M.A. (1630— 
 1698) 19, 66, 71 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin (1700-1790) 24 
 Freke, William (1662—1744) 10 
 Frend, William (1757—1841) 24 
 Fry, John (1609-1657) 6 
 Fuller, William, D.D. (1608—1675) 57 
 
 GASKELL, William, M.A. (1805— 
 1884) 37 
 Geddes, Alexander, LL.D. (1737— 
 
 1802) 100 
 Gibbon, Edward (1737—1794) 9, 97 
 Gibbon, Nicholas, D.D. (1605—1697)78 
 Giles, Henry (1809—1882) 35 
 Gilpin, Richard, M.D. (1625—1700) 
 
 56, 66 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, M.P. (6. 
 
 1809) 89, 90, 108, 109 
 Gordon, Thomas (d. 1750) 18 
 Gough. Strickland (d. 1752) 94 
 Grafton, see Fitzroy 
 Greg, William Rathbone (1809—1881) 
 
 38 
 Grosvenor, Benjamin, D.D. (1676 — 
 
 1758) 18 
 Grove, Henry (1684—1738) 19 
 Grundy, John (1782—1843) 35 
 
 HADFIELD, George (1787—1879) 36 
 Hale, Sir Matthew (1609— 
 1676) 59 
 Hales, John, M.A. (1584—1656) 5 
 Hall, George, D.D. ^612-1668) 61 
 Hall, Thomas, B.D. (1610—1665) 50 
 Hallett, Joseph (1656—1722) 17 
 Hamont, Matthew (rf. 1579) 4 
 Hampden, Renn Dickson, D.D. (1793 
 
 —1868) 96 
 Harris, George (1794—1859) 31 
 Hartley, David, M.A. (1705—17.57) 96 
 Ha warden, Edward, D.D. (1662—1735) 
 
 14 
 Hawkins, Sir John (1719—1789) 58 
 Hed worth, Henry ( /?. 1662—1696) 10 
 Henry, Philip(1631— 1696) 61, 66, 72,77 
 Hewley, Sarah (1627—1710) 36 
 Heywood, Oliver, B.A. (1630—1702) 
 
 66, 75 
 Hibbert, Robert, B.A. (1770—1849) 37 
 Hickeringill, Edmund (1631—1708) 18 
 Hincks, Thomas Dix, LL.D. (1767— 
 
 1857) 29 
 Hoadly, Benjamin, D.D. (1676— 
 
 1761) 14 
 Hobbes, Thomas (1588—1679) 17 
 Hobson, Paul {fi, 1646—1660) 6 
 HoUls, Thomas (1720—1774) 94
 
 Index 
 
 137 
 
 Horsley, Samuel, LL.D. (1733-I80(i) 
 
 23. 97, 104, 113 
 Howe. John, M.A. (1630—1705) 81 
 Hunt, Jeremiah, D.D. (1678—1744)17 
 Hunter, Joseph (1783—1801) 37 
 Hyde, Edward, earl of Clarendon 
 
 (1609—1674) 53 
 
 JACKSON, John, M.A. (1086—1763) 
 14 
 James I. (l.'SeO— 10-;?5) 59 
 James II. (1633—1701) 11, 74, 75 
 Jebb, John, M.D. (1736-1786) 24 
 Jeffreys, George, baron Jeffreys (1648 
 
 — 16S9) 74 
 Jekyll, Sir Joseph (1663—1738) 17 
 JeuHings, David, D.D. (1691—1762) 17 
 Johnson, Samuel, LL.D. (1621—1773) 
 
 17, 58 
 Jones, John (1700—1770) 14 
 
 KELYNG, Sir John id. 1671) 59 
 Kenrick, John, M.A. (1788— 
 1877^ 38 
 Kenrick, Timothy (1759—1804) 27 
 Kentish, John (1768—1853) 24 
 Kett, Francis, M.A. {d. 1589) 4 
 Kippis, Andrew, D.D. (1725—179.5) 
 
 90, 92 
 Kitcat, John (/. 1805—1827) 34 
 Knowles, John {fl. 1646—1668) 6 
 
 T ANGDON, Luke {ji. 1717) 17 
 
 J— Lardner, Nathaniel, D.D. (1684 
 
 —1768) 17, 21, 90, 92 
 Laud, William, D.D. (1.573—1645)63 
 Lauderdale, .see Maitland 
 Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent (1743 — 
 
 1794) 88 
 Law, Edmund, D.D. (1703—1787)96 
 Laycock. .Fohn {fl. 1789) 31 
 Legate, Bartholomew (1575 ?— 1612) 4 
 Legate, Thomas {d. 1611) 4 
 Leslie, Charles, M.A. (1650—1722) 13 
 Lewes, John (d. 1583) 4 
 Lindsey, Hannah nie Elsworth (1740 
 
 —1812) 104 
 Lindsey, Theophilus, M.A. (1723— 
 
 1808) 22, 93, 99 
 Livingstone, John (1603—1672) 50 
 Locke, .lohn, M.B. (1632—1704) 16, 
 
 80, 84 
 Love, William (d. 1689) 71 
 
 Lowman, Moses (1680— 1752) 17 
 Luther, Martin (1483 -1546) 96 
 
 MAITLAND, John, duke of 
 Lauderdale (1616—1682) 76 
 Manning, William (1630?— 1711) 13 
 Marryatt, Zephaniah, D.D. (d. 1754) 
 
 89 
 Marsden, John Bu.Kton, M.A. (1803— 
 
 1870) 50 
 Martin, Thomas {fl. 1792— 1S14) 29 
 Martindale, Adam (1623—1686) 50, 66 
 Martineau, James, D.D. (6. 1805) 30, 
 
 35, 38, 97 
 Mather,Increase,D.D. (1639—1723)66 
 Means, Joseph Calrow (1801—1879)34 
 Milton, John (1608—1674) 8, 96 
 Morley, George, D.D. (1.597—1684) 56 
 Muggleton, Lodowicke (1609 -1698)7 
 
 NEWCOME, Henry (1627—1695) 51 
 66,70 
 Newton, Sir Isaac (1042—1727) 14 
 Nightingale, Florence (&. 1820) 32 
 Nye, Philip, M.A. (1596? -1072) 10,80 
 Nye, Stephen, B.A. (1648 ?— 1719) 10 
 
 OCIIINO, see Tommasini 
 Orton, .Tob (1717—1783) 24 
 Owen, James (1654—1706) 107 
 Owen, John (d. 1633) 42 
 Owen, John, D.D. (1616—1683) 6, 73, 
 78 
 
 PAINE, Thomas(1737— 1809)29,103 
 Pakingham, Patrick (d. 1555) 3 
 Palmer, Samuel (1741—1813) 65 
 Palmer, Thomas Fyshe (1747—1802) 
 
 24 
 Parker, Theodore (1810—1860) 38 
 Parris, George Van (d. 1551) 2 
 Pecock, Reginald (1390?— 1460) 1 
 Peirce, James (1673 ?— 1726) 17 
 Penn, William (1644—1718) 7 
 Percival, Thomas, M.D. (1740—1804) 
 
 99 
 Perkins, William, M.A. (1558?— 1602) 
 
 79 
 Petty, William Fitzmaurice, earl of 
 
 Shelburne, marquis of Lans- 
 
 downe (1737—180.5) 96 
 Philip II. (1527—1598) 63 
 Phillpotts, Henry, D.D. (1778—1869) 
 
 107, 108 
 Philpot, John (d. 1555) 3
 
 138 
 
 Index 
 
 Porter, John Scott (1801—1880) 35 
 Price, Richard, D.D. (1723—1791) 26, 
 
 28, 99 
 Priestley, Joseph, LL.D. (1733—1804) 
 
 23, 28 
 Priestley, Mary, ni-e Wilkinson (1740 
 
 179fi) 104 
 Priestley, Timothy (1734—1814) 104 
 
 RAWDON, Christopher (1780— 
 1858) 37 
 Reeve, John (1608—1658) 7 
 Reynolds, Edward, I).D. (1599—1676) 
 
 56 
 Reynolds, Thomas (1667- 1727) 17 
 Ridge, John, M.A. ( /f. 1590^1636) 50 
 Ridgley, Thcjmas, D. i). (1667—1734) 17 
 Robertson, William, D.D. (1705— 
 
 1783) 24 
 Robinson, Benjamin (1666?- 1724) 17 
 Roy, Rammohun (1780—1833) 33 
 Ryder, Budley, viscount Sandon, earl 
 
 of Harrowby (1798—1882) 107 
 
 SAND, Christopher (1644—1680)23 
 Sandon, see Ryder 
 Seddon, John (1719—1769) 21, 92, 99 
 Serveto, Miguel (1511?— 1553) 2, 9 
 Sharpe, Samuel (1799—1881) 37 
 Shell, Richard Lalor (1791-1851) 108 
 Shelburne, aee Petty 
 Sheldon, Gilbert, D.D. (1598—1677) 
 
 56, 58, 62, 69 
 Sherlock, William, D.D. (1641—1707) 
 
 13 ' 
 
 Shute, John Barrington, viscount 
 
 Barrington (1678—1734) 17, 21 
 Smith, Jeremiah (1654 ?— 1723) 17 
 Smith, William, M.P. (1756-1835)32 
 Sozini, Lelio Francesco (1525— 1562) 2 
 Sozzini, Fansto Paulo (1539—1604) 5 
 
 100 
 Stillingfleet, Edward, D.D. (1635— 
 
 1699) 12, 72 
 Stogdon, Hubert (1692—1723) 17 
 Sturch, William (1753—1838) 29 
 Sykes, Arthur Ashley (1684-1756) 20 
 
 TAYLER, John James, B.A. (1797— 
 1869) 30, 38 
 Taylor, Dan, (1738—1816) 15, 113 
 Taylor, Henry, M.A. (d. 1785) 21 
 Taylor, John, D.D. (1694—1761) 16, 99 
 Thorn, John Hamilton (1808-1894) 
 
 30, 35 
 Thomson, John, M.D. (1783-1818)31 
 
 Thornborough, John, M.A. (1552— 
 
 1641) 43 
 Tillotson, John, D.D. (1630—1694) 
 
 10, 69 
 Tonikins, Martin (1682—1755) 17 
 Tonimasini, Bernardino (1487— 1564)2 
 Tong, William (1662- 1727) 17 
 Toulmin,Joshua, D.D. (1740—1815)26 
 Towgood, Micaijah (1700—1792) 25 
 Travers, Walter, B.D. (/. 1572— 1624) 
 
 48 
 Tucker, Abraham (1705—1774) 21 
 Tuckerman, Joseph, D.D. (1778— 
 
 1840) 33 
 Turner, William (1714—1794) 99 
 
 USSHER, James, D.D. (1580—1656) 
 48, 56, 67 
 
 "X /ENNER, Thomas (d. 16C1) 57 
 V Vidler, William (1758—1816) 30 
 Vitells, Christopher ( H. 1555) 3 
 Vorst, Conrad (1569—1619) 5 
 
 WAKEFIELD, Gilbert, B.A. (1756 
 —1801) 24 
 Walker, John, D.D. (rf. 1730?) 40, 55 
 Walker, John (1720—1805) 89 
 Wallace, Robert (1791—1850) 38 
 Wardlaw,Rol)ert,D.D. (1779— 1853)35 
 Waterland, Daniel, D.D. (1683—1740) 
 
 Watson, Richard, D.D. (1737—1816) 
 
 Watts, Isaac, D.D. (1674—1748)21 
 Wellbeloved, Charles (1769—1858) 26, 
 
 35, 38 
 Wesley, John, M.A. (1703—1791) 9, 
 
 22, 41 
 Whiston, William, M.A. (1667—1752) 
 
 14 
 Wickstead, Richard {fl. 1630) 42 
 Wicksteed, Charles, B.A. (1810—1885) 
 
 30 
 Wightman. Edward {d. 1612) 4 
 Williams, Daniel, D.D. (1644?— 1716) 
 
 12, 81 
 Worthington, Hugh (1752—1813) 34 
 Wrangham, Francis, M.A. (1769— 
 
 1842) 35 
 Wright, Richard (1764-1836) 31 
 
 Y 
 
 ATES, James, 31. A. (1789—1871) 
 35, 37
 
 BOOKS ILLUSTRATIVE OF 
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 ALLEN, Joseph Henry, D.D. 
 
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 THE ESSEX HALL PULPIT. 
 
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 23. The Life to Come. By William Binns. 
 
 24. The Choice of Life. By Frank K. Freeston. 
 
 Price One Penny : Postage |d. extra. 
 
 Nos. 1-12 may be had in a bound volume, under the title of 
 'The Outer and the Inner World,' cloth 1/6; Nos. 13-24, under 
 the title of ' The Verities of Religion,' cloth 1/6. 
 
 PHILIP GREEN, 5, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.
 
 RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 GOD AND CHRIST. 
 
 Sermons by Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. 8vo, 5s. 
 
 ' The literature of religion and theology has received no more importan* 
 addition during the month than Mr. Stopford Brooke's "God and Christ."' — 
 Review of Reviews. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF LIFE. 
 
 Sermons by Frank Walters. 8vo, 3/6. 
 
 ' They are effective, and show the results of a vcider reading than most similar 
 volumes.' — Bookseller. 
 
 ' Discourses marked by unusual breadth and care.' — iieuxastle Daily Leader. 
 
 EVOLUTION AND THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 By Miss Anna Swanwick. 8vo, is. 
 
 ' Tlie theory of Evolution is frankly accepted and applied, first to the great 
 pre-Christian religions, and then to Christianity itself.' 
 
 SOME MODERN PHASES OF THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 By G. Vance Smith, D.D. 8vo, is. 
 
 The author deals with the conflicting theories of the Atonement, as revealed 
 in the writings of Dr. Dale, Dr. Horton, Principal Fairbairn, and 'Lux Mundi.' 
 
 THE VERITIES OF RELIGION. 
 
 Sermons by Rev. J. Hamilton Thom and others. 8vo, 1/6. 
 
 These sermons deal with devotional and practical topics, and are suited for 
 home reading. Each Sermon is followed by a hymn and prayer. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE BETTER HOPE. 
 
 Short Essays by J. Page Hopps and others. i6mo, 2s. 
 
 These Essays deal with the Bible, the Trinity, the Person of Christ, Sin and 
 Salvation, the Problem of Evil, Eternal Punishment, the Personality of God, 
 Christianity as Christ preached it, &c. 
 
 UNITARIANS AND THE FUTURE. 
 
 By Mrs. Humphry Ward. 8vo, is. 
 
 ' It is needless to say that it is marked by the literary grace and deftness we 
 expect from the author of " Robert Elsmere." ' — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 ' A brilliant sketch of the development of Unitarianism, and of its prospects in 
 the future.' —Christian World. 
 
 COURAGE AND CHEER. 
 
 Sermons by Brooke Herford, D.D. 8vo, 5s. 
 
 ' We have not seen lately, more interesting, striking, instructive, and 
 encouraging discourses tlian these.' — Literai-y World. 
 
 ' Tliere is much in the book which appeals to that which is 'common in the 
 spiritual life.' — Speaker. 
 
 JESUS AND MODERN THOUGHT. 
 
 By Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. 8vo, is. 
 
 This volume contains four discourses on the Humanity of Jesus, and the Love 
 we bear to Jesus, taken from the new volume of Sermons ' God and Christ.' Mr. 
 Stopford Brooke adopts the humanitarian position, and finds in it inspiration 
 for life and thought. 
 
 PHILIP GREEN, 5, ESSEX STREET, STRAND, vV.C.
 
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