Bible is paramount to all other authority; they account it a sacred duty to maintain a perfect liberty of thought, inquiry, and judgment. They do not admit, that any one, with justice to himself, and integrity to the christian cause, can transfer this prerogative to another. Religion connects every man with his Maker by personal responsibility and obligations of duty, and not through the medium of other men's thoughts and advice. The welfare of his soul depends on what he shall alone think, resolve, and do. All the opinions of all the world would not make him a christian, nor bring him one step nearer to his God, unless he were faithful to his own understanding and conscience.

The slightest attempt to bind him to a particular notion, or to make him turn traitor to the unbiassed reflections of his own mind, is an insult to his nature, and a presumptuous attack on his moral freedom. To attempts of this sort, as we have seen, are to be ascribed almost all the evils, which, in one shape or another, have spread devastation and misery over the christian world, and counteracted the benign influence of a holy religion. And they have been started and prosecuted in violation of the spirit of Unitarianism.

This is no less true in principle, than fact. Unitarians have not participated in the causes, which have produced these disasters. One reason is, to be sure, that the smallness of their numbers has prevented their having power to do much good or harm. But this does not weaken the argument. It only

lays the burden more heavily on the orthodox themselves, and compels them to admit, that the persecutions, and violence, and enormous wickedness, which every serious heart deplores, have actually grown out of their sentiments. Unitarians have had in the affair. The spirit of orthodoxy has reigned triumphant; it has done all, that has been done.

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Now, whatever charges may be advanced against the particular opinions of Unitarians, it must at all events be granted, that experience and the history of the church exhibit effects of orthodoxy quite as terrible as any, which the most vivid imagination has pictured to itself in the train of these opinions. While engaged in examining particular sentiments in regard to their moral tendency, it is proper to keep this fact in mind, and also to remember, that the principles of orthodoxy have been thoroughly tried in all their varieties, and under every circumstance of place, time, government, laws, forms of discipline, and ecclesiastical order. They have been tried and found wanting. Not that I would use this as a proof of the truth, or perfection, of Unitarian sentiments; these must stand on their own merits; but I do contend, that this fact, so broad and well established, is a strong evidence against the moral influence of orthodoxy, as opposed to Unitarianism. It is a practical demonstration in respect to the combined action of a system, and ought to have much weight in confirming the coincident results of theory and argument,

as applied to the individual parts of which that system is composed.

I shall now proceed to the specific charges, which you and others have made against the character and opinions of Unitarians. I hope to make it appear from fact, and reason, and Scripture, that these charges have been thrown out with more haste than discretion, more zeal than knowledge, more vehemence than judgment. The spirit and latitude of your charges naturally draw me into somewhat of an extended view of the subject. You attack character and principles. These shall be defended both on their own grounds, and by comparing them with the character and principles of the orthodox. This is the only mode in which the subject can be fully and fairly examined.

The task, I am aware, has its difficulties. Nothing is more easy, than for the mind to run into extremes in pursuing a favourite train of thought or investigation. This is particularly true in following what we deem false opinions to their results. Imaginary consequences thicken around us as we advance; we soon persuade ourselves that they are real; and then we are ready to charge them to the account of our opponents. "How often," says Watts, when alluding to this mode of inquiry, in his admirable Essay on Uncharitableness, "how often do we put their opinions upon the rack; we torture every joint and article of them, till we have forced them to confess some formidable errors, which their authors never knew or dreamed of. Thus the original

notions appear with a frightful aspect, and the sectators of them grow to be the object of our abhorrence, and have forfeited their right to every grain of our charity." This is no doubt a natural tendency of our zeal for cherished opinions, and an eagerness to spy out something alarming in those of an opposite kind. It can hardly be hoped, perhaps, that this zeal will be entirely extinguished in prosecuting such an investigation, as the one on which we are now entered. Let a knowledge of its existence and bearing teach us a lesson of caution, moderation, candour, and charity, if it do no more.

LETTER III.

On Charges against the Character of Unitarians.

SIR,

I HAVE read your Ordination Sermon, preached some time since at Baltimore, and propose offering for your consideration a few remarks on that part particularly, which relates to Unitarians. Many persons have been at a loss to conjecture, what evil star could induce you to select that occasion for making so violent and unprovoked an attack on a class of christians, who have shown no disposition to molest you, nor the society, which you had the honour to address. And I confess myself among the number

of those, who have not been able to reconcile your conduct with the maxims of christian faith and practice, by which I could not doubt you aimed to be guided.

It was easy to conceive, that you might have no very high respect for the opinions of Unitarians, because your own are so widely different. Nor was it difficult to imagine, that you might regard these opinions as errors, and might look with concern on the spiritual condition of those, who were so unfortunate as to embrace them. You might think it necessary, on suitable occasions, to point out such errors, to confute them by fair and temperate argument, and to make known their dangerous tendency. It was easy to suppose, that love of truth, your sincerity, and zeal in the cause of your pure religion, might prompt you to so benevolent and pious a work. All this, done with moderation, and a proper spirit, would not only be pardonable, but praise-worthy. It is every preacher's duty to support what he thinks to be truth, and by all just and honourable means to dig away what he conceives to be the sandy foundations of error.

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But you have taken a course widely different from this. Instead of coming forward to detect and confute the dangerous opinions of Unitarians, instead of attempting to convince them by argument, and to win them from their errors by affectionate persuasion and salutary warnings, you have at the outset fixed on them the mark of heresy, denied to them the christian name, and accused them of immorality and