Should the reader begin to ask whether our modern Trinitarians are not becoming avowed Polytheists, and to exclaim, What was there in Paganism itself more palpably absurd than that three Beings are one Being?-the Reviewer silences him with the remark, that this a subject on which he, the reader, and the Reviewer, and the great Dr. Dwight, and all the Trinitarians, and all the Unitarians, know nothing, absolutely nothing, and therefore one proposition is as good as another, and no man can be fairly charged with absurdity:

"The ideas intended by the words God (here denoting the Infinite Existence) and Tri-personal, are not and cannot be possessed by any man. Neither Trinitariaus nor Unitarians, therefore, can, by any possible effort of the understanding, discern whether this proposition be true or false, or whether the ideas denoted by the words God and Tri-personal, agree or disagree."-P. 262.

This is a curious sample of Dissenting orthodoxy of the more erudite sort: with one more item of self-complacent bigotry in the true spirit of the Athanasian Creed, we shall conclude this amusing, though somewhat disgusting, catalogue of Trinitarian novelties:

"The question at issue is, not so much whether the Saviour is Divine, as whether man needs a Saviour.-If Unitarians are not recognized as Christians, let it always be remembered, that it is not because they reject the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, but because they reject with that, and we think consistently reject, the whole of the Christian system.”—P. 265.

This nameless writer decrees with one stroke of his pen, that Unitarians, (Newton, Lardner and Lindsey,) are not Christians; they reject the whole of the Christian system. They renounce, that is to say, a certain system, on which the calculations of the proprietor of the Eclectic Review, as to its success, are founded, and which is defended by certain anonymous persons at so much per sheet, and, therefore, they shall not be Christians nor have Christ for a Saviour! Good Eclectic! call them Atheists at once; they disbelieve the Triune God, consisting of "Three Infinitely Perfect Beings," and you say there is no God besides, and therefore they believe not in God, but are downright Atheists. Q. E. D.

SIR, Liverpool, Oct. 7, 1821.
a
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friend in the United States of America, which may be interesting to your readers, not only as it shews the opinion entertained by an intelligent and highly respectable foreigner of the Dissenting body of England, but also as containing some pertinent observations on Bishop Marsh's celebrated Questions.

AN ENGLISH DISSENTER.

"I read the Monthly Repository with much pleasure, and think it has many excellent papers. In my opinion there is no class of people more respectable than the English Dissenters; I mean those who and liberal. But they are, as being a are well educated, and really charitable sect, frowned upon by the Government, and this makes them, as I think, unreasonably jealous and hostile to the administration for the time being. They are, moreover, perpetually insulted and misrepresented by the bigots of the Establishment, and this produces, unhappily, something of a corresponding narrowness on their side. On the whole, however, I love them, their character and their spirit, and pray that my soul may be with these people. I admire your Mr. Richard Wright. He is quite an extraordinary man, and possesses the true apostolical character of a Christian minister. There have been, and still are, such men among the English Dissenters, and now and then also among the Missionaries abroad. In the English Establishment they can hardly arise; or if they do, would probably be discountenanced, if not expelled. I see the Bishop (of Lincoln,* I think) Marsh has lately obliged his clergy to sign eightyseven new articles of faith. As people would understand the Scriptures in different senses, Queen Elizabeth, in order to produce an uniformity of faith, estathe Bible of all good Churchmen. Now it blished Thirty-nine Articles, which are seems the Bishop has discovered that a subscription does not ensure this uniformity, and that these Thirty-nine want eighty-seven more to explain in what sense they are held! And what adds to the absurdity is, that these eighty-seven are intended to keep out those persons who hold the original Thirty-nine in their original sense! At least it seems to me that the Calvinists had the greatest share in their composition."

This mistake is pardonable in a descendant of the men whom Junius describes as crossing the Atlantic to get out of the way of bishops. ED.

ART. I.-Unitarians not Infidels, a Sermon preached before an Associa- tion of Ûnitarian Christians at Hull, Sept. 29, 1818, in which are also defined the Nature and Objects of the Association. By John Platts, Unitarian Minister at Doncaster. pp. 12. Hunter.

ART. II. The Antidote: or Unitarians proving themselves to be Infidels, by denying the Doctrines of the Bible. Remarks upon a Sermon preached by John Platts, Unitarian Minister at Doncaster. By Evan Herbert, Minister of the Gospel. pp. 10. Two pence, or Twelve Shillings per hundred. Warwick, Heath

cote and Foden. ART. III.-Letters addressed to the Calvinistic Christians of Warwick, occasioned by the Rev. Evan Herbert's Publication, entitled The Antidote, &c. By a Unitarian Christian. pp. 170. Warwick, printed; and sold by Hunter, London. 3s 6d.

WE
E should have before introduced

connexion. But that any bigotry, assuming to itself the character of Chris tian, should dare to deprive us of that merited and dignified title, is scarcely eredible, and claims a monopoly more odious than any pretended to by the Star Chamber or St. Peter's: nor could a more cruel ingratitude be perpetrated against a class of Christians who may, perhaps, challenge the whole aggregate body of the Christian world for the Biblical learning and labour they have bestowed on the advancement of the great common cause, and more particularly on the external evi

dences of revelation. It cannot be

necessary to appeal to the most able and popular answers which Popery and Scepticism have received from the time of Chillingworth to the numerous and victorious confutations of the sophisms of Hume, Gibbon and Paine; the great majority of which were the work of Unitarian Dissenters. We have had too much contempt to notice this ec

clesiastical slander on all occasions of its recent promulgation by the mitred prelate and itinerant preacher, willing

this controversy, which has called forth a most able and superior defence of Unitarianism, but that the last article was not known to us until very lately.

The Sermon, preached by Mr. Platts, and originating the other two pamphlets, was composed and delivered with the immediate object of rebutting those calumniating charges which, in the absence of more effective argument, it has of late years been fashionable, both in the Church and out of it, to prefer against the principles of Unitarians. That the Unbeliever himself should endeavour to establish this pretended relationship with us is by no means surprising, when we think of the convenient shelter of partial tole ration it has pleased the "Church and State" to allow Unitarianism, a moiety of which he seeks through a family

This seems to be a new edition, with another title, of the Sermon of which we took notice, XIII, 768, ED.

leave it to its own refutation, and

being quite of Archbishop Tillotson's sensible opinion in his remarks on Infidelity and "Socinianism”—“ If this be Socinianism, for a man to inquire into the grounds and reasons of the Christian religion, and to endeavour to give a satisfactory account why he believes it, I know no way but that all considerate and inquisitive men, that are above fancy and enthusiasm, must be either Socinians or Atheists."

To the same purport we give the following extract from the Sermon of Mr. Platts, and regret our want of space for further quotation from a very sensible and well-written discourse:

"It is true we differ in opinion from the majority of our Christian brethren on some very important points. Not choosing to have a religion imposed upon us-not wishing to imbibe the sentiments of others without due examination-nor to believe by any system of human invention; we have searched the Scriptures

"where dead in their trespasses and sins, and where by nature the children of wrath, even as others." The passage in p. 5-"Satan had once the effrontery to put a if"-might equitably barter a consonant n in exchange for a supernumerary in the following sentence, p. 4, line 35: "Alas, fallen nature, with thy boasted wisdom take a reason for your dullness." If we recollect right, Dr. Johnson spells dulness with one I only, and defines it 1 "a weakness of intellect," a popular complaint very prevalent among theologues, and which, if Mr. Herbert be afflicted with it, entitles him to our pity and charity; for far be it from us to ridicule natural defects. In the following passage Mr. Herbert cuts a sorry figure-p. 8: in "one dark cell to another, from Charybdis to Sylla.” In this exhibition Mr. Herbert appears better acquainted with the proper name of the Roman General than with the orthography of Cellarius: perhaps, fear of that poisonous juice which Circe is said to have poured into the waters where Scylla bathed, and which Dr. Lampriere would have informed him metamorphosed her into "frightful monsters like dogs, which never ceased barking," scared Mr. Herbert from the use of a c, lest this malapropos description should pass for the common domino of his own species. But leaving this accomplished "Analizer of Greek" to settle with his compositor and printer's devil the credit of these elegant extracts, we shall take our leave of him, with the counsel that his next twopenny bunches of texts be tied up with more attention to the nature of the "simples that have place in a compound."

We shall pass on to the answer of his learned and able opponent, the Rev. Wm. Field, who for thirty years has been the minister of an increasing Unitarian congregation at Warwick, and whose many excellent publications, notwithstanding the professional labours of his school and pulpit, are well known to many of our readers. To deprive this congregation and Mr. Field, whose private and public character had long acquired him the respect of all classes of Christians, of the honourable distinction of the Christian name, was the laudable aim of Mr. Herbert. And we only lament that so capital a defence of the principles of Unitari

anism should have been thrown away on so contemptible an antagonist, lest it should rather conceit Mr. Evan Herbert of his "dullness," and lead him to think, with the fly on the wheel, "what a dust I kick up!" We should rather have left him to smother in the dust of his own bigoted ignorance, certain that his poison contained its own "Antidote," and holding, with Lord Halifax, that "a man that hath read without judgment is like a gun charged with goose shot, let loose upon the company; he is only well-furnished with materials to expose himself, and mortifie those he liveth with." Indeed, Mr. Field's own contempt appears only to have yielded to the strong solicitations of some of his congregation.

"By no inclination of my own could tice of what to me seems beneath all I have been led to take the smallest nonotice; and it is only in compliance with the urgent request of some esteemed friends that I have been induced to attempt a reply; which has been delayed longer than I wished, and has grown to a greater length than I intended. These friends think, that such confident ignorance, such conceited absurdity, such disgusting spiritual pride, and such insufferable religious bigotry, as are conspicuously displayed throughout this notable performance, ought to be put to that shame, and to be met with that public rebuke, which they deserve. As Mr. H.'s work is dedicated to his Calvinistic friends, so these pages are respectfully addressed to you, the members of the same religious community; and, notwithstanding other differences of opinion, I do hope to convince even you-not, indeed, that I, in the view I take of Christian truth, am right-but that, in the spirit, and in the whole manner of his attack upon those and flagrantly wrong. Let me claim your who think as I do, Mr. H. is decidedly fair and impartial attention."-P. 2.

The different subjects of the volume are divided into nine letters. Our readers are probably satiated with the beauties of Mr. Herbert, and we shall, therefore, not trouble them with any extracts from the second and third letters devoted to the punishment and prevention of his theological offences.

The subject of the 4th Letter is the sincerity of Unitarians in the cause of revelation; their confessions of faith, not on oath as prescribed by statute law, but given in the words of scripture; and a statement of their devo