by our own might, or in conjunction with any of those allies which your Lordship has been pleased to provide for us, at overturning an establishment protected by the Legislature, and supported by the prepossessions of a large majority of the inhabitants of the realm.

Having thus, I trust, sufficiently obviated your Lordship's first allegation, I shall in my next Letter resume the subject; and in the mean time I remain with great respect, &c. &c.

LETTER III.

His Lordship's distinction of Unitarians into Infidels and conscientious Unitarians stated-Allegations against the latter obviated-Real Unitarians do not reject the peculiar dogmas of Christianity —are not partial infidels—do not refuse assent to legitimate conclusions from Scripture premises -do not arbitrarily impose meanings unwarranted by the usage of language.

MY LORD,

HAVING, I trust, to the satisfaction of your Lordship, and of every other candid and impartial judge, obviated the allegation that the Unitarians are in alliance with sects from which they most widely differ in all other points, in hostility to -the Established Church, I now proceed in my endeavours to remove another prepossession which appears to occupy your Lordship's mind, namely, that the great body, or, at least, that a very large .proportion of professed Unitarians are unbelievers in the christian religion; that they are Deists, Atheists, or licentious Freethinkers; and that even real and conscientious Unitarians reject the

peculiar doctrines of the gospel, and support their opinions by palpable misconstructions and arbitrary interpretations of scripture.

I do not desire to exaggerate: but this appears to me to be the plain and obvious meaning of your Lordship's language, and the impression which it is calculated to leave upon the mind of the reader.

Your Lordship states, p. 14, that infidelity, "commencing about the middle of the seventeenth century, has since, at different times and on dif"ferent occasions, appeared under three distinct "forms. It first burst on the astonished world, betraying its native deformity through a thin "veil of metaphysical subtleties, and directing its "open assaults against the fundamental truths of "religion and the sanctions of morality."-This ground, however, your Lordship declares, being "rendered untenable by popular detestation, the "unbeliever took his stand on the ground of "Deism. This term was adopted as a conven"tional symbol of union amongst all who agreed " in the single principle of denying the truth of revelation, however widely disjoined in belief "and opinion on the subject of natural religion. "In the issue of the controversies which followed, "the advocates of deistical tenets were completely

unmasked,...the appellation of Deist became a

"term of reproach: and the licentious Free"thinker was identified in popular estimation "with the professed Atheist. The union of un"believers, as a regular and ostensible party, was dissolved by this discomfiture"--and owing to the "contempt and horror" with which they were regarded by the people-" the direct attacks on religious and moral truth were for a long time "few and feeble. THE FACT ON HAS AGAIN BEEN "EMBODIED in modern times under the less invi"dious denomination of a christian sect. As all "unbelievers in religion were formerly Deists, a "considerable proportion of those who are styled "Unitarians in the present day, have no other "title to the name, than their rejection of the principal doctrines which distinguish the reve"lation of the gospel from natural religion."

According therefore to your Lordship's representation, the body of persons professing themselves to be Unitarian christians consists of two parts. A certain proportion are allowed to be real and conscientious Unitarians: and the rest cousist of the whole faction of unbelievers, whether Atheits, Deists, or licentious Freethinkers, who having been driven with ignominy from the stations which they had seized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have now in the nineteenth

embodied themselves again, under the denomination of Unitarians, adopting this expression as a conventional symbol of union, that they may thereby "obtain a facility of diffusing their pernicious principles with less suspicion."

I shall first, my Lord, take the liberty of offering a few remarks upon the animadversions which your Lordship has thought proper to make upon the principles and conduct of those whom your Lordship styles real and conscientious Unitarians; and shall reserve for another Letter my observations upon the heterogeneous host of intruders which your Lordship conceives to have passed our lines, to swarm in our camp, to have forced themselves into our society, and to have assumed our name for the worst purposes.

"In this statement," continues your Lordship, p. 15, "it is not my intention to wound the feelings of the conscientious Unitarian; who, while "he rejects its peculiar dogmas, admits the ge"neral truth of christianity. The charge of in

fidelity indeed attaches in a certain degree to "all who refuse their assent to any material doc"trine deducible by the established laws of inter"pretation from Scripture: and great must be "the force of that prejudice, which can over"look the inconsistency of arbitrarily imposing