the first of our countrymen who openly recommended them to the world. In the reign of Charles the first, he was for his principles immured in prison, where he published" Twelve Arguments against the Deity of the Holy Spirit," which were answered by Mr. Pool. The year after, he sent forth "Seven Articles against the Deity of Christ," with testimonies from the fathers, for which some of the Westminster assembly of divines moved that he might be put to death, instead of which he was, in 1751, set at liberty. He now published his catechisms, which maintain that God is confined to a certain place, has passions and a bodily shape, is neither omnipotent nor unchangeable, and that Jesus Christ was not a priest upon earth, and did not make atonement for sin. For this the long parliament committed him to the Gatehouse, but Oliver Cromwell afterwards liberated him, and when considerable disturbance was excited by a challenge for a disputation between him and Mr. Griffin, a baptist minister, the protector sent him to Scilly, with an annual pension of a hundred crowns. His catechisms were answered by Dr. Owen, in the learned treatise entitled, " Vindicia Evangelicæ." Mr. Biddle, having returned to London at the restoration, and established a society there, was thrown into prison, where he died, September, 1662, leaving a high character for talents, morals, and learning.

Dr. Owen maintained the war against socinianism through many of his works; but especially his "Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews," in which he considers the arguments of the most celebrated socinian writers, and shows how completely they are confuted by the apostolic writings. The next attack on these sentiments was unhappily of a very different kind

the act of William and Mary against heresy and blasphemy.

Soon after the revolution, arianism occupied the public attention; but though it seemed to step in between the orthodox and Socinus, it still secretly prepared the way for socinianism. Mr. Emlyn, who was persecuted as an arian, seems, before his death, to have become a socinian; but Mr. Cardale, a dissenting minister of Evesham, in Worcestershire, is considered as the avant courier of the controversy. He published a piece, entitled, "the true Doctrine of the New Testament concerning Jesus Christ considered; wherein the Misrepresentations that have been made of it, on the arian Hypothesis, and on all Trinitarian and Athanasian Principles, are exposed, and the Honour of our Saviour's divine Character and Mission is maintained." The last part of this title seems designed as a bait to catch readers; for who would not suppose that a book written to maintain the honour of our Saviour's divine character, against arians and trinitarians was the work of a sabellian, or of some one who maintained, like the Swedenborgians, that Jesus Christ was the only divine person? Mr. Cardale published a supplement to this work, in the form of a comment on Christ's last prayer, and a treatise on the application of certain terms and epithets to Jesus Christ. To this writer is ascribed, by the admirers of his system, the praise of leading the way to just and clear sentiments in religion; but those who oppose his creed, would rather consider him as having only outstripped others in the career of

a Dr. Priestley, in his History of Corruptions, laments, but with little reason, the obstacle which arianism opposed to the progress of socinianism,

unbelief and ingratitude towards Christ, to which human depravity so powerfully impells.

Dr. Lardner, who is considered to have run the usual race of heresy, from thinking Christ to be less than God, to regarding him as no more than a man, may be said to have given the new turn to the dispute. His polemical works were not numerous, and we have only to mention his "Enquiry whether the Logos supplied the place of a human soul in Jesus Christ;" and "two Schemes of a Trinity considered, and the divine Unity asserted." Cool, temperate discussion characterizes all the works of this eminent writer, who was more formed for research than for disputation. Mr. Hopkins, a clergyman of Essex, attempted to recommend arianism to the members of the church of England. He received an answer to his " Appeal" from Dr. M'Donnell, and from two or three other writers. Dr. Clayton, bishop of Clogher, rekindled the fires by his "Essay on Spirit," which was answered by several trinitarians; but especially by William Jones and Dr. Randolph. Mr. Hopkins vindicated him in a "Sequel to the Essay on Spirit," and the bishop published a " Defence of the Essay," as well as "a plain and proper Answer to the Question, why does not the bishop of Clogher resign his Preferments." The arian hypothesis was most ably supported by Mr. Henry Taylor, in his "Apology of Benjamin Ben Mordecai to his Friends, for embracing Christianity," and by Dr. Price, in his "Sermons on the Christian Doctrine."

Dr. Priestley came forth the champion of socinianism, and provoked a contest which is not yet terminated. He had been educated in orthodoxy, but when the works of Lardner had contributed to alter his views,

he shewed to that celebrated writer some manuscript observations, which he had prepared to prove that the sacred writers sometimes reason in a false and inconclusive manner. Though Lardner disapproved, he afterwards published these remarks, which form the clue to all his subsequent aberrations from evangelical principles. Priestley's attacks on the trinity and deity of Christ, were entitled" an Appeal to the serious and candid Professors of Christianity;"" a familiar Illustration of certain Passages of Scripture;' "a general View of the Arguments for the Unity of God, and against the Divinity and Pre-existence of Christ, from Reason, from the Scriptures, and from History." His "Institutes of natural and revealed Religion" may be considered as a socinian body of divinity; though it is professedly not polemical. It controverts, however, the inspiration of the Scriptures, the separate state of the soul, and the eternity of future punishments; and as the former part is a mere speculation upon what the light of nature might teach of religion, which the Dr. confesses to be very little; in the latter, the same speculative turn prevails concerning the contents of Scripture. Of this most able and best written work of the socinian coryphoeus it may be said, that what is good is borrowed, and what is original is good for nothing. The controversial supplement to the institutes, is Dr. Priestley's celebrated "History of the Corruptions of Christianity." Viewed as a historial defence of socinianism, or rather as a death stroke to the deity and atonement of Christ, which had been promised with some parade, it must strike every intelligent reader as the ridiculous birth of a mountain in labour. One short section of a work that extends through two

thick volumes, contains all the polemical history, which was to prove the earliest Christians to have been socinians; but which only proves that Dr. Priestley, unable to find historic documents, could substitute for them mere suppositions, or the modest assumption that primitive Christians must have believed what the Dr. thinks is taught in the Scriptures. He must have had a monstrous faith in the credulity of his adherents, if he thought that such a work would be taken for a proof that their principles prevailed in the earliest ages; and if he supposed that such an attack would induce his opponents to abandon their faith, he must have imagined that they held it by a hair. The history was attacked by an able writer in the "Monthly Review for June, 1783," against whom Dr. Priestley published a reply. Dr. Horsley, successively archdeacon of St. Albans, bishop of Rochester and of St. Davids, was one of the most mighty antagonists of Priestley; his three publications on this question are collected into a valume, entitled, "Tracts in Controversy with Dr. Priestley," upon the historical question of the belief of the first ages in our Lord's divinity, with a large addition of notes and supplemental disquisitions." This episcopal champion for the orthodox creed, who was singly a host, unhappily enlisted in the cause his passions and his pride, which disgraced his learning, and gave his adversaries an opportunity of attacking him in a weak place. Dr. Priestley's letters to the archdeacon of St. Albans, and his remarks on the Monthly Review of the letters to Dr. Horsley, evince the unbroken spirit of the combatant: indeed it has been observed, that Priestley followed up the reviewers with so much prowess and policy, that "finding their coun