of principle and character having been insensible, and altogether imperceptible.

"The application of this doctrine may be made both by those who are provoked at others for holding opi nions which they think damnable, and by those who laugh at them for opinions which they think ridiculous. In many cases, I am satisfied that the pure love of truth is on both sides absorbed in passions of a very different nature. I would overlook every thing in a man who meant nothing but to inform me of any thing that he thought me ignorant of; but they who have that pretence in their mouths only, when it is far from their hearts, though they may deceive themselves as well as others, are by no means entitled to so favourable a reception.

"It behoves us, however, carefully to distinguish between this latent insincerity, under the influence of which men deceive themselves, and that direct prevarication with which those who are engaged in debate are too ready to charge one another, as if their adversaries knowingly opposed, or concealed, the truth. This last is a crime of so heinous a nature, that I should be very unwilling to impute it to any person whatever. For a man voluntarily to undertake the defence of what he thinks to be error, and knowingly to pervert the scriptures in order to make them favour his purpose, argues the heart to be so totally void of all principle of rectitude; it is such an insult upon the God of truth, and such a contempt of his judgements, that I think human nature could never be so depraved as to be capable of it, and that no situation in human life could supply a sufficient temptation for such conduct. There are such well known instances of the

force of prejudice, that I had rather ascribe any opi nion, how absurd soever, in any man, how intelligent soever in other respects, to wrong judgement, than to a bad heart. I can hardly imagine any case in which the chance would not be in favour of the former.

"If these remarks be just, with what caution should we censure any person with respect to a point of mere speculation! How should I be affected at the day of judgement to be convinced of the integrity, and perhaps the right judgement also, of an adversary whom I should have treated in an illiberal and insulting manner!" P. 4, &c.

Whether you, my Lord, will allow the truth of these observations I cannot tell. You certainly have not acted upon them, either with respect to the excellent Origen, or myself. But I have not copied the above for the use of your Lordship; considering you to be a person to whom some of them are so far applicable, that I do not expect the least benefit from the fairest and justest representation of any thing connected with this controversy; and yet without thinking so ill of you, as you profess to do of me.

That your Lordship is in this state of mind, destitute of what I call perfect ingenuousness, is evident from the turn that you have given to a passage in my Sermon to which I had referred you, in answer to your charge

of

gross illiberality. I there speak in the highest terms that I could of the good understanding, and the sincerity, both of many Catholics, and members of the church of England, even "those who are sensible of the corruptions and errors of the system in which they are entangled, and yet have not been able to break their chains." Of this you say, " It is a long passage,

in which he professes to hold the church of England in no less estimation than the church of Rome;" which I might have done without thinking well of either of them. This I cannot call a fair and ingenuous conduct, because it gives your readers (many of whom, I believe, never read any thing of mine) a false idea of what I write. Besides, I said nothing directly about the two churches of England, or of Rome, but of the members of them; being openly hostile to the systems, but friendly to their adherents.

I am, &c.

LETTER III.

Of the Charge of borrowing from Zuicker.

MY LORD,

THOUGH my rule in controversy is by no means your Lordship's above mentioned, viz. " to strike without remorse at whatever in your adversary you find to be vulnerable, in order to destroy his character and credit," I must, now that I am upon the subject of latent disingenuousness, produce an instance which has much the appearance of it in your Lordship's conduct

to me.

You charged me with having " produced few, if any, arguments, but what are found in the writings either of Zuicker or Episcopius." From this it might naturally be concluded, that you had compared my arguments with those of those two writers, and had found them to be the same; which implies that you

had seen, and perused, their works. I entertained no doubt of it myself; and taking it for granted that your Lordship had the work of Zuicker, or had access to it, (and it being a book that I had never seen, and could not by any means procure,) I desired a common friend to apply to you for it. Your answers, which were different at different times, convinced him that you had never seen the book at all. It has since been sent to me by a learned foreign correspondent, and I find Zuicker's views of the state of opinions in early times to be so different from mine, that I am confident, if you had ever seen his work, you had never read it. For, if you had, you could never have asserted that I had borrowed from him at all.

Zuicker says, p. 16, that Justin Martyr, besides availing himself of his Platonic principles, derived his notion of a trinity from the spurious verses of Orpheus, which he supposes to have been written by some disciple of Simon Magus. He also makes Simon Magus the parent of the Praxeans, Patripassians, and Sabellians, p. 17. Now these opinions are fundamentally different from mine. I suppose Justin Martyr to have borrowed from nothing besides his Platonism; and he was so far from being friendly to Gnosticism, which was the offspring of the school of Simon Magus, that he wrote a treatise against it. And I consider the Praxeans, Patripassians, and Sabellians, as no other than philosophical Unitarians.

Except these opinions, there is nothing of much consequence in the work of Zuicker, besides a proof, very much detailed for so small a treatise as his is, of the christian fathers before the council of Nice not having believed the equality of the Son to the Father;

and this, if I had read nothing of antiquity myself, I might have borrowed from Dr. Clarke and twenty other writers as well as Zuicker.

I submit it to the reader, therefore, whether your Lordship appears to have been perfectly ingenuous in saying that I had borrowed from Zuicker, or whether you did not advance this charge at random, without any more knowledge of Zuicker's work than you got from Bishop Bull.

While I am on the subject of Zuicker, I shall observe that he had no doubt, p. 114, but that, in the passage of Jerom, the true sense of which has been debated between us, the writer meant to assert the identity of the Ebionites and Nazarenes with respect to every thing of importance.

Zuicker also makes a good observation, p. 110, on the manner in which Austin introduces his account of the Ebionites immediately after that of the Nazarenes, which is, Ebionæi Christum etiam tantummodo_hominem ducunt; "The Ebionites also suppose Christ to be a mere man." As if it implied that the Nazarenes thought the same, though he had not expressly asserted as much in his account of them, the word etiam intimating as much. I am inclined to think that Austin had written this in the account of the Nazarenes, but that the clause is now lost. I cannot else account for the insertion of etiam, also, in the next sentence. I am, &c.