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                         UNITARIANISM DEFENDED:


                          A SERIES OF LECTURES


                                   BY


                 THREE PROTESTANT DISSENTING MINISTERS
                             OF LIVERPOOL:


                              IN REPLY TO


              A COURSE OF LECTURES, ENTITLED “UNITARIANISM
                  CONFUTED,” BY THIRTEEN CLERGYMEN OF
                         THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.


           --------------------------------------------------

Would to Heaven that Christians had their own ‘vail’ of orthodox words
taken away from their minds; that, limiting Orthodoxy to the acceptance
of the Christ as the SPIRIT (‘the Lord is that Spirit,’ says St. Paul),
_i.e._, the meaning, the end of all revelation, they would not allow a
new _letter_, consisting of abstract doctrines, to involve their minds
in a ‘vail’ which obstructs the view of the Gospel, even more than the
old letter, which kept the Jews in “bondage.”—_Heresy and Orthodoxy by
Rev. J. Blanco White_, p. 53, 2nd edition.

           --------------------------------------------------




                               LIVERPOOL:
                 WILLMER AND SMITH, 32, CHURCH STREET.

                                LONDON:
                    JOHN GREEN, 121, NEWGATE STREET.

                                 -----

                                 1839.




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                                LONDON:
                       PRINTED BY RICHARD KINDER,
                    GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY.




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                            GENERAL PREFACE.


In this Preface, and in all the other contents of this volume, we have
occupied the position of an assailed party, lending our best
consideration to whatever a leagued body of resolute and unsparing
adversaries could say against us. We have stood upon the defensive, not
lamenting that such an occasion had occurred of exposing our views of
Christianity to so severe a scrutiny, and of displaying to the world
whether our position was tenable. We did not provoke this Controversy.
It was of our opponents’ choosing. They entered into combination, and
arranged their method of attack, and invited the public attentively to
look on while they performed upon us the work of destruction. With
respectful attention, as men whose system of Christianity was about to
be subjected to a powerful analysis by those who believed the main
ingredients to be poisonous,—but with quiet hearts, as men who had no
interest in this world but to discover Truth,—we have interfered no
further than was necessary to make this examination, by carefulness,
impartiality, and accuracy, productive of a true result. We have struck
out whatever was untrue, and we have supplied whatever was wanting, to
exhibit a full statement of the respective Evidences of Unitarianism and
of Trinitarianism. Lecture qualifies lecture; and Preface corrects
Preface. We are satisfied to have thus placed, side by side, the
contrasted views of Man and God, and to await the issues.

To return upon the “thirteen Clergymen of the Church of England” the
words of their General Preface, (p. xi.) “_it is no uncommon practice in
modern criticism to neglect the statements_” of an opponent’s case, as
if they never had been made, and the corrections passed upon one’s own
as if they never had been experienced. It is the policy of the “thirteen
Clergymen” to _reiterate_, nothing daunted, arguments, our careful
replies to which are not even noticed, and misrepresentations whose
injustice had solemnly been protested against. By these resolute
repetitions some are seduced to believe, and attention is withdrawn from
the overthrow of an error or a calumny by the hardihood with which it
rises from its fall, and reasserts itself. Strike them down;—they get
up, and coolly offer themselves to be struck down again. Great ought to
be the power of Truth; for great is the vitality and the power of
effrontery in a popular error. It is only in the long combat of years
and generations that the _Real_ manifests at last its imperishable
quality. The “General Preface” quietly gathers up all the “_disjecta
membra_” of error and misstatement, and without a word of answer to our
analysis of their character, presents them again to have sentence and
execution passed upon them. It is a careful redintegration of the broken
particles, which in our simplicity we had hoped would not so readily
reunite. We are obliged, therefore, by way at once of Preface and of
Protest, to repeat our solemn contradiction of some most strenuous
misrepresentations, and to attempt again the exposure of some fallacies
most tenacious of life.

I. It was distinctly stated by us in