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    They have never wanted , and , under Providence , will never want writers to maintain their principles and vindicate their characters . May their advocates always obtain as honourable a triumph as must be decreed to Mr . Belsham for his victory over the Bampton Lecturer !

    Dr . Mosey displays so much petty intolerance , and falls into such gross blunders , that his answerer could not possibly have preserved an uniform tone of gravity . Mr . Belgium ' s motto

    is , that " it is better to laugh than to be . angry . " If his antagonist ( for the Bampton Lecturer attacks him personally ) feel the edge of his irony , he must reflect that his own temerity has given it all its sharpness .

    jlhe Oxford divine seems to cast a look of regret upon the departed statutes which carried pains and penalties against the Unitarians , and attributes the present activity of these misbelievers to ik the impunity which the Legislature has formally granted to them ; " upon which Mr . Belsham says , with becoming spirit ,

    ** The Unitarians rejoiced in the success of Mr . Smith ' s Bill , because it placed them upon a level with their fellow-subjects . They now enjoy their religious liberty upon the ground of le # al right , not as a matter of courtesy and forbearance . But in point of security , they feel no difference between the protection of the spirit of T , he times and th . - » t of the Jaws . In this

    enlightened and tolerant age , what miserable narrow-minded big'ot would have dared to rouse the spirit , of the persecuting * laws against the Unitarians ? Or who can believe , if such a savage were to be found , that the mild spirit of the House of Brunswick would not immediately have issued

    out a noli pfosequi , as upon all former occasions , to have stopped such infamous proceedings ? The Unitarians felt no fears . And the learned Lecturer knows but little of mankind , or of the history of religion , if he is not aware that

    persecution lias . never damped the zeal or stopped the progress of a rising and ardent sect . The truth is , that T ^ nitaiiauism has preserved its steady march : it lias neither been accelerated or retarded by the repeal of the penal Jaws . All its engines were at work before . Plain sneaking * , sound

    argument , sober criticism , Scripture proofs , theological learning , ecclesiastical history , public preaclijng , fair and learned controversy , Unitarian societies for the distribution b £ books , Unitarian funds , Unitarian ^ missionaries , Unitarian academies , and the

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    Improved Version , —all these machines were in motion long before the Trinity Doctrine Bill was thought of , and their success would have been the same if that bill tiad never existed . And if the success has b ^ en great , — -and it has indeed

    exceeded all expectation , —it has been owing to no other advantage than that which truth , familiarly explained , and calmly , fearlessly and judiciously defended , must always possess over error rashly persisted in suid in temperately maintained , even though power and interest , and fashion

    and popularity , are rang-ed under its banners . The repeal of the last odious relics of the persecuting code is an honour to the age in which it was accomplished , to the government by which it was countenanced , to the patriot by whom it was introduced , and to the parliament by which it was

    enacted £ it restores to the Unitarians their natural rights as freeborn subjects of the United Empire , who have done nothing to forfeit their birth-right ; and it is hailed by them with joy and gratitude to the government by which these rig-hts hare been acknowledged and restored , and with thankfulness to Divine

    Providence for having" cast their lot in an a ? ra so auspicious : but it has not , to my knowledge at least , been the means of inducing * a single effort for the promotion and vindication of Evangelical truth , which the

    Unitarians would not have thought it their duty to liave exerted , had the persecuting code still continued to disgrace the Statute Book . "—Pp . 7—9 .

    Dr . Moysey , following herein the usage of soi-disant orthodox doctors , charges Unitarians with rejecting doctrines , however clearly revealed , merely because they cannot comprehend them , to which his Reprover replies ,

    " A charge so unjust and illiberal as this is only to be met by a direct negative . And I do aver in my own name and in that of my Unitarian brethren , that no one individual among us rejects the doctrine of the Trinity , or any other doctrine , solely because it is incomprehensible : but we refuse our assent to tile doctrine of the

    Trinity because , according * to some expositions of it , it is a gross and palpable contradiction ; and because in every form it is unfounded in reason and unsupported by the Scriptures . "—IV . 11 , 12 .

    Mr , Belsham is eminently successful in this , as in all his preceeding works , in the statement of the philo ~ sophieal argument for the pure Unitarian doctrine , and in the-exposure of the weakness or inconsistency of all the received explications of the

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    496 Review *—* Behhatris Reply to Dr . Moysey .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1819, page 496, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1775/page/36/