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    seem that a man of sense ami learning should * in these times , entertain and avow such extraqr- dinary tenets . What his lordship asserts , I am satisfied that he be- lieves . Nor did it ever enter into

    my contemplation that any orthodoxy of sentiment , or elevation of ecclesiastical preferment , could release a gentleman from those

    forms of civility , which the custom of polished life has rendered indispensable in the intercourses of society , and which ought by no means to be banished from the .

    ological discussions . I can , However , assure his lord . ship , that I do most firmly believe , and that , in the estimation of same readers who are very competent to judge , as well as in my

    own , I have demonstrably proved , in that little work upon which his lordship animadverts * that Bishop Horsley retired from the controversy with Dr . Priestley " baffkd and defeated ; " th ^ t , " the victory

    of his opponent was decisive and complete ? and that , < c though his lorchhip might be gratified to see the effect produced by his pompous and imposing style upon

    the unthinking crowd , he woulcj have beep the first to laugh to scorn the solemn ignoramus who should seriously profess to believe that the advantage of the argument remained with him . "

    Far be it from me , Mr . Urban , to maintain , that my late learned and revered friend was successful in every point in this famous coju traversy . There were some skirmishes in which truth constrains

    we to acknowledge that victory perched upon the standard of the Bishop . In evi | hour was the taunting question proposed by my too CQnfldent friend , " Pray , Sir 3

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    i i : in < what Lexicon or Dictionary " , ordinary or extraordinary , do you find idiota rendered idiot ? In reply to which , in a learned

    dis-£ i sertation , the Bishop , to the eternal confusion of his unguarded opponent , produces no less than ten distinct significations of the word idiota * and cites five

    Lexicons in which that word is translated idiot . My respected friend likewise was rather too precipitate in attributing ( o his acute antagonist the sole honour of discovering the sublime mystery that * ' the Fa « ther produced the Son by the con-

    templation of his own perfections : and though the learned prelate , with exemplary discretion , de « clines to offer any proof or explanation of this mysterious doctrine , or to say why this energetic contemplation of divine attributes

    should exhaust itself in the pro . duction of one Son only , in an elaborate and learned disquisition upon the subject , the Bishop has distinctly shewn that the credit of this grand discovery did not belong entirely to himself ; but m , 4 r 4 « a - m « « to

    that it had been revealed origi * nally by some of the ancient piatonizing fathers , and was adopted by some learned divines at the . er $ of the Reformation . It also ap * pears that Dr . Priestley was guilty of an oversight in reckoning Ire * naeus in the number of those

    writers who had not specified the Ebionites as heretics . All this , Mr . Urban , I most readily concede ; but 1 still maintain that the most material point at issue between the learned

    champions was not a question oi scholarship and criticism , but concerning a plain matter of fact , " ivl which Dr . Priestley obtained the mo ? t decided advantage ; and thgt

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    J £ r . Bfkhgnis Answer to Bp . By >? ge $$ . 607

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1814, page 607, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2445/page/19/