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    fable number of leading- persons among them , look with an Englishman ' s fondness on the existing- state of things . If there arc any Unitarians who look with complacency or fondness upon the existence of a union between church and ! state , or who regard an established religion , as such , with any feelings but those of decided disapprobation , we are satisfied the number is small , and their

    influence in the body nothing . Base indeed must they be who can fawn and crouch before the foot that spurns and would tread them in the dust , and unworthy the honour to hold any place among those who call Milton , Locke , Price , and Priestley , brethren . If the spirit of the stout-hearted Puritans walks abroad in Britain , it is among the Unitarians , and by them , if at all , it must be handed down to posterity *

    " Mr . President , ' I would not claim the attention of the meeting at this late hour , were it not that the subject which I wish to present appears to me of that importance that I should regret to have it lie over to another anniversary . It appears from the

    report which has been read , that communications have been made during the past yeai * between the government of this society and of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association . I , for one , am highly gratified to be informed of that fact . 1 am desirous that we should

    cultivate a good understanding and a greater intimacy than has yet subsisted with our English brethren ; especially that the expressions which it seems have been given by them of interest in our concerns , Should be cordially reciprocated .

    " There has been in time past a degree of reluctance on the part of American Unitarians to express sympathy With those of England , which I think we should all along have been at a loss to justify ; at any rate , I am persuaded that there has now extensively grown up among us a conviction that it ought no longer to be indulged . It arose principally from two circumstances . In the

    first place , when the Unitarian controversy broke out in this country twelve years ago , the orthodox writers , among their various expedients to bring odium on their opponents , had the address to glean the most obnoxious passages which could any where be found among the works of English Unitarians , and present them to the American public as expressing essential points of Unitarian belief * To some extent the plan suc-

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    ceeded . Unitarians here found themselves labouring under a degree of discredit , as the supposed advocates of extravagant opinions which they had not only never avowed , but were conscious to themselves of having been always as far as possible from entertaining ; and if it was not right , it was not surprisiug ,

    that they should be led to look with some coldness on a foreign sect , of which they knew almost nothing , except that its writings had thus been quoted to their injury . Of which I say , Suy they knew almost nothing . Generally they knew not even enough of that sect

    to be aware that the quotations in question , often related to points not considered by it as characterizing its belief , and that they were the most offensive which could be collected with much pains from a variety of writers , and these not always of high standing with their brethren . The Unitarian belief

    was not imported into America . It grew up among the descendants of the Pilgrims , in consequence of that habit of diligent and reverential study of the Scriptures , which had been taught them by their fathers , aided by the better lights of recent times . Accordingly , many of us had no other information concerning the belief of English Unitarians than what we obtained from the

    misrepresentations of adversaries . Is it wonderful then , that under these circumstances , there should be manifested some backwardness to be in any way identified with them ? ** I am free to say , that I have no indiscriminate favour for all the opinions

    which English Unitarian authors have really and deliberately expressed . Not a few have been maintained by one or another of them , within the last half century , which , to my view , appear al ^ together unscriptural . I am at no loss to account for this . The state of

    theological science has been , for a long pe- ' riod , low in England . It is now low w those denominations from whose ranks some of the leading Unitarians have come . Besides , the English , much credit as they give themselves for cool good sense , are in reality > by temperament , a fanatical people , as the incipient

    history of all their parties , political and religious , abundantly shews ; and to say that English Unitarians , when they first came into notice as a sect , did not always avoid reasoning ill , and advancing extravagances , would be no more than to include them in a remark which , by common consent , might be made of all sects , since England has known them *

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1828, page 189, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2558/page/45/