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Addresses 
 Biographical and Historical 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER GORDON, M.A. 
 
 Sometime Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History 
 in the University of Manchester 
 
 VETUS PROPTER NOVUM DEPROMETIS 
 
 THE LINDSEY PRESS 
 
 5 ESSEX STREET, STRANDi LONDON, W.C.2 
 1922 
 
The portrait prefixed is'af fecsimile, full size, of the first 
 issue of the original engraving by Christopher Sichem, from 
 the British Museum copy (698. a. 45(2)) of Grouwelen der 
 voornaemster Hooft-Ketteren, Leyden, 1607. 
 
 'i'rinted in Great Britain by 
 Elsom & Co. Ltd., Hull 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 With three exceptions the following Addresses were 
 delivered at the openings of Sessions of the Unitarian 
 Home Missionary College, in Manchester, where the 
 author was Principal from 1890. to 191 1. 
 
 The fifth Address (Salters' Hall) was dehvered at 
 the Opening Meeting of the High Pavement Historical 
 Society, in Nottingham; the seventh (Doddridge) at 
 Manchester College, in Oxford, in connection with the 
 Summer Meeting of University Extension students; 
 the eighth (Lindsey) at the Unitarian Institute, in 
 Liverpool. 
 
 In this volume the Addresses are arranged according 
 to the chronology of their subjects; the actual date 
 of delivery is added at the close of each. 
 
 Except the first and the fifth, the Addresses were 
 printed, shortly after deUvery, in the Christian Lije 
 newspaper; these two (also the third) were printed 
 separately; all have been revised, with a view as far 
 as possible to reduce overlapping and to mitigate the 
 use of the personal pronoun. 
 
 Further, in the first Address it has been necessary 
 to make an important correction in reference to the 
 parentage of Servetus, Misled by the erroneous 
 ascription to him of a letter from Louvain in 1538 
 signed Miguel Villaneuva (see the author's article 
 on Servetus in the Encyclopadia Britannica, also 
 
PREFACE 
 
 vitiated by this error) the author furnished in the 
 original Address a wrong account of the family of 
 Servetus. The real parentage of Servetus was first 
 disclosed in 1903 with documentary proofs by 
 Dr. Benet Roure Barrios, in Joventut, a magazine in 
 the Catalan language published at Barcelona; of 
 this the present author had no knowledge prior to 
 1911, when he visited the locality for the second time 
 
 A. G. 
 
 Belfast, October, 1922. 
 
THE PERSONALITY 
 
 OF 
 
 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
Miguel Serveto. — Born, 1511; Toulouse, 
 1528; Bologna, 1530; Lyons, 1530-36; Paris, 
 1536-38; Chariieu, 1540-41; Vienne, 1541-53; 
 Died, 1553- 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 N a lively passage of his most popular work, 
 Michael Servetus inveighs against the folly 
 lUeging two causes when one suffices to account 
 the effect, and is especially insistent in his 
 )roof of a laborious investigator who must 
 ids furnish forth a triad of causal activities, as 
 jven with two he could not rest satisfied. It 
 ms, then, only too likely that, were he here, I 
 ght fall under the lash of my present study 
 en I put forward three reasons for my choice of 
 s topic. 
 
 Yet each of these reasons has had some weight 
 th me. Through the generosity of our Pre- 
 ent our store of books has been enriched, this 
 ir, with copies of the earliest publications of 
 rvetus, in their rare and costly first editions, 
 is natural to take this as a call for some en- 
 ivour to renew an interest in their author, 
 ain; next year (1911), if our calculations are 
 :rect, will bring round the four hundredth 
 aiversary of the birth of Servetus; and the 
 ;asion is to be celebrated in that city in which 
 spent his happiest years, till influences from 
 
4 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 without brought on him the premonition of the 
 catastrophe of his fate. So it may be well to 
 ask, What was there in him to make him deemed 
 worthy, after all these years, that such celebra- 
 tion should be accorded to his memory ? Further, 
 and as a third reason : it is to be feared that many 
 of us are apt to think far more of the fate of 
 Servetus than of him on whom it fell. The fire 
 that consumed his body kindles imagination 
 much more readily than the flame that burned 
 in his soul, the radiance that illumined his spirit. 
 Nay, there are those who even value his story for 
 the most part, as a damaging episode in the giant 
 career of Calvin. 
 
 I am not anxious to treat my topic from that 
 point of view; into the circumstances which cut 
 short the days of Servetus, though elsewhere I 
 have not shrunk from that enquiry, for the pur- 
 poses of this sketch I shall not go. With the 
 verdict of history on that matter I am well con- 
 tent. This only will I now say. His modern 
 apologists are ill-advised when they essay, 
 abandoning their defences, to make excuse for 
 Calvin's share in the tragedy of Servetus. For 
 the excuse is shabby. It was the error of the 
 age, say they — ^a sorry shift. Even in matters 
 of tolerance, as in many other matters, Calvin, 
 greatest of the Reformers, could on occasion rise 
 above the level reached by most of his contem- 
 poraries. In the affair of Servetus he fell below 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 5 
 
 his own mark, and while partisans approved or 
 acquiesced, nobler spirits shuddered and con- 
 demned. Putting all this away from sight, I 
 want to rouse your curiosity and enlist, if I may, 
 your appreciation, while I make an effort to 
 recover the vivid impression of a gifted, almost a 
 unique, personality, full of life and force, strenu- 
 ous in purpose, and with a heart as warm as his 
 intellect was keen. 
 
 It is not easy to accomplish a task for which the 
 ordinary means of information fail us. Con- 
 temporary notices are valuable, but extremely 
 rare; and in a life of surprises many points 
 remain dark and mysterious. While there is 
 much of romance in this life, there are no love- 
 passages. When I sit down to biographize a man, 
 I always want to know what kind of woman was 
 his wife. Servetus did once contemplate matri- 
 mony, only to stifle the thought for an imperative 
 reason. Of his correspondence, if we except the 
 few missives of miserable appeal penned in the 
 Geneva dungeon, no vestige survives. Of his 
 person as it appeared to his contemporaries we 
 have but a single glimpse, and this at second 
 hand. Certain spectators not named, who had 
 seen him at his trial and witnessed his execution, 
 described him long after to Faustus Socinus as' 
 quite an old man. His years were only forty-two ; 
 the impression made by his appearance tells how 
 effiectually ten weeks' ^ incarceration under the 
 
6 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 foulest conditions had wasted his health and 
 strength. 
 
 A small Dutch copperplate of 1607, the only- 
 possible portrait of him, presents us with no 
 ignoble visage ; but it occurs in a series of effigies 
 of heretics, some of which have no claim to 
 authenticity, and we are without means of 
 assuring ourselves that a genuine likeness was in 
 the hands of Christopher Sichem, the engraver — 
 not a very scrupulous person, for he manufactured 
 an effigy of Arius by the simple expedient of 
 scraping out the mitre from the portrait of a 
 Swabian bishop, thus leaving a bald patch on the 
 imaginary head of the Alexandrian arch-heretic. 
 
 From this Dutch engraving, however, numerous 
 copies, more or less close, have been derived ; and 
 the sculptor's art has transferred the features, 
 more or less varied, to several statues. Of these, 
 by far the most impressive is the earliest, erected 
 in 1876 at Madrid by the pious care of a leading 
 anthropologist, the late Dr. Pedro Gonzales de 
 Velasco. Inferior to this, judging from a photo- 
 graph, is the statue at Annemasse in Haute 
 Savoie, which was refused erection at Champel. 
 The statue in the Place Beaumont at Paris is a 
 figure of horror, representing its subject near the 
 last stage of his destitution and agony. The 
 Paris statue, in the Place Maubert, of Etienne 
 Dolet, martyr of the Renaissance — ^immortalized 
 in the late Chancellor Christie's learned and light- 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 7 
 
 ne pages — is a figure inspired by a right taste 
 i a true reverence, qualities in which some of 
 ! tributes to Servetus seem to be lacking. This 
 true even of the memorial figure erected at 
 ;nne in 191 1, though certainly this is more 
 asing than the Paris atrocity. These harrowing 
 ;ctacles of the victim give little satisfaction 
 her to the eye or the mind ; on the Spaniard's 
 inumental tribute to the Spaniard one may 
 ell with admiration, for at any rate it embodies 
 vorthy conception of the man. 
 The birthplace of Servetus was probably at 
 dela, in Navarre, now a gloomy and not too 
 an city, reminding one of Galway by its. 
 lancholy ancient mansions, testifying in sculp- 
 ed shields of arms to a long-past splendour, 
 >laced to-day by squalor and decadence. This, 
 parently at Paris and certainly at Vienne, he 
 3wed as his birthplace, and there seems no 
 )d reason to challenge the statement, though 
 :s true that in a solitary passage of his Geneva 
 timony — if the minutes of the trial, which 
 en blunder about names, are here correct — 
 described himself not simply as de Villeneufve 
 t as de Villeneufve natifz. We may account for 
 ; birth at Tudela, if we suppose this to have 
 ;n his mother's old home, and the birth to have 
 cen place while she was there on a visit. 
 :hard Baxter's birth under his grandfather's 
 )f came about in this way. 
 
8 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 The father of Servetus was Antonio Serveto 
 alias Rev^s, a notary at Villanueva de Sigena, 
 whose signatures to legal documents in the 
 archives of the convent of Sigena extend from 
 19 November 1511 to 3 April 1553 — the years, 
 curiously enough, being those of the birth and 
 death of his most famous son. The mother of 
 Servetus was Catalina Conesa ; both parents were 
 of good family {vivants noblement). There was 
 another son, Juan Serveto de Reves, a beneficed 
 priest, rector of Polinino. 
 
 As to the date of birth of Servetus, it is true 
 again that an isolated passage of his Geneva 
 testimony may (as reported) be cited in favour of 
 the year 1509; and the date is tempting as a 
 coincidence, being that of Calvin's birth at Noyon. 
 All his other and oft-repeated testimony, during 
 both judicial examinations (at Vienne as well as 
 at Geneva) and in his writings, points to 1511 as 
 the true date; and this was the date ultimately 
 accepted by Calvin. The " expiatory " stone 
 placed at Champel (1903) by thrifty Calvinists — 
 after getting amused Unitarians to lighten the 
 burden of their inexpensive penance — ^particu- 
 larizes the birth date as 29 September, 1511. 
 This perpetuates a mere fancy of the patient and 
 erudite scholar to whom students of Servetus owe 
 more than to any other, my late most valued and 
 lamented friend Dr. Henri W. N. ToUin (1833- 
 1902), Huguenot pastor of Magdeburg, Dr. 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS g 
 
 ToUin threw out the suggestion that Servetus was 
 named Michael, because born on Michaelmas Day. 
 There seems no usage to this effect. Miguel 
 Cervantes was not born on Michaelmas Day; or, 
 if so, his baptism was long deferred. Miguel de 
 Molinos, the great Spanish mystic, was born on 
 Christmas Day. If, by any chance, 29 September 
 were a lucky guess, then 15 11 would have to be 
 amended to 1510, since the date 1511 involves the 
 supposition that, when Servetus under examina- 
 tion in 1553 stated his age, he had passed his 
 birthday. In short, we know the exact date of 
 his death, 27 October 1553, but not that of his 
 birth. 
 
 Whenever and wherever Servetus was born, 
 Villanueva was undoubtedly the seat of his 
 family and the place of his early upbringing. Its 
 situation was unknown to Dr. ToUin ; I believe I 
 was the first (beyond the immediate locality) to 
 identify it among the Villanuevas and Vilanovas 
 in that part of Spain. It is not a place of mark. 
 Servetus rightly locates it "in the diocese of 
 Lerida." His biographers have vainly sought for 
 it in the province of Lerida. Actually it is in the 
 province of Huesca, though in the diocese of 
 Lerida. Its origin is due to the great and famous 
 convent of.Sigena, founded in 1188 by Queen 
 Sancha of Aragon, and renowned in after ages as 
 containing the stately burial place of the royal 
 house of Aragon. V^en Sigena, on the bank of 
 
10 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 the river Alcanadre, was chosen as site for the 
 ample buildings of the royal convent, a new town, 
 Villanueva de Sigena, to give its distinctive 
 designation, was placed on higher ground above. 
 This new town, now no longer new, is a tiny 
 stone-built place, little more than a compact 
 village, though it would be highly incensed if so 
 called; not boasting when I first visited it (1888) 
 an inn, even of the humblest description, and as 
 regards its civic being, centering in the post office. 
 The postmaster, the physician (both freethinkers) 
 and the courteous Cura, who took no interest in 
 heresies, were then the magnates of the place. A 
 large and gloomy structure, shorn then of its top- 
 most story was pointed out as the traditional, 
 mansion of the Serveto race. This building,, 
 known also as Casa Reves, on my second visit 
 (1911) was much brightened up, and converted 
 into a comfortable inn, whose hostess was proud 
 of the connection of the house with Miguel Serveto. 
 The parish church, dedicated to San Salvador,, 
 is ancient, but has no good points of architecture 
 saving a respectable Gothic porch. As in the 
 majority of Spanish churches, no ancient 
 baptismal register is preserved. The retablo to 
 the high altar was (1888) comparatively modern,, 
 bearing date 1774; by 1911 it had been sold,, 
 apparently to defray the expense of a renovation 
 of the interior of the church. To the right of the 
 high altar, attached to the south wall, is a side 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS ir 
 
 altar dedicated to Santa Lucia — one of the saints 
 still commemorated in the Anglican calendar 
 under date 13 December — and this was the family- 
 altar of the house of Serveto. An inscription 
 states that its retablo, having paintings in ten 
 compartments, was completed on 27 August 1558 
 by the care of the widowed Catalina Conesa 
 and her son, Rector Juan. It had in 1888 an 
 outer frame of later workmanship, not older than 
 the seventeenth century; this bore, in three 
 places, namely, at top and sides, a shield of arms 
 emblazoned in colours, with the name serveto 
 conspicuous to the right and left of each shield. 
 In 1911, the outer frame was new and less 
 elaborate; not reproducing the Serveto name,' 
 it bore, in two places, the Serveto arms more 
 handsomely blazoned than before. 
 
 Just as the name Colombo appears also as 
 Colon, so may the name Serveto drop the filial 
 vowel and appear as Servet; but neither does 
 Servetus, nor his father, nor his brother, use this 
 curtailed form — those who employ it do so in 
 defiance of the usage of the family. On his 
 earliest title pages Servetus owns his authorship 
 in these words: Per Michaelem Serueto, alias 
 Reues ab Aragonia Hisfanum. Later, he Latin- 
 ised Serveto into Servetus, and this (never 
 Servet) is the form he employs even when he is 
 writing French. In years past I followed Dr. 
 Tollin not only in treating the double surname 
 
12 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 as equivalent to Serveto-y-Reves — where Reves, 
 in accordance with Spanish custom, would be the 
 mother's name, but also in thinking the name 
 looked as if the mother were French. The truth 
 is that the combination was not unique, and pro- 
 bably appertained to a considerable branch of the 
 Serveto race. Among natives of Villanueva de 
 Sigena I find one Marco Antonio Serveto de Reves, 
 born about the date of Michael's death, and dying 
 in 1598. He was Abbot of Montaragon, near 
 Huesca (an abbacy once held by Michael's patron, 
 ^uintana) and a kinsman of Pedro Antonio 
 de Reves, Bishop of Albarracin. Reves is cer- 
 tainly not French; Dr. Pompeyo Gener, tracing 
 it to the Catalan rebec, in the sense of stubborn, 
 treats it as denoting one who sticks to his con- 
 victions against everything and everybody; yet 
 it seems a place-name, not a personal one. 
 
 Of the early training of Servetus no record 
 remains. To fill the blank. Dr. ToUin has again 
 offered a conjecture which lesser writers, the 
 present penman included, have accepted even as 
 solid fact. He thinks Servetus, when grounded 
 in the elements, may have gone first to the 
 University of Zaragoza for his higher education. 
 Were I now to hazard a guess, I should place my 
 guess nearer hand, at the College of Huesca, which 
 Marco Antonio, his namesake aforesaid, entered 
 in 1575. Somehow he acquired, in addition to a 
 competent stock of learning, a certain deftness of 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 15 
 
 hand, contributing to his notable skill as a dis- 
 sector. Deftness of delicate manipulation was 
 characteristic also of Priestley, who resembled 
 Servetus in his combination of the man of science 
 with the pioneer in theology. Priestley indeed 
 was an explorer in the field of science at an earlier 
 age than Servetus in all probability ; for Priestley 
 as a youngster of eleven began his experiments on 
 gases by bottling-up spiders to see how long they 
 would live without air. Apparently Servetus was 
 not, as a boy, alive to the scientific value of the 
 dying agonies of spiders; any more than Calvin 
 was, as a man, alive to the polemic value of the 
 dying agonies of Servetus. 
 
 The notary Antonio Serveto, apparently a man. 
 of means, had planned his own profession as the 
 destined career of his son Michael. For legal 
 training the lad was sent to the University of 
 Toulouse in his seventeenth year. He never saw 
 Spaia again. To the law he did not take, though 
 evidently he acquired some knowledge of it, 
 Fausto Paulo Sozzini (Socinus) was in like manner 
 put to the law, the hereditary profession in which 
 his ancestors had acquired both fame and wealth _ 
 Socinus hated the law, and in his young days read 
 Dante, wrote sonnets (still in print, though not 
 reprinted in his works) and sighed forth his soul- 
 in amorous verses instead of giving his mind to 
 jurists and canonists. There is no evidence that 
 Servetus forsook legal study out of any special- 
 
X4 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 iove for the poets, and it is doubtful if he ever 
 wrote a line of verse in his life. From that dis- 
 temper he seems clear. A crabbed Greek couplet 
 adorns the title-page of his chief medical treatise ; 
 to him it is addressed, not by him composed. He 
 does in his final publication quote (without 
 naming them) Vergil twice and Ennius once ; but 
 the brief passages, incorporated in his text, are so 
 familiar and so loosely recollected that they 
 might have come to him by mere hearsay. No 
 other poetical citations will be found in his pages 
 except, for controversial purposes, a few lines 
 from the Sibylline verses and a phrase from an 
 Orphic hymn. A totally different class of study 
 proved irresistible in its attraction for him. 
 
 In choosing Toulouse as the place of his son's 
 professional education, Antonio Serveto doubtless 
 had in mind, as Dr. ToUin well conjectures, not 
 merely the prominent repute of its University as a 
 school of learned jurists, but also its fame in 
 divinity as a hot-bed of Roman Catholic ortho- 
 doxy, intolerant of any of those newer ideas 
 which, in various parts of Spain and France, had 
 been fermenting for years, provoked by Luther's 
 ■outburst in 15 17, wherewith not Germany alone 
 but all Europe rang. The German or Lutheran 
 type of reformed doctrine, it may be said, never 
 •enlisted the sympathies of Servetus. It was not 
 radical enough on the sacraments; while its 
 exaltation of mere faith appeared to him inimical 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 15 
 
 to the sound doctrine of good works. Perhaps 
 the teaching of Toulouse might have definitely 
 confirmed him in his father's faith, but for an 
 incident which suddenly turned his thoughts from 
 law to the Gospel. Up to the year 1528, it would 
 appear that he had never seen a Bible. He says 
 he had never read any of the Bible, and we may be 
 sure that, had one fallen in his way, he would 
 certainly have had the curiosity to examine it. 
 At Toulouse, he, with certain other scholars, 
 began to read " the Holy Scriptures and the 
 Evangel." Here indeed we have a coincidence 
 with the life of Calvin; for it was in this same 
 year, 1528, that the future Reformer, at Orleans 
 and as a law student, began his study of the 
 Bible in the Vulgate version. Usually it is 
 assumed that the Bible on which Servetus lighted 
 was also simply the Vulgate. This there is 
 reason for doubting. He is never in the habit of 
 quoting the Vulgate; his acquaintance with the 
 original texts must have been made very early. 
 It is in the highest degree probable that a copy of 
 the Complutensian Polyglot (published 1522) in 
 which the Vulgate version is flanked by the 
 Hebrew and the Greek, was la saincte escripture et 
 evangile of which Servetus speaks. This. finest 
 fruit of the Alcala press, a splendid contribution 
 to sacred letters under the auspices of a Spanish 
 Cardinal devoted to the interests of the Holy See, 
 could hardly have missed its way to the University 
 
I6 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 of Toulouse, and would be sure to attract the 
 curiosity of its Spanish students. 
 
 Not long after his initial acquaintance with the 
 Bible, Servetus left Toulouse to enter the service 
 of an influential patron, Juan de Quintana, an 
 Aragonese by birth, a Franciscan by religious 
 training, a theologian who in the bitter con- 
 troversies of that age endeavoured a line of con- 
 ciliation; and on this account had been selected 
 by Charles V — ^for the moment desirous of an 
 accommodating policy — as his confessor, replacing 
 an uncompromising Dominican. 
 
 Thus it happened that Servetus, in attend- 
 ance upon Father Quintana, was present at 
 Bologna in February 1530 ; there witnessing the 
 twofold event of Charles V's coronation, first as 
 King of Lombardy, then as Emperor of Rome and 
 of the world. Of these ceremonies we have a full 
 contemporary account from the pen of Cornelius 
 Agrippa, the Emperor's historiographer, whose 
 graphic sentences enable us to realise the scene, 
 almost as if we had been present. From every 
 window in proud Bologna costly tapestries were 
 hung forth. On every wall golden and silver 
 gewgaws reflected the cheery radiance of the 
 Italian sun. The very streets and arcades — the 
 mighty arcades of Bologna which lift our imagina- 
 tion till those of Chester shrink to a decrepit in- 
 significance — were carpeted with fresh flowers. 
 Wine ran in the fountains from eagles', beaks and 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 17 
 
 lions' gaping throats. Every nation from Britain 
 in the West to the isles of the Levant sent high 
 dignitaries of Church and State, princes and peers, 
 cardinals and canons, in robes and badges of 
 every imagined description, to swell the pomp 
 and multiply the paraphernalia. 
 
 In all this blaze of magnificent splendour the 
 eyes of Servetus, to whom pomp was always 
 repulsive— =-though he had a nice taste in jewelry; 
 an unprinted catalogue of his personal effects left 
 behind on his escape from Vienne proves this — 
 rested mainly on one figure ; and the vision of this 
 ever after haunted and burdened his memory. 
 The Pope who was to do the crowning was borne 
 aloft, says Agrippa, upon men's shoulders in his 
 chair of state, and as they carried him through 
 the gilded throng that lined the streets, bearing 
 him in grand procession to the high altar of San 
 Petronio, the people knelt in the ways. Those 
 fortunate enough to be near, pressed forward to^ 
 kiss the slippers of Giulio de' Medici, known now 
 as the seventh Clement, Vicar of God; and they 
 received his benediction as if it were the visible 
 assurance of the favour of the Most High. Three 
 and twenty years after this, in the latest of his 
 works, Servetus printed his reminiscence of a 
 spectacle which had made on his young mind an 
 indelible impression. "With these very eyes," 
 he exclaims in accents of quivering indignation, 
 " with these very eyes did I behold him, carried in 
 
 c 
 
i8 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 pomp upon the necks of princes, adored in the 
 open squares by the whole populace on bended 
 knee. Those who could kiss his shoes deemed 
 themselves possessors of indulgence for their sins, 
 and dreaded no more the pains of infernal fire. 
 O beast of all beasts most execrable ! Well hath 
 Isaiah painted thee — ." Then follows a terrible 
 passage, adapted rather than translated from the 
 prophet. 
 
 An unsparing vehemence of denunciation is a 
 feature of Servetus' latest language when he 
 touches on the Papacy, language which one can- 
 not but wish that he had been able to keep in 
 restraint. What makes it the more startling and, 
 in a sense, the more impressive is that there was 
 nothing of it in any of his earlier works. It is the 
 discharge of a long pent- up fury, to which he 
 must needs at length give vent. It should be said, 
 however, that he never assails the Catholic 
 Church as such. In his first publication, while 
 frankly submitting his own views, he affirms: 
 " the Church shall judge." In a later one, he 
 claims to write pro ecclesia, ut pro matre filius. It 
 was not merely from fear of consequences that he 
 habitually conformed. In many respects the 
 Catholic ideal was consonant with the breadth of 
 his religious mind. For that very reason it came 
 about that with the Roman travesty of Catholic- 
 ism he entirely lost patience. The Pope to him 
 was essentially a usurping Antichrist. Valued 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 19 
 
 friends he had among Catholic dignitaries, close 
 intimates among the priesthood — one of these 
 intimates, Jacques Charmier, got into trouble on 
 this score, and suffered imprisonment at Vienne 
 after his friend's trial — yet the rank and file of the 
 sacerdotal class constituted in his judgment an 
 unclean, unwholesome crew. In the scornful 
 section of his latest work, quoted above, he does 
 not measure terms in his fierce reprobation of 
 their morals and their hypocrisy, though he lays 
 the ultimate blame of this unworthiness upon the 
 Pope, their evil master, their unscrupulous 
 t5nrant. We must recollect what too many Popes 
 were, in his day. At the time when he printed 
 his denunciation, the Papal throne was occupied 
 by Julius III — of fame so unsavoury that 
 particulars are not desirable . We may hasten from 
 them with the Catholic Encyclopedia as " very 
 disagreeable rumours." He it was who kindly 
 absolved this country from heresy and schism 
 when Mary Tudor drew it back to the Roman 
 obedience. His end is thus sketched by a mild 
 writer : " He died from the consequences of his 
 own folly, and no tomb was erected to his 
 memory." 
 
 The Bible made Servetus a theological student, 
 compelling him as it did to investigate the 
 grounds of his ancestral religion, and especially 
 convincing him that to-day, as at first. Christian 
 doctrine must start from a realizing knowledge of 
 
20 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 the Man Christ Jesus. Ab homine exordiendum is 
 his pregnant phrase. The spectacle of Bologna 
 turned the theological student into the would-be 
 missionary of a better theology. In the year fol- 
 lowing the Bologna pageant, Servetus, having 
 quitted the service of Quintana, issued his first 
 little theological work. One would like to know 
 how he managed to obtain the services of his 
 printer, Johann Setzer of Hagenau in Alsace. 
 Setzer was a Protestant of discrimination, who 
 seems to have chosen the books he printed as 
 carefully as he printed them. In neat little 
 volumes nicely got up he brought out numerous 
 reprints of reforming tracts, favouring especially 
 ' those by Melanchthon. Uniform with these and 
 in the same type he produced in 1531 the seven- 
 fold tract by Servetus on Trinity Errors (De 
 Trinitatis Erroribus), withholding however, his 
 name as printer. The second work of Servetus 
 {Dialogorum de Trinitate libri duo) consisting of 
 six short chapters, the first two being in dialogue 
 form, was brought out in 1532 by the same 
 printing firm, though meanwhile Setzer had died.. 
 That first little book, on Trinity Errors, found 
 its way to the Diet at Ratisbon (17 April, 1532),. 
 where Quintana was in attendance on Charles V.. 
 It seems that Servetus had secured its coming^ 
 under the notice of the Diet by sending a copy to- 
 one of its members, Christopher von Stadion, 
 Bishop of Augsburg. Servetus had gone to Augs- 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 21 
 
 burg with Quintana in 1530. Perhaps he hoped 
 that in this prelate he might find a friend. Stadion 
 was not an irreconcilable. As Lord Acton notes, 
 he thought his own people blind, not to coalesce 
 with Protestants on the basis of the Augsburg 
 Confession. 
 
 A contemporary letter (in Italian) from Ratis- 
 bon to Rome by the Italian Nuncio, Jerome 
 Aleander, soon to be made a Cardinal, begins 
 with the exclamation : " I do really believe we are 
 very near the end of the world ! " Having 
 delivered himself of this terrified foj-ecast, he pro- 
 ceeds to say that a young Spaniard, one " Mihel 
 Serveto, alias Dereves " has written a book against 
 the Trinity, cram-full of misused Scripture, inter- 
 spersed with shreds of Greek and Hebrew, a very 
 distasteful piece, but clearly by a very shrewd 
 fellow. Quintana, he goes on to say, knows the 
 writer, says he is a young man of very great talent 
 and a great sophist, but cannot imagine that a 
 book so replete with Scripture knowledge and so 
 polished in style, can really be the production of 
 one of his years; and this, though he over- 
 estimated those years by five. Aleander means 
 to get together some of the theologians attending 
 the Diet, especially those connected with Spain, 
 to have the book condeinned, and instructions 
 sent which would procure the burning of the book 
 with the effigy of its author, al modo di Spagna. 
 This laudable project was not carried out, so far 
 
22 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 as we know, though Aleander assures his Roman 
 correspondent that the most reverend Legate, in 
 the belief that Serveto belonged to his diocese 
 (Huesca) will write instructing his Vicar-general 
 to see about it. The Vicar-general was the 
 bishop's brother, who administered the diocese 
 for him, since this bishop had graver occupations 
 on hand, being no less a personage than the 
 Bolognese Cardinal Legate, Lorenzo Campeggio, 
 who already had appeared in our own history as 
 Papal Commissioner in the first of Henry VIII's 
 conscience-stricken suits of nullity. 
 
 The polish of style here signalized as pertaining 
 to the first work of Servetus is an imaginary 
 quantity. The Latin, though clear, is crude; 
 yet very likely it impressed Quintana by its 
 superiority to the ordinary dog-Latin of the 
 friars with whom he was most familiar. On the 
 other hand, every reader must share Quintana's 
 amazement at the proofs of learning and reading 
 (not in Scripture alone) which the little book 
 presents, especially in the first of its seven sub- 
 divisions. How, we want to know, did a lad not 
 yet fully of age acquire this breadth of attain- 
 ment ? Where did he find all the books he 
 quotes, and quotes moreover with point and fair- 
 ness ? Let us make a list of them in alphabetical 
 order: Aristotle, Augustine, Basil, the Chaldee 
 Paraphrase, Rab Chimhi, Clement of Rome, 
 Clement of Alexandria, the Clementines, Corpus 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 23 
 
 Juris, Cyprian, the Decretals, Dionysius of 
 Alexandria, Erasmus, Glossa Ordinaria, Gregory 
 of Nazianzum, Henricus de Gaudano, Hilary, 
 Robert Holcot, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Joachim of 
 Flores, John of Damascus, Lactantius, Maxentius 
 Constantinopolitanus, Mahomet in his Alcoran 
 (not printed till a dozen years later), Rab Moyses, 
 Occam, Paulus Burgensis, Peter de Aliaco, Peter 
 Lombard, Ricardus de Media Villa, TertuUian. 
 Of these, Irenaeus and TertuUian were through- 
 out his life, especial favourites with him. His 
 reference to the Qoran of Muhammad is ushered 
 in with the wholesome reminder: "Hearken to 
 what saith Mahomet, and remember that one 
 truth confessed by an enemy is better worth cred- 
 ence than a hundred lies though authorised by 
 our own men." He must have ransacked the 
 libraries at Tonlouse and elsewhere to come upon 
 all these writers. Even if he found some of them 
 in extracts (as is evident in the case of Joachim 
 of Flores) the industry and research are obvious. 
 Nor had he, as Andrew Kippis is said to have 
 done, crammed so many books into his head that 
 his brains refused to move. Who taught him 
 Hebrew ? Not the ordinary Hebrew only, for he 
 introduces a cryptic Hebrew abbreviation when 
 he wishes to administer a sly slap at the theo- 
 logians of his day. It puzzled Dr. ToUin, till I 
 suggested to him. Try Buxtorf De Abhreviaturisy 
 and you shall see what you shall see. This little 
 
24 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 trick on our Michael's part is prize-worthy, for it 
 is one of the very few instances in him of a sub- 
 rident humour. Where he got his Hebrew to 
 begin with, he does not say; only that he never 
 had any communication with the Jews. This 
 question, however, we can perhaps answer. His 
 master in Hebrew, at a later date, was certainly 
 the venerable Sanctes Pagnino, whose translation 
 of the Bible he subsequently (1542) re-edited and 
 annotated. Now Servetus tells us that when he 
 left Quintana he went to Lyons, and Pagnino was 
 settled in Lyons from 1525 tUl his death in 1541. 
 If this is the answer, it necessarily follows that 
 his command of Hebrew was gained in much less 
 than a year. Throughout life his rapidity of 
 attainment was truly marvellous. 
 
 His little book made a great stir. Luther, as 
 we might expect, would none of it. Luther in his 
 big-hearted way (reminding us of Dr. Johnson) 
 liked what he liked and scoffed at what he dis- 
 liked. He scoffed at Servetus in his Table Talk, 
 just as he scoffed at the Epistle of St. James in 
 print. The cautious Erasmus wrote that the 
 Spaniard had tried in vain to gain his ear, so 
 Alearider tells us. Melanchthon read the little 
 voliime and read it again. It frightened him ; and 
 it was some time before he tried to rebut its 
 positions. The Roman Catholics held aloof from 
 the controversy over the book, but scarcely any 
 Protestant theologian of repute abstained from 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 25 
 
 having his say about it, and usually his flitig at it. 
 
 The Swiss Reformers — Oecolampadius in par- 
 ticular, who to the disgust oi Alearider received 
 Servetus into his house — entered into friendly dis- 
 putation with him as with no mean adversary. 
 
 It was to meet their objections that he wrote 
 his supplementary booklet, with a modest fore- 
 word admitting the imperfections of his boyish 
 essky, tanquam a paruulo paruuUs scripta. This 
 description is something more than a humble 
 apology for acknowledged defects. It throws a 
 clear light on the nature of his early work, and the 
 method of its composition. He had begun the 
 study of Scripture, so he declared at Geneva, in 
 company with certain of his fellow students. The 
 curious and sometimes puzzling personal appeals 
 characteristic of his first publication are unintel- 
 ligible till we realize that we have before us again 
 and again what amounts to a record of actual dis- 
 putation carried on at the University of Toulouse 
 between the young enthusiast and his youthful 
 compeers, who for their parts were not slow to 
 put forward objections which they deemed fatal 
 to his novel views, while for his part these were 
 met by his eager and skilful defences. Lad as he 
 was, debating with lads, he evidently felt himself 
 to be a man with a mission. In the original pre- 
 face, to his Christianismi Restitutio, which exists 
 only in a manuscript copy, he speaks of himself as 
 moved by a divine impulse in his twentieth year to 
 
26 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 treat of matters pertaining to the salvation of 
 Christ's people, matters respecting which he had 
 learned nothing from any human source. This 
 purpose he had ever kept before him, though con- 
 scious of the many dangers to which it exposed 
 him. At times, like Jonah, he felt impelled 
 to flee from duty, and betake himself to some 
 distant and solitary isle. The voice of Christ 
 came to him as an irresistible mandate bidding 
 him be true to the Master's cause. 
 
 Nothing is more characteristic in the religious 
 development of Servetus than the growth of a 
 vivid sense of the personal relation in which he 
 stood to his Divine Master. From his earlier 
 works this is absent ; in these he is bent on the 
 recovery of the historical Christ. In his latest 
 work, so full is his mind of the presence and 
 stimulus of the ever living Lord and Leader, that 
 to Christ his heart leaps forth in the spontaneous 
 approach of personal address. 
 
 In regard to such address, we may mark some 
 notable contrasts of thought and feeling, dis- 
 tinguishing Servetus from Faustus Socinus on the 
 one hand, and from Thomas Emlyn on the other. 
 Emlyn who in 1704 wrote his " Vindication of the 
 Worship of the Lord Jesus Christ on Unitarian 
 Principles," rests the claim to worship on the fact 
 of dominion — ^his own word. Worship, in short, 
 is with him purely an act of homage; an idea 
 which we find reflected in many of our older 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 27 
 
 hymns: " To Thee, O God, we homage pay," as 
 the gentle Doddridge has it. To our Lord also, 
 in Emlyn's view, like though not equal homage is 
 due ; he would have been ready to use the words 
 of one of Dr. Martineau's own rather stiff and 
 stilted hymns, in which our Lord is apostrophized 
 with the address: " O King of earth." 
 
 Turning to Socinus, we find him, in his critical 
 manner, distinguishing between adoration of 
 Christ — and by this he means that feeling of the 
 heart which constitutes the Christian attitude — 
 and invocation of Christ, direct verbal address and 
 petition, and this by no means necessarily accom- 
 panies the Christian emotion. It is lawful but 
 not imperative. We have evidence of its em- 
 ployment by his English disciples, but it has not 
 been possible to detect Socinus himself in the 
 actual use of it, though he will make no terms 
 with those who deny its legitimacy. To the 
 temperament of Servetus the distinction thus 
 critically drawn between emotion and utterance 
 would have been a practical impossibility. Just 
 as, in his denunciations, the flow of feeling and 
 the rush of language constitute one act, and he 
 could no more be reticent in word than quiet in 
 mind before any evil which pressed upon him as 
 a dire reality to be repelled with the whole force 
 of his being, so in his religion the cry of the heart 
 and the appeal of the lips come surging up in 
 unison from the same sense of a gracious presence 
 
28 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 very near to his spirit. Break forth then in 
 supplication he needs must : " O Christ Jesu, Son 
 •of God, liberator most clement, who hast so often 
 delivered thy people from their straits, pity and 
 •deliver us now ! " 
 
 The introduction of Servetus to a scientific 
 career took place at Lyons, where he was earn- 
 ing' his bread as editor for the press. Dropping 
 his patronymic, he borrowed a place-name from 
 Villanueva, appearing in Latin as VUlanovanus, 
 in French as de Villeneufve. This dissociated 
 him from his theological speculations, which 
 would hardly have ingratiated him with the Lyons 
 booksellers. The excellence of his literary work 
 was conspicuous in his edition of Ptolemy's 
 ■Geography, published in 1535, and reissued, 
 further improved, in 1541. His additions to 
 Ptolemy are copious and curious, showing a good 
 ■deal of enquiry, an original grasp of the future 
 science of comparative geography, and a keen 
 study of the manners and characteristics of various 
 peoples. It may be of some interest to extract, 
 irom the folio page of his observations on the 
 British Isles, the main things which struck him in 
 regard to our country and people. There is the 
 more reason for doing this, inasmuch as Dr. 
 Willis has given an attempt at a version, with 
 extraordinary blunder's. It will be observed 
 that he sets down his points, just as they occur to 
 him, like joltings transcribed from a note-book. 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 29. 
 
 not worked up into any systematic arrangement. 
 Taking as basis the first edition of the Geography, 
 the omissions in the second are here indicated by 
 italics, while the additions are enclosed in square- 
 brackets. 
 
 " Among Scots," he says, " there are few differ- 
 ences of customs, language or manners. Their 
 temper is hasty, prone to revenge, and fierce .- 
 They are brave in war, very patient under fasting,, 
 watching and cold, shapely in mien, careless in 
 dress. Unfriendly in disposition, they look down 
 on all other mortals. They are vain of their noble 
 blood ; even in the depth of poverty tracing their 
 pedigree to a line of kings. They flatter them- 
 selves on their argumentative skill ; in lying they 
 delight, and do not study peace, like the English. ^ 
 [The northern parts of Scotland are tenanted by 
 wild men, bearing the name of foresters; their 
 speech and dress are as in Ireland; they wear a. 
 rug over a tunic of saffron dye, and go with bare- 
 shanks and a shaggy kind of footwear; they live- 
 on garne and fish, though with plenty of cattle, 
 milk and cheese; their weapons are bows and 
 arrows, and broadswords ; hunting is their chief 
 pursuit; they have a provincial code, different 
 from the civil law. The rest of the Scots are 
 similar to the English in language and civilization - 
 Almost throughout the island] the use of coal for 
 firing is so common that beggars meeting charit- 
 able persons ask for coal." 
 
30 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 Speaking of England, he says " the climate is 
 more temperate than in France, with less extremes 
 of cold and heat. The land is well wooded, rich 
 in produce, suitable for feeding cattle and horses, 
 of which there are great numbers, especially of 
 sheep, for there are no wolves. Formerly the 
 country produced no wine, but now there are 
 vineyards in some localities ; it yields gold, silver, 
 iron, lead, tin, and coal in abundance [and exports 
 hides and excellent hounds for the chase]. It 
 has large fisheries in tidal rivers, salt springs and 
 hot springs, precious stones, pearls, and the finest 
 jet in large quantities. The population is enor- 
 mous, and, according to Plutarch, long-lived. The 
 English language, a composite speech arising from 
 diversity of races, is very difficult both to understand 
 and to pronounce. In war they are intrepid, and 
 the best of archers. They are a wealthy people, 
 and for the most part given to, commercial pur- 
 suits; they are celebrated for the finest cloth, 
 owing to the abundance of good wool. On their 
 music and their banquets they especially pride 
 themselves. They are of blue eyes and tall 
 stature." Here he tells the story of Beatus 
 Gregorius and the fair young Angles, inserting in 
 his second edition [" Recently, however, they 
 have separated from the Roman Church, like a 
 good part of Germany "]. 
 
 "Another island," he says, "near to this, 
 called Hyrland, is [for the most part] subject to 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 31 
 
 the King of England; it is situated to the West, 
 and is half the size of Britain. So rich is it in 
 fodder that unless in summer the cattle are kept 
 off the pastures, they are in danger of overeating. 
 This island produces no noxious animal, no 
 spider or frog, nor will it maintain them if im- 
 ported ; it kills all noxious animals brought from 
 another soil, smothering them in dust. Bees are 
 not found here. The climate is marvellously 
 temperate, the fertility remarkable. Yet the 
 population is inhospitable, uncultivated and cruel, 
 given to hunting and sports more than to agri- 
 cultural labour. They are called Hybernians 
 from one Hybernus, a Spaniard, who reached the 
 island in a three days' sail." Finally, with a two- 
 edged compliment he remarks in the second 
 edition [" Whence it happens that in most 
 respects they resemble in characteristics those 
 Spaniards who are their nearest neighbours, 
 namely, the Basques "]. Elsewhere in this Geo- 
 graphy Servetus speaks some home truths about 
 the characteristics of his own nation, a people 
 "restless in mind, vast in endeavour, quick of 
 genius, impatient of discipline." Here, with an 
 unsparing candour, he drew his own portrait. 
 
 More important than his geographical work in 
 its influence on his future career was his employ- 
 ment as corrector of the press for sundry publica- 
 tions of Dr. Symphorien Champier (1472-1539), 
 herbalist, physician, Platonist, and astrologer 
 
32 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 at Lyons. Champier is embalmed for ever in the 
 great work of a brother physician; for a book 
 "per § C," with an odd title, finds a place in the 
 immortal library of St. Victor. Francis Rabelais, 
 who rendered his neighbour this service, was not 
 merely a physician, but one of the first anatomists 
 to conduct a dissection in public at the Lyons 
 hospitaL Servetus may have been present. A 
 singular poem by Etienne Dolet, published in 
 1538, introduces the corpse of a malefactor, 
 priding itself on having been the honoured subject 
 of this dissection. This poem Servetus had cer- 
 tainly seen or heard, for he owes to it a turn of 
 expression which he subsequently reproduced on 
 the wonderful " artifice " of the human body. 
 He must either have personally known Rabelais, 
 or, what is perhaps less likely have been a reader 
 of Pantagruel ; for he follows Rabelais in locating 
 the faculty of memory in what was then known 
 as the posterior ventricle of the brain. 
 
 Servetus reckons Champier as his second 
 patron, and owns his considerable debt to him as 
 teacher. It was with Champier's backing that 
 he repaired in 1536 to Paris, there to study 
 medicine. Again we stand amazed at the rapid- 
 ity of his advance. He was little more than a 
 couple of years in Paris. During that time he 
 graduated in arts; was licensed in medicine; as 
 assistant to the anatomy professor, in succession 
 to. Andre Vesale, gained - repute as a dissector; 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 33 
 
 virldicated Champier in print (1536) against the 
 attack of a German critic, Leonhard Fuchs; 
 lectured on geography, and on astronomy or 
 astrology (the terms were then used indis- 
 criminately) with an archbishop as one of his 
 hearers; published his rationale of digestion in 
 the shape of six lectures on Syrups (1537) which 
 ran through five editions in eleven years; was 
 prosecuted by the medical faculty for alleged 
 libels in his astronomical lectures (1538) and 
 inhibited from meddling with that branch of the 
 science of the stars which we now set aside as 
 astrology. This is pretty well for two years' 
 work, and largely original work. His penetra- 
 tion was equally remarkable for its quickness and 
 its depth. Well does his contemporary, Sebastian 
 Miinster, a rival editor of Ptolemy, characterise 
 him by the epithet oculatissimus. His eyes were 
 eyes of mind, his observation was instant and sure. 
 As for the connection between medicine and 
 astronomy in some of its practical applications, 
 we shall not forget that Chaucer tells us, of his 
 Doctour of Phisik, that 
 
 In all this world ne was ther noon him lik. 
 To speke of phisik and of surgerye ; 
 For he was grounded in astronomye. 
 
 The astronomy of Servetus, like that of Ptolemy, 
 was strictly geocentric. He held, indeed, that 
 the earth was created first, before the heavens, 
 to serve as the centre about which the whole 
 
34 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 organic system of the universe was in suGcessibii 
 arranged. In his capacity of astrologer, Servetus 
 was inter alia a meteorologist and a weather 
 prophet. His weather forecasts, not being ran- 
 dom guesses, but founded on observations really 
 scientific in their character and in the principle of 
 their interpretation, had a perverse habit of 
 coming true. Hence some of that jealousy which 
 led to his prosecution. Furthermore, he was in 
 advance of his age in his detection of the influence 
 of climatic conditions on certain forms of disease. 
 It is noticeable, too, that in his treatise on Syrups 
 he deprecates the use of drugs as aids to digestion 
 in ordinary cases, prescribing rest, sleep, massage 
 (friciiones), baths, attention to diet, and use of 
 warm drinks. 
 
 This treatise (Syruporum Universa Ratio) is the 
 only one of all his publications into which he intro- 
 duces no theology. It is also the best written, so 
 far as classic Latin goes, of all his works ; and in 
 controversy the most temperate. One could 
 wish that all his medical pamphlets had been in 
 equally good taste ; but no doubt he had his pro- 
 vocations. No doubt also it was sufi&ciently 
 galling to grave and learned members of the 
 faculty, addicted to the Arab school of physic 
 with its multifold theory of digestion, to be 
 taught the elements of true science by a young 
 beginner in his twenty-sixth year, who knew his 
 Galen, and made skilful use of that great name as 
 
MICHAEL. SERVETUS ^5 
 
 of paramount authority. Unpoliteness' in ^rebuke 
 and in retort were perhaps natural in the circum- 
 stances. In the Sjnrups treatise Servetus is care- 
 ful to attack no Jiving person directly or indirectly 
 and even apologizes for his references to John 
 ■Manardus, then recently dead, the inventor while 
 living of three digestions in the same human 
 frame. It gives me pleasure to note his com- 
 mendation of my namesake, Bernard Gordonius 
 (who died, I believe, in 1305, at any rate he is not 
 living now) for frankly owning that physicians, 
 of whom he was one, sometimes do make mis- 
 takes. The dominant anxiety of Servetus is that 
 the science of medicine, of which he speaks 
 enthusiastically, as coming to a new birth, should 
 be as free from error as possible. 
 
 Soon he took to medical practice as his means 
 of livelihood, exercising his profession at Avignon 
 and for a longer period at Charlieu. Two ro- 
 mantic episodes mark his sojourn, of a couple of 
 years or so, at the quaint old town of Charlieu, 
 .with its ancient castle, and its venerable inn, 
 which yielded once upoii a time, to a traveller in 
 search of traces of Servetus, a welcome supper of 
 milk and grapes. Here it was that Servetus 
 .would, had he been competent to "do so, have 
 •married une fille dudict lieu: Here too, one night, 
 on his .way to visit a patient, he was set upon by 
 .friends of a rival physician.- Swords were drawn, 
 wounds given, and Servetus was-put under arrest 
 
36 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 for two or three days. He says he never got inta 
 such a scrape before; nor did he again, till the 
 Inquisition was hounded on to him by hints froni 
 Geneva. 
 
 Finally, after some further study in the medical 
 school at Montpellier, he found a permanent settle- 
 ment (1541-53) at Vienne, on the invitation of its 
 Archbishop, Pierre Paulmier, the same who had 
 been his hearer in Paris ; who now attached him 
 to his person as confidential physician. In 
 addition to this he had a considerable practice^ 
 and made money. He still continued to do some 
 work for the Lyons publishers, bringing out the 
 revised edition of his Ptolemy, and his noble 
 annotated edition of Pagnino's Bible (1542). 
 This contains his remarkable theory of prophecy, 
 perhaps the only theory which preserves the 
 element of Christ-predicting vision, while admit- 
 ting the immediacy of the prophet's historic out- 
 look. He certainly also pursued his anatomical 
 researches, for his discovery of the pulmonary 
 circulation of the blood, not made in Paris, had 
 been reached by him before 1546. 
 
 Being now in easy circumstances, and the 
 master of some leisure, his main business from his- 
 own point of view was the revision and completion. 
 of his theological work. For this task he had pre- 
 pared himself by larger learning and more 
 searching study. So . subsidiary did he reckon 
 everything else to this, that he made no immedi- 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 37 
 
 ^ate publication of his great physiological dis- 
 covery, reserving for incidental exposition in his 
 Christianismi Restitutio, "a truth which Galen 
 himself had not perceived." This exposition is 
 but a stage in the process by which he endeavours 
 to pass from physiology to psychology, and to 
 determine how and where the Spirit of God 
 operates upon the soul of man. As we are not 
 now dealing with his scheme of doctrine, but 
 touching only on points which illustrate the man 
 and his characteristics, it will suffice to say that 
 of the contents of the Christianismi Restitutio 
 (1553) the portion which will best repay the 
 general student is its final piece, the Apologia. 
 This is the only piece which has been separately 
 reprinted (1896) and is easily accessible, though 
 marred by errata, some of which belong to the 
 original text, others to the reprint of 1790. It 
 takes its title from the circumstance that its 
 primary raison d'itre was the writer's desire to 
 defend himself in the face of criticism by Melanch- 
 thon, to whom the Apologia is addressed, as he had 
 attacked Servetus by name in his Loci Communes 
 {1536). From a mere reply, the Apologia pro- 
 ceeds to a general and lucid outline of the writer's 
 scheme, both of Christian doctrine and of Church 
 polity, at once temperate in tone and glowing 
 with anticipation of its ultimate acceptance. 
 
 The earlier sections of the volume give many 
 more evidences of the writer's scientific curiosity 
 
38 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 than thiat pfesented by his account of the pul- 
 monary circulation. Whether he. had definitely 
 grasped the larger truth of the general circulation 
 of the blood may be left in doubt, for while there 
 are indications which fit in with this, they need 
 not be pressed too far. This wider truth was not 
 of service to the psychological argument; and 
 this alone deternjined the introduction and proof 
 of the discovery which he signalized. Hints for 
 many of his scientific positions — we can hardly 
 call them discoveries, some of them being merely 
 unverified convictions — he finds in the letter of 
 the Bible. Thus, for example, he has an inkling 
 of the fact that water is composite — a truth which 
 Priestley, strange to say, repudiated with vigour 
 to his dying day— and he is guided to it by the 
 circumstance that the Hebrew terms for water and 
 for sky are in the dual number. His mind is 
 moving away from the older theory of four fixed 
 elements. Air is a gas (as we should say) which 
 escapes from water ; flame is enkiiidled air or gas. 
 On the other hand his experience as a physician 
 proinpted some of his interpretations of Biblical 
 phenoniena and Biblical data._ "Contraction of 
 the tieryes," he ;says,. "is. called by Christ the 
 chain of Satan, just as. St. Paul calls his own 
 infirnjity.a messenger. of Satan." . In regard to the 
 retributive facts of the hereaft.e.1;, he -observes 
 that,, just as to those whose senses are diseased, 
 swfiefi thing's seeni bitter and .iragrant things 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 39 
 
 fetid, Iso in the future life the conditions which 
 make the bliss of the good, will be torture to the 
 depraved. His glimpses of universal restoration 
 are suggested by the thought that as Nature has 
 remedies for all her diseases, could we only dis- 
 cover and apply them, so there may be ultimate 
 modes of treatment for the depravities of the 
 moral and spiritual being. 
 
 The Biblicism of Servetus, it must be owned, is 
 of the most thoroughgoing order. He does not 
 indeed with the Hutchinsonians (now, presum- 
 ably, extinct or nearly so) find all science in the 
 books of Moses, designedly there taught, though 
 veiled in symbols; but the discoveries of science, 
 so far as he had made them, tally with the 
 language of Scripture, as he understands it. The 
 absolute inerrancy of the Bible was evidently 
 with him an axiom so patent that it never occurs 
 to him even to state it. Here he differs from the 
 earlier Reformers, for Luther was a Biblical critic 
 in his slap-dash way, and the commentaries of 
 Calvin on both Testaments are pervaded by a 
 scientific acumen. Milton escapes the pressure 
 . of his Biblicism,. at least as regards the New Testa- 
 ment, by pleading the presence of irreducible- 
 variations in the existing text, providentially 
 designed to compel a resort io the guidance of the 
 Spirit... Servetus knows nothing of textual uncer-- 
 tainties. In bis earliest .and again in his ktest 
 work,, he cites and expounds the Three Heavenly 
 
40 MICHAEL SERVETUS 
 
 Witnesses verse, without a suspicion that it has 
 no place in the true text. His one selective 
 criticism — and this does not call in question the 
 text but is founded upon it — is in his strong 
 assertion of the superiority of St. Paul to St. 
 Peter as an exponent of Christianity. St. Peter, 
 he maintains, could never have transmitted to the 
 Papacy a supremacy in the Apostolate which he 
 did not himself possess. The more excellent 
 organ of apostolicity was St. Paul " who from the 
 beginning of his vocation knew perfectly the 
 mysteries of Christ, namely, that the Gentiles 
 were to be called, and that all Judaisms were to 
 be done away; things which none other of the 
 Apostles knew." 
 
 In spite of all this, while holding that the Bible 
 is absolutely true, he claims, and on Biblical 
 authority, that the true Christian is, for the 
 essentials of his religion, independent of the 
 Bible. " Christ," he exclaims, " is my only 
 Evangelist." He means that for the knowledge 
 of Christ he need not go to the records of the 
 historic past, and must not be content with these. 
 Firm faith in a living Leader is the primary 
 requisite of discipleship, the very quality which 
 constitutes the Christian, for nemo Christianus 
 nisi discipulus. Hence it is not enough to tell a 
 man that the Evangelists wrote so and so. The 
 Gospel was in being before they wrote. It is not 
 the Gospel because they wrote it, they wrote it 
 
MICHAEL SERVETUS 41 
 
 because it was and is the Gospel. " The law of 
 ■Christ is the law of the heart. This law of Christ 
 needs no outward writing. Yea, even had the 
 Apostles and Evangelists written nothing, still, 
 providing that the knowledge and the faith of 
 •Christ endured in us, this new law of Christ would 
 •stand, ■written with inward ink by the ef&cacy of 
 the Divine Spirit, which imprints that law on 
 tablets of the heart." 
 
 Here Servetus reaches the highest mark of his 
 mystic faith, and here we leave him. Cut off at 
 forty-two, his ever-growing mind had not yet 
 ■shown the full extent of its insight and its powers. 
 His last and ripest work is after all but a bundle 
 •of tracts theological, sewn up together, some 
 rewritten (not, it may perhaps be thought, in- 
 variably mended) and some new, many of them 
 bristling with speculations strange to the modern 
 mind, all of them instinct with the writer's 
 .genius. They show us what he was ; they point 
 further on to what he might have become. For, 
 •of all human achievement, of all human aspira- 
 ■ tion, of all human progress in religion, thank God, 
 " the end is not yet." 
 
 6 October, 1910. 
 
THE TERCENTENNIAL 
 OF A NAME 
 
II 
 
 THE TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 THE nineteenth century of the Christian Era 
 did not reach its proper termination before 
 24 March, 1901. The reason is, that this Era 
 begins its years on 25 March, the date of our 
 Lord's conception by his Virgin Mother, as cal- 
 culated in A.D. 527 by the Scytho-Roman monk 
 Dionysius Exiguus (Denis the Insignificant) by 
 himself thus designated. To his modest labours- 
 in the chronological field we owe the introduction 
 of the Annus Domini. The inconvenience of 
 beginning the Christian year at Lady Day, while 
 the historical year began on the first of January^ 
 was recognized at length by the English Parlia- 
 ment to whose legislation we owe the Era now ia 
 use, according to which the year, and consequently 
 the century of years, terminates on 31 December.. 
 It follows as a matter of course that somewhere or 
 other there has been a shortened year; the 
 century in which this has occurred, though it 
 consist. of the full number of years, will neverthe- 
 less be of necessity a shortened century. 
 
 Amateur chronologists seem inclined to play 
 tricks on their own account with the first of all the 
 
46 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 Christian centuries. Some of them go so far as 
 to reckon a year a.d. o, which yet is to count as 
 one before one; thus they make up a century 
 closing with the year a.d. 99. Others would 
 reckon as the first Christian year a period of nine 
 calendar months and six days, so as to begin the 
 second Christian year with the first of January. 
 The really short year in our English chronology 
 is the year a.d. 1752. This began, like all its 
 Christian predecessors on 25 March, but came to 
 an end by law on 31 December, having been 
 meanwhile, in the previous September, compelled 
 to make restitution of borrowed moments, the 
 overdraft of previous years from the days of 
 Julius Czesar. This reform of the calendar, in- 
 troduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, had 
 been adopted in Scotland in 1600 ; in Ireland it 
 was not legalised till 1782. Thus the English 
 year 1752 consisted of eight calendar months and 
 twenty-five days. The eighteenth therefore is 
 our short century ; and it is in virtue of its short- 
 ness that the following century, the one imme- 
 diately behind us, whose first year began by law 
 on I January 1801 accomplished its full tale of 
 years on 31 December 1900. 
 
 It is impossible to bring to mind this passage 
 from one century to another without some 
 salutary and even solemn thoughts on the flight 
 of time, -the procession of the ages, and the 
 turning-points of human story. Though it be 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 47 
 
 quite true that there is no real pause or break or 
 change when a century closes, yet the process by 
 which we engraft upon our imagination this idea 
 of parallels of longitude, as intersecting the un- 
 broken flow of years, is by no means artificial. 
 It may be called instinctive or perhaps con- 
 stitutional. Our habit of marking off a decade of 
 decades arises from our physical structure. We 
 count by tens because we have that number of 
 fingers, and the step to tens of tens is not arbitrary. 
 The space of time thus measured is naturally im- 
 pressive from its relation to the utmost span oi 
 human life. When, further, we contemplate the 
 centuries past, we cannot fail to see that each, to 
 the eye of posterity appears with an individual 
 character, and bears a distinctive repute of 
 its own. 
 
 What special stamp the judgment of the coming 
 •time may fix upon the century now [in Oct. 1900] 
 •near its close, we cannot safely anticipate. It is 
 not likely to be a flattering one ; for the next age 
 wUl have, and rightly have, a keen eye for faults 
 and defects, supposed or real, in its predecessor, 
 and means of course to remedy them. The 
 century last completed is always severely judged 
 by its successor. It gains neither the indulgeiice 
 nor the admiration bestowed upon earlier ages, 
 which compete less closely with the present time 
 arid are seen in an historic perspective, invisible to 
 those who stand too near. Witness the blind and 
 
48 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 persistent disparagement, on the religious side, 
 which our nineteenth century flung upon the 
 eighteenth, the century of Christian hymns, the 
 century of the rise of Christian missions, the 
 century which shone with the catholicity of 
 Doddridge, which thrilled with the fervour of 
 Whitefield and, unable to resist the appeal of the 
 consecrated philanthropy of Wesley, opened its 
 heart to the truth of God's free grace, its mind to 
 the fact of a human world improvable. Little 
 Laud, little Wesley — do we doubt which of these 
 irrepressible spirits made religion more real in 
 his own time and for all time ? Does religion, 
 again, owe no debt to the men who put Christian- 
 ity avowedly on its trial, brought its assumptions 
 to the bar of reason, searched out its facts by the 
 methods of history, checked its preachers into a 
 wise caution and, unsatisfied with the appeal of 
 mere sentiment, demanded of them the qualities 
 of solidity and sense ? That surely was no stag- 
 nant century in which Butler with new reverence 
 traced the springs of virtue in human nature, and 
 Hume probing the metaphysics of Deity set the 
 witness of the firmament and the tides above the 
 hearsay tales of men ; in which Lardner awoke a 
 living interest in the literature of the first Christian 
 ages, and Priestley compelled the fruitful study of 
 the mind of Christ and the process of doctrinal 
 development. We may console ourselves with 
 the consideration that, if those who come after us 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAM£ 49 
 
 treat the nineteenth century as the eighteenth 
 has been treated, dwell complacently on our weak- 
 nesses, and rank even some of our virtues as the 
 freaks or faults or foibles of our age, nevertheless 
 time will do us justice; and at any rate the 
 twenty-first century will avenge us, scourging our 
 detractors, and perhaps transfiguring our poor 
 endeavours in a fashion which our modesty for- 
 bids us to anticipate. 
 
 While then this address is retrospective in its 
 design, the retrospect of the immediate past is a 
 task left free to the Principal of this College a 
 hundred years hence. Let us look further back, 
 and extend our gaze beyond our vaunted bi-cen- 
 tennials, all of them, strictly speaking, bi-centen- 
 nials of the old Calvinistic Dissent. The history 
 of the Unitarian religion— not indeed under that 
 name — ^has lasted long enough to permit of its 
 Tercentennials, even in this country, did we 
 choose to celebrate them. The year of grace 
 1900 happens to be the Tercentennial of the first 
 known appearance of the Unitarian name, and 
 the very month coincides. It were inexcusable to- 
 pass this anniversary in silence. 
 
 How the term Unitarian originated, we may 
 perhaps conjecture, but we cannot say that we 
 certainly know. People are apt to rub their eyes 
 when they read that, in the sixteenth century, 
 those who now are called Unitarians were deno- 
 minated Trinitarians, and that in the Papal bull 
 
50 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 Coena Domini, as issued on Maundy Thursday by 
 successive Popes, from Gregory XIII. in 1583 to 
 Clement XIII. in 1768, Trinitarians are associated 
 with Anabaptists and Apostates as outcasts from 
 the Faith. The explanation is this : the heretics 
 so designated, holding the threeness of Father, 
 Son and Holy Spirit as distinct persons, denied 
 their unity of being and nature. It was Servetus 
 who first in 153 1 and again in 1553 employed the 
 term Trinitarian in its present theological sense. 
 So novel and so repulsive was his use of it, that 
 his judges at Geneva were more than scandalized 
 at his temerity. It was even included among the 
 capital charges against him that to ceux qui 
 croyent en la TriniU he had given the name 
 Trinitaires. His nomenclature has endured,- and 
 the term has now the force of a compliment. 
 
 As its theological correlative we might have 
 expected to find the term Unitarian earlier in use 
 than in point of fact we do. In vain do we search 
 for it till we come upon a decree of the Transyl- 
 vanian Diet at Lecsfalva in October, 1600, when 
 Unitaria Religio, the Unitarian Religion, was 
 first recognized as such. In old statutes of the 
 same country such titles as Antitrinitarian and 
 Arian had been frequently used ; the one a com- 
 bative, the other an antiquarian term, and both 
 bestowed upon the new movement by its enemies. 
 Nor does it appear that the Unitarian name was 
 devised by its friends; they certainly did not 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 51 
 
 readily or rapidly adopt it. There are grounds 
 lor supposing that it was deliberately intended by 
 this name to associate the would-be reformers of 
 Christendom with the followers of Muhammad 
 under a comimon term of reproach. Certainly at 
 a later date we find it in customary use as the 
 received translation of the Arabic Muahid; and 
 as such it crops up in our own literature as 
 synonym for Moslem, e.g., in Gibbon's pages, in 
 Wesley's well-known intercessory hymn, and 
 more recently in one of Pusey's treatises. Be all 
 this as it may, there came a time when the 
 Unitarian name was first tentatively, then 
 formally adopted by the Antitrinitarians of 
 Hungary — ^not by those of Poland — as their 
 official style and title. It is first to be found upon 
 the official records of their mother-church at 
 Kolozsvar, in August 1637. Next year (1638) it 
 took the public and authorized position among 
 them which it has ever since retained. 
 
 Several reasons combine to stamp upon our 
 memories this date of 1638. In our own insular 
 history it is memorable as being the date of the 
 Scottish National Covenant — ^not the Solemn 
 League and Covenant in which the Puritans of 
 the three kingdoms joined, that was in 1643, and 
 was the religious sanction of a political alliance. 
 The Covenant of 1638 was the religious sanction of 
 an ecclesiastical reform, it meant that Presby- 
 lerianism was in earnest. There is perhaps no 
 
52 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 picture in the religious history of Scotland more 
 profoundly moving than the vision of that day in 
 1638 when the broad parchment scroll was spread 
 out upon a tombstone in the Old Greyfriars' 
 churchyard, the Westminster Abbey of Edin- 
 burgh, and nobles and magnates followed by the 
 whole population swore to their Covenant with 
 uplifted hand and affixed their signatures, filling 
 the blank space, crowding the margin, covering 
 the back, and, when meaner ink failed, dipping 
 their quills in their blood. 
 
 Take this date with you, and travel to the far 
 East of Europe, for it is a memorable date in the 
 history of two Churches of the freer faith — the 
 Church in Poland and the Church in Hungary. 
 It carries very different associations in the two 
 cases. In Poland 1638 was virtually the year of 
 doom ; in Hungary 1638 was practically the year 
 of establishment. This contrast, fully realized, 
 may aid the English mind to surmount the 
 difficulty of drawing a clear distinction between 
 the two Churches. It is true that they had many 
 points of contact, yet they never were in close 
 touch with each other. Like the contiguous. 
 Churches of England and Scotland they differed 
 in spirit and in constitution ; the Antitrinitarians 
 of Hungary retained a modified Episcopacy, those 
 of Poland were purely Presbyterian; and the 
 Churches were further kept apart by the barrier 
 of language. 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 53 
 
 The key to the rise as well as to the fall of the 
 Church in Poland is to be found in the fact that 
 its history is the record of one long-continued 
 struggle with the emissaries of the Society of 
 Jesus. But for intrigues which began with the 
 incursion of Jesuit Fathers into Poland in 1558, 
 the Antitrinitarian section of Protestants might 
 never have been forced into separation as the 
 Minor Church in 1565 . To reaction against Jesuit 
 influence must be ascribed the remarkable series 
 of converts to the Minor Church from the Roman 
 Catholic aristocracy of Poland. The Minor 
 Church was undogmatic in spirit, and fond of the 
 undefined use of such terms as Catholic and 
 Christian. This avoidance of limiting appella- 
 tions was, as is well known, the policy of Socinus, 
 but it was not original to him. He did not bring 
 it to Poland, he found it there. The Polish 
 Church, even when most Socinian, in fact never 
 adopted a party term as its designation. Along 
 with a firm adhesion to the Supremacy of the 
 Father, it cherished the adoration of our Lord, on 
 grounds not very dissimilar to those on which 
 Roman Catholics defend the adoration of our 
 Lady. The recoil of its members from any 
 magisterial office or patriotic service involving 
 them in complicity with the taking of human life, 
 while fatal to the social and political influence of 
 their community, constituted it a refuge for 
 religious minds, weary of bloodshed as an engine 
 
54 TERCENTENNIAL OF A. NAME 
 
 of reformation and anxious for a haven of rest 
 whence moral regeneration might proceed. 
 
 In 1569 a Polish noble, John Siennynski, for the 
 improvement of his estate and the encourage- 
 ment of trade, laid out the plan of a new town 
 seated on a sandy reach beside a pleasant river, 
 with mountain views to delight the eye and con- 
 tiguous forest to furnish building material. In 
 honour of his wife, whose maiden name was 
 Rak [i.e. Crab] he called the projected settle- 
 ment Rakow [pronounced Rackuff]. Siennynski 
 had become a Calvinist, but (not availing himself 
 of the decree of 1566 by which every Polish noble 
 might prescribe the worship within his domain) 
 he invited settlers of every sect to the free exer- 
 cise of their own religion. We may take this as 
 due to the fact that his wife was already in strong 
 sympathy with the attitude of the Minor Church. 
 Among the first to seize the proffered opportunity 
 was a little band of Non-trinitarians, led by one 
 of the most remarkable men of that day. Gregory 
 Pauli, originally a Calvinist, had been ejected 
 from the pastorate of Trinity Church, Cracow, for 
 advancing opinions in that building utterly in- 
 compatible with the doctrine to which its dedica- 
 tion pointed. His ideas of reform were social and 
 economic as well as theological. He believed in 
 an approaching millennial reign of Christ, and in 
 the duty of Christians to prepare themselves for 
 it . His followers, increased by small contingents 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 55 
 
 of Anabaptists, fleeing for their lives from 
 Bohemia and Moravia, held a community of 
 property, and every member had to contribute by 
 his labour to the common stock. How long this 
 experiment lasted is not clear, but in its early 
 stages it contributed materially to the rise of 
 Rakow, where Pauli ministered as the first in the 
 succession of its liberal pastors. Pauli died in 
 1591 after ten years' enfeeblement by failing 
 eyesight, and leaving a name of past greatness. 
 The oldest monument in Rakow stands in an 
 ancient walled graveyard on a sand-bank outside 
 the town. It is a lofty pedestal, surmounted by 
 a rudely carved but very touching figure of our 
 Saviour crowned with thorns, seated and bending 
 forward, with pensive eyes surveying the town 
 below. It is dated 1591 and inscribed " Erexit 
 L.E." Local tradition makes this the resting 
 place of Pauli, and interprets L.E. — rather fanci- 
 fully — as Lugens Ecclesia, the Church in Mourning. 
 Eight years later, a strong effort was made in 
 public conference to win the heretics of Rakow 
 from the error of their ways. The discussion had 
 an unexpected result. James Sienn3Tiski, son of 
 the founder, was convinced that the heretics had 
 the best of the argument. In 1600 he openly 
 joined the Minor Church, whose synods from i6or 
 met annually in Rakow. To the zeal of a convert 
 the younger Siennynski added the schemes of a 
 patron animated by broad and wise educational 
 
56 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 views. In 1602 he made Rakow — ^already famous 
 for a printing-press which issued works of science 
 as well as of theology — ^more famous still as the 
 seat of a College for the promotion of learning 
 in every department. Teachers of eminence and 
 of liberality were brought together from various 
 parts of Europe, scholars rapidly poured in, and 
 for thirty-six years it was no uncommon thing 
 for the College roll to include a thousand names, 
 three hundred of them representing the flower of 
 the Polish aristocracy. Catholics and Calvinists 
 readily sent their sons to share its advantages, 
 and Rakow gained abroad the proud title of the 
 Sarmatian Athens. Its own authorities, still more 
 proudly, delighted to call it Verona, the Home 
 of Truth. 
 
 Needless to say, the Jesuit gaze wa;s fixed upon 
 it with sleepless enmity, and with lynx-eyed 
 longing for some means of compassing its down- 
 fall. The Primate of Poland condemned to the 
 flames a reprint of the Polish Bible translated by 
 members of the Minor Church. There was in it 
 a terrible misprint, do for od, which made our 
 Saviour tempted to the Devil instead of tempted 
 by him. This reprint however was not executed 
 at Rakow, which could not therefore be made to 
 suffer. At length, in 1638, two thoughtless lads, 
 Falibowski and Babinecki by name, furnished the 
 first occasion of complaint against Rakow, and 
 the Jesuit wire-pullers determined that it should 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 57 
 
 be the last. The youths in question had flung 
 pebbles at a wayside crucifix of wood, doing 
 it some damage. Their parents had soundly 
 chastised them. The authorities of Rakow, 
 thinking the culprits sufficiently punished, had 
 taken no further action. The matter then was 
 brought before the Diet at Warsaw, and urged 
 as involving the whole community of Rakow in a 
 heinous crime. On the roof of the great hall at 
 Kielce in what is — or was in pre-War days — the 
 ofiicial residence of the Governor, a contemporary 
 painting by Dolabella, the court painter, repre- 
 sents the sitting of this Diet. King Wladyslaw 
 IV., himself a man of easy and tolerant dis- 
 position, but overborne by strenuous bigots, 
 occupies the throne. On the dais beneath his 
 feet appears the inscription: Arianismus Pro- 
 scriptus. At his right sits Wezyk, the Bible- 
 burning Primate, while on his left rises Zadzik, 
 Bishop of Cracow and diocesan of Rakow, 
 pleading for summary dealing with that hotbed 
 of heresy. The leaders of the Minor Church stand 
 at the bar ; their best friends, the third order of 
 nobility, have been excluded from the sitting. 
 On May Day 1638 the decree was passed pro- 
 scribing the teachers of Rakow, confiscating their 
 church and their printing-press, and dooming 
 their College buildings to demolition. 
 
 This was the first act of a tragedy destined to 
 be developed and completed in the course of some 
 
58 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 score of years. When at length the throne of 
 Poland was filled by John Casimir, who had beea 
 a Cardmal ; and when the Jesuit Severin Karwath 
 held the office of Court preacher, it is no wonder 
 that a decree was issued for the extermination of 
 the Minor Church. Accordingly in 1660 (a date 
 memorable in our own ecclesiastical annals for 
 its tale of blighted hopes) our Polish ccr-religionists- 
 were compelled either to renounce their religioa 
 or to become exiles from their homes. Their ex- 
 pulsion was the natural sequel to the suppression 
 of Rakow. Pope Alexander VII (whose portrait 
 might be mistaken for that of Richard Baxter) de- 
 corated John Casimir with the title Rex Ortho- 
 doxus, and the churches of the Arians (so called)' 
 were devoted henceforth to Roman Catholic 
 worship. 
 
 Obscure enough is Rakow to-day; yet those 
 who, with Count Krasinski speak of it as a miser- 
 able village, can never have heard the sound of 
 its bells, or filled their shoes with the sand of its. 
 suburbs, or bowed the head within its synagogue, 
 or, guided by the parish priest, stepped over- 
 prostrate worshippers on the pavement of its- 
 graceful church, to view the mural portrait of 
 Zadzik. Like all old Polish towns, its main 
 feature is a vast open square, eastward of which 
 is a desecrated church of the proscribed com- 
 munity, or what remains of it patched up into a 
 dwelling-house. A network of narrow streets. 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 59 
 
 encloses a smaller square. Neither in street or 
 square is there (1900) any sign of freedom or of 
 literature to remind the traveller that this was 
 once the Sarmatian Athens. The decree of 1638- 
 did not work by halves. 
 
 Look now, by way of contrast, to what was 
 effected by the kindred Church in Hungary in 
 that same year. It cannot be doubted that the 
 course which things were taking in Poland had 
 made a strong impression on those of the like 
 faith across the Carpathians, warning them of a 
 common danger. The Hungarian Church had 
 wavered more than once between the alternatives 
 of framing a policy of its own, or following in the 
 wake of its Polish sister, which certainly took the 
 lead in learning and culture, perhaps also in 
 wealth. It had received teachers and pastors 
 from the College and Church of Rak6w, and had 
 even elected one of them, Valentine Radecki, as 
 its bishop. Radecki, as was natural enough, 
 proved a warm adherent to Polish ideas. The ill 
 success of his advocacy of them was in part due 
 to the circumstance that, confining himself to 
 Latin, he never learned the Magyar tongue, thus 
 never getting into accurate touch with the com- 
 munity over which he presided. So strongly was 
 this felt that, on his death in 1632, a law of the 
 Hungarian Church was enacted, excluding from 
 the episcopal office all but native-born Hun- 
 garians. 
 
6o TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 Radecki's death was followed by internal dis- 
 sensions in the Church; questions of policy 
 became questions of party and of personal rivalry. 
 After the election of Daniel Beke as bishop, at the 
 end of 1636, the divisive action of a disappointed 
 candidate very seriously endangered the position 
 of the Antitrinitarians as one of the Four 
 Religions of the country recognized and pro- 
 tected by the State — a position never attained by 
 their co-religionists in Poland. 
 
 The fall of the thunderbolt on Rakow was 
 convincing proof that the need, of internal unity 
 was imperative and that the work of consolida- 
 tion could not safely be delayed. Beke, a strong 
 man, convened a Synod synchronously with the 
 Transylvanian Diet, which was meeting at Dees. 
 Gaining the co-operation of both Synod and Diet, 
 Beke on 7 July, 1638, effected the famous 
 Complanatio Deesiana, at which the Unitarians — 
 jointly taking that name for the first time- 
 achieved a united front, presented a common 
 Confession, and obtained from the Diet, assembled 
 under a Calvinistic Prince, the ratification of their 
 place among the Received Religions of their 
 country. Never since has this position been 
 questioned, even in the bitterest times of perse- 
 cution. That it should have been established at 
 such a moment was no srnall attainment, and com- 
 pels us to admiration of the. statesmanship of 
 Beke, the sagacity with which he grasped the 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 6r 
 
 situation, the skill with which he treated it. 
 As the symbol of this Complanatio appears for 
 the first time in history a document with the 
 heading Confessio Fidei secundum Unitarios — a 
 Confession of the Faith according to Unitarians, 
 If we say that the statesmanship of Beke is no- 
 where more conspicuous than in the ofi&cial 
 adoption of the term which first emerged in 1600, 
 it is not meant that the choice of this distinctive 
 Name did the work of preserving the Unitarian 
 Church of Hungary. The adoption of a common 
 name was a symptom rather than a cause. It 
 was the symptom and outcome of a spirit which 
 had become alive to the necessity of standing" 
 closely together, not merely for self-preservation^ 
 but for the health and strength of a cause greater 
 than any self-interest, greater than any private- 
 preference. 
 
 Yet it was not from Hungary that the bequest 
 of the year 1600 came to Western Europe and 
 reached our own shores. By a strange irony of 
 fate the Unitarian name has been derived from 
 the exiled Poles, who never, even in exile, adopted- 
 it as their own. Next to Gregory Pauli the most 
 remarkable ^champion of the liberal faith that 
 Poland ever produced was Andrew Wiszowaty, 
 grandson of Socinus. He it was who rallied th& 
 fugitives from Rakow in 1638, and again who,, 
 later on, piloted to Holland the main body of the 
 exiles of 1660. Obtaining the willing services of a. 
 
62 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 learned printer at ' Amsterdam, he projected in 
 1665 the series of Latin folios designed to secure 
 for his faith through the press a hearing denied 
 to it from the pulpit. On the general title-page 
 the series is described as the Library of the Polish 
 Brethren. Then come the words, added in con- 
 cert with Stanislaus Lubieniecki, quos Unitarios 
 vacant, called by others Unitarians. 
 
 As their writings show, Wiszowaty and 
 Lubieniecki would have preferred phrases such as 
 " simple Christians," " mere Christians," " Catho- 
 lic Christians." In this they were in accord with 
 the tenacious sentiment of the body to which 
 they belonged. Within the limits of that body, 
 these phrases were perfectly intelligible; they 
 meant not many things, but one thing. Whereas 
 in Holland the exiles had taken in hand the task 
 ■of introducing the views of their representative 
 men to an outside public. From that public 
 they sought the justice of which at home they had 
 been ruthlessly deprived. They must therefore 
 make their position plain and intelligible to those 
 to whom they appealed. Hence they yielded so 
 far to the schooling of events as, for literary pur- 
 poses at any rate, to pay some heed t,o the lesson 
 of Hungary. Precisely similar in its motive was 
 the adoption of the term in England ; first, so far 
 as is known, by Henry Hedworth in obscure 
 pamphlets of 1672, and further (1687) in a 
 publication which speedily became widely known. 
 
TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 63 
 
 " A Brief History of the Unitarians, called also 
 Socinians " — the work of Stephen Nye, with a 
 short addition by Hedworth. It was to furnish 
 a rallying point for existing adherents and present 
 a standard for anticipated accessions that the 
 Name was adopted in England, %vhich in Hungary 
 had stood since 1600 for a Religion, since 1638 for 
 a Church. 
 
 In the march of the world three centuries cover 
 no great stretch of time, yet in the history of a 
 movement they mean much, and may not un- 
 reasonably be interpreted as an augury of endur- 
 ance. It was indeed a great thing to go into exile 
 for conscience and for truth. It was something 
 greater to stand so firm in the tenacity of purpose 
 and the comradeship of faith as to impress even 
 unfriendly powers with the conviction that here 
 was a people whose mind was clearly made up to 
 stay, to speak, to live and grow. 
 
 Gregory Pauli may have been justified in his 
 millennial vision, though overhasty in his chrono- 
 logical surmise and fanciful in his colouring of the 
 spiritual prospect. The millennium may in truth 
 be on its way, and in its advent be expected to 
 eclipse, and by eclipsing sweep into oblivion, our 
 tentative endeavours for the establishment of the 
 true kingdom of the One True God. Meanwhile 
 Pauli was certainly right in holding that this 
 expectation should not damp but should rather 
 stimulate the determination to be found, when 
 
64 TERCENTENNIAL OF A NAME 
 
 the triumph of our ideal brightens the sky, 
 robustly active in its behoof, ready to welcome 
 it with girded loins and with the responsive glow 
 of our lighted lamps. 
 
 3 October, 1900. 
 
EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 AND 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
Ill 
 
 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 AND EDUCATION 
 
 FRANCIS Hutcheson, the future philosopher, 
 when on the threshold of his career as an 
 ethical writer and teacher, had a friendly dis- 
 cussion in 1726 with his neighbour — and almost 
 namesake — Francis Hutchinson, Bishop of Down 
 and Connor, the subject being the question of 
 conformity. The Bishop thus laconically stated 
 this question from his own point of view: — " We 
 would not sweep the house clean, and you 
 stumbled at straws." While the candour of the 
 former half of this pronouncement has not always 
 been imitated by episcopal advocates of Anglican 
 claims, its latter half very well expresses the 
 estimate of the Nonconformist conscience enter- 
 tained by bishops, and by other persons, in the 
 most modern times. Indeed something may be 
 said for it; if we remember that, by Noncon- 
 formists themselves, the obstacles in the way of 
 their conformity are often and characteristically 
 described as " scruples." A scruple, when we go 
 back to its original and literal meaning, is indeed 
 a tiny matter, less bulky even than a straw. 
 
68 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 Now it is the privilege and almost the pre- 
 rogative of minutiae, that to them belongs much 
 and momentous significance. The analogy of the 
 grain of sand that blinds the eye, the spark that 
 fires the mine, the pinprick that entails death and 
 destruction, forbids us — in spite of Alexander 
 Pope — ^to think of any causes which breed real 
 events as trifling. To dismiss niceties as petty, 
 is to fail to understand life. Only by securing 
 exactitude in minimis can the stern persistent 
 resolve, nay, the uncompromising inappeasable 
 strife, with which wise men toil after truth, reach 
 and attain any kind of permanent satisfaction. 
 If, then, the starting-point of Nonconformity be 
 scruple, it must be added that the aim of Non- 
 conformity is the complete adjustment of thoughts 
 to things, of words to thoughts, of deeds to words. 
 Are we not saying the same thing when we affirm, 
 with emphasis, that the very life-blood of Non- 
 conformity is Education ? 
 
 This was well understood by the authorities in 
 Church and State, when from the passing of the 
 Uniformity Act in 1662, they employed every 
 effort in their power to debar Nonconformists- 
 from the exercise of the teaching profession, and 
 to break up their schools. A bishop's licence was 
 required in the case of every Teacher ; the Teacher 
 not so licensed was prosecuted, and subjected on. 
 conviction to fine and imprisonment. Had these 
 prosecutions succeeded in their object, Noncon- 
 
AND EDUCATION (m.) 
 
 formity would have been strangled in its cradle. 
 By hurried moves from place to place, Teachers 
 sometimes managed to evade arrest, at least for a 
 time. The prosecutions continued, even after the 
 passing of the Toleration . Act ; and were not 
 finally abandoned till (in 1734) proceedings against 
 Doddridge were stopped by the personal order of 
 George II. 
 
 In the earliest days of Ejected Nonconformity, 
 the scope of its Teachers went no higher in secular 
 learning than the curriculum of the grammar 
 school. Of set purpose they abstained from 
 trespass upon those branches in which the 
 Universities then held a close monopoly. This 
 self-restriction was due to conscientious scruples, 
 raised in the minds of ejected graduates, by the 
 terms of their graduation oath. As far back as 
 the reign of Edward III, disputes in the older 
 Universities had led to migrations of tutors and 
 students, till at Stamford the attempt was made 
 to establish a rival University. Hence the oath ; 
 which bound graduates not to lecture tamquam in 
 universitate elsewhere than in Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge. Many of the Ejected felt this oath as a 
 conscientious bar to the exercise of their gifts in 
 the higher learning. Calamy has preserved for 
 us the elaborate arguments by which, after a time, 
 Charles Morton, of Wadham College, Oxford, and 
 Samuel Cradock, ex-fellow of Emmanuel, con- 
 vinced themselves that the oath prohibited, and 
 
70 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 was designed to prohibit, merely prelections in 
 order to a degree ; and that, since Nonconformists 
 did not pretend to give degrees, or to qualify for 
 them, the oath did not close their lips as teachers 
 of university learning. They cited examples of 
 conformists, including even a bishop, who had 
 lectured in philosophy and divinity at their own 
 abodes. These precedents, however, did not 
 satisfy the consciences of all their brethren. 
 
 In the North of England the need for some 
 further provision for the higher learning was 
 acutely pressing. To supply a long-felt want 
 Cromwell had founded a college at Durham in 
 1657; but at the Restoration Cromwell's patent 
 was reckoned void, the endowments went back 
 to the Church, the college collapsed. Among its 
 tutors had been William Pell, eminent as an 
 orientalist. His friends, after his ejection, re- 
 peatedly urged him to take up, as a volunteer, the 
 tutorial work from which he had been excluded. 
 Pell was one of those whose scruples could not be 
 overcome. At length the work was begun in 
 Yorkshire by Richard Frankland, of Christ's 
 College, Cambridge, who, it seems, had been 
 designed for some post at Durham College, had 
 it continued. Him we must ever revere as the 
 Founder in this country of the Nonconformist 
 Academy. 
 
 Why Academy ? The answer is interesting. 
 In 1559 Calvin established at Geneva the first 
 
AND EDUCATION 71 
 
 European university not fortified by powers 
 conveyed under a Papal Bull. For this reason, 
 in all probability, the name Universiias was not 
 adopted as its official description. Calvin gave it 
 the style and title of Academia. Universiias and 
 Collegium, though we distinguish between them 
 in modern usage, are, in Latin, practically 
 synonymous terms ; they simply mean a corpora- 
 tion. Accademia was, and is, in use in Italy, as 
 the designation of a literary club, perhaps because 
 Cicero had employed it in a somewhat similar 
 sense. There can, however, be no doubt that 
 Calvin went back to the original associations of 
 the term, recalling the scene where Plato taught 
 in the suburbs of Athens, at " the olive grove of 
 Academe " the Attic hero. There may be some- 
 thing in the suggestion that, in thus invoking 
 Plato, as the ruling spirit of his new foundation, 
 Calvin as a humanist intended to emphasize his 
 breach with the Schoolmen and with Aristotle, 
 their idol, though not, it must be confessed,, 
 their model. 
 
 Four years later the town council of the Scot- 
 tish capital projected a seat of the higher learning 
 on Calvin's lines. I am somewhat proud to think 
 that my Alma Mater was the earliest University 
 within the British Isles in whose establishment no 
 Pope ever had a finger. Naturally, the Scottish 
 hierarchy of that day put obstacles in the way, 
 and the University did not obtain a royal charter 
 
72 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 till 1582. Its oificial title still runs Academia 
 Jacohi VI Scotorum Regis Edinensis. 
 
 Thus for our Nonconformist predecessors the 
 name of Academy (or as they called it, and as 
 John James Tayler always continued to call it, 
 academy) was suggestive of reminiscences con- 
 genial with their object and their spirit. They 
 desired to keep alive in their land the solid sub- 
 stance of the best university learning. They did 
 not profess to grant degrees; though, had they 
 done so, one may suspect that a degree at Rath- 
 mell in the seventeenth century, or one at 
 Daventry in the eighteenth, would have meant a 
 good deal more than a contemporary degree 
 either at Oxford or at Cambridge, if measured, 
 not by its value for merely social purposes, but 
 by its worth as an index of the intellectual 
 stimulus promoted by careful and enlightened 
 study. 
 
 Frankland set about his work at a time and 
 in a spirit which may entitle him to be viewed as 
 the rescuer of Nonconformity from destruction at 
 the hands of the oppressor. He chose the mo- 
 ment when, by the provisions of the second Con- 
 venticle Act (the Act of 1670), the persistent 
 Nonconformist preacher was laid under penalties 
 meant to be ruinous — ^unless, indeed, he were a 
 peer of the realm, as the Act set forth, with subtle 
 and cruel irony. This Act it was which, so far 
 from inclining Frankland to feel himself crushed. 
 
AND EDUCATION 73 
 
 roused him to action, drew him from the com- 
 fortable quiet of his private estate, and made him 
 join for the first time the persecuted ranks of the 
 " conventicle " preachers. He journeyed to Lon- 
 don, gained audience of Charles II, and, with a 
 faithfulness as severe as its utterance was dignified 
 and impressive, went straight to the mark, calling 
 upon the pleasure-loving king, in the name of the 
 King of kings, lo reform his life, his family, his 
 kingdom, and the Church. Charles was well 
 aware that he was listening to no Court-preacher ; 
 not only did the transparent earnestness and 
 sincerity of the appeal' succeed for the moment in 
 touching him; he recognized in his reprover the 
 man of culture and the gentleman, and his 
 response was more marked than usual : " ' I 
 thank you, sir,' and twice looking back before he 
 went into the Council Chamber, said, ' I thank 
 you, sir; I thank you.' " Then Frankland re- 
 turned, to Rathmell, and the Northern Academy 
 was opened. Partly in remembrance of its 
 Tutor's ancient place of learning, it was also 
 known as Christ's College, Rathmell. It was no 
 •clerical seminary, either in design or in fact. Its 
 first student was a baronet's son, a young lay- 
 man, bred an Episcopalian, though of the Puritan 
 type, who went to Rathmell just as he would have 
 gone to Oxford, to receive a learned education. 
 For observe, while the Academy was Noncon- 
 iormist, its alumni were not asked to commit 
 
74 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 themselves, either actually or implicitly, to the 
 Nonconformist position. Its raison d'etre lay in 
 the fact that the older Universities were not 
 open to Conformists and to Nonconformists alike. 
 It would have been contradictory to its very 
 principle of existence had it been closed to either 
 party. " This securing of the key of knowledge," 
 wrote Charles Morton in words which seem to 
 have a very modern significance, " and tying it 
 fast to some men's girdles, or making it too hot 
 and heavy for others to touch on any terms, might 
 well enough comport with popish designs, to 
 keep people in the dark, that they may lead them 
 the more quietly by the nose." To maintain an 
 open door was vital to the very being of the old 
 Nonconformist Academy. Some of Frankland's 
 students were intended for the legal, others for 
 the medical profession. Though Frankland him- 
 self was a Presbyterian, his early divinity students 
 belonged to the Independent denomination. Not 
 till the Academy had been conducted for two 
 years did it receive any divinity students from 
 Presbyterian families. For, until the Indulgence 
 of 1672, the Presbyterians (with only a rare 
 exception here and there) were not satisfied to fall 
 in with the separating ways of the Independents. 
 It is from 1672 (not from 1662) that Stillingfleet 
 quite correctly dates " the Presbyterian Separa- 
 tion." 
 
 Frankland was never imprisoned; but prose- 
 
AND EDUCATION 75 
 
 cutions and excommunications (which then were 
 no mere brutum fulmen) dogged him all his re- 
 maining days, and it was only by constant re- 
 movals from corner to corner of Yorkshire and 
 Lancashire that he was able to keep his Academy 
 going during the whole of the eight-and-twenty 
 years which intervened between its origination 
 and his death. One hardly knows which most to 
 admire — the unflinching tenacity of the middle- 
 aged Teacher, or the brave young courage of the 
 Students who followed him in his wanderings. In 
 every year but one, the bitter year of 1685 (the 
 year when Jeffreys tormented Baxter from the 
 bench), new pupils came eagerly forward to 
 freshen and increase the list of Frankland's 
 scholars. 
 
 It was much against the grain with Frank- 
 land's diocesan, Sharp, Archbishop of York, that 
 he felt driven to countenance proceedings against 
 Frankland; for Sharp had close family con- 
 nections with Nonconformists. His clergy be- 
 sieged him with petitions to suppress the 
 Academy. He resorted to Archbishop Tillotson 
 for advice; and, with Tillotson, severity toward 
 Nonconformists was still more against the grain, 
 for he had been a Nonconformist himself. Tell 
 him, he wrote, that it is not as a Nonconformist 
 you proceed against him ; that a bishop is bound 
 by his oath not to license anybody to give public 
 instruction in university learning; that will be 
 
76 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 " the fairest and softest way of ridding your 
 hands of this business." Sharp, however, found 
 what he thought a fairer and softer way. He 
 invited Frankland to Bishopthorpe, and in the 
 library there they talked matters over, not 
 without the soothing aid of a pipe of tobacco, and 
 the gentle stimulus of a glass of good wine. 
 Henceforth Sharp and Frankland understood one 
 another. But prosecutions from other quarters 
 did not cease. 
 
 Quickly was Frankland's example followed; 
 and in a very few years Academies sprang up in 
 all parts of the country. It is far from my 
 intention to go into the history of these Non- 
 conformist Academies ; but I desire to direct your 
 attention to some features of the earlier ones, 
 those before Doddridge. I draw the line here 
 for a very good reason. Doddridge initiated an 
 important change in the Nonconformist Academy, 
 amounting to a revolution. Before his time, 
 following the practice of the older Universities, 
 all lectures were in Latin, prayers were in Latin, 
 and Latin was the customary speech during 
 business hours within the Academy walls. Eng- 
 lish was only permitted on stated occasions, 
 e.g., always on Sunday evenings, when sermons 
 were repeated. Indeed, the amount of linguistic 
 facility which was exacted from ingenuous 
 youth in those days may well surprise, if not 
 shame, our modern backwardness. Thomas Hill, 
 
AND EDUCATION 77 
 
 of Findern Academy — who died in 1720 — ex- 
 pected his students to sing their' Psalms, not 
 merely as rendered into Latin, but in Greek verse 
 too. A Tutor of a yet severer stamp, made his- 
 pupils sing them in the original Hebrew. The 
 day for such heroic exercise is long gone. 
 
 Whether or no it was entirely for good, Dod- 
 dridge changed all that; lecturing in English, a& 
 the appropriate vesture of a more modern Science, 
 a more modern Philosophy, a more modera 
 Theology. The three branches just enumerated 
 were the main items of the curriculum, and 
 formed the staple of the old Academy courses of 
 instruction. Prominence was given to Philo- 
 sophy; which constituted, indeed, the chief 
 intellectual interest of an age when the older 
 forms of thought were being supplanted by the 
 influence of Descartes, and again of Locke. In 
 none of these old Academies was Science neg- 
 lected ; and though it was the nascent Science of 
 that age, it was pursued with a keen curiosity, 
 and often with an apparatus as efficient as was- 
 then procurable. The weak point was the treat- 
 ment — or non-treatment — of History, which rare- 
 ly appears in the schemes of lectures, except under 
 the denomination of Chronology, and this was- 
 largely Biblical. Sacred history was to some 
 extent dealt with incidentally under the head of 
 Jewish Antiquities, but ecclesiastical history was 
 not touched, nor history of doctrine. 
 
78 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 Another department, much cultivated in some 
 of the later Academies, under the name of Belles- 
 Lettres, was unrepresented in the earlier ones. 
 At Oxford, it is true, the professor of Poetry used 
 within living memory to lecture on English poets 
 in the Latin tongue; but we can quite under- 
 stand that, with Latin as the sole medium of 
 class instruction, English literature would come 
 off badly. At Rathmell, however, as we are told 
 by one of the students — James Clegge, in his 
 excellent gossiping Diary — " Mr. Frankland's 
 •daughters " supplied to some extent their father's 
 •deficiencies in this respect. They " led me," he 
 says, " to read poetry and novels; and such like 
 trash," he somewhat ungratefully adds. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that, when the 
 burden of the Academy work fell upon an indi- 
 vidual, with the assistance of one (rarely two) 
 of his senior pupils, the multitude of subjects was 
 felt to be quite as much as could be reasonably 
 accomplished, without .taking in the additional 
 •departments above specified as not represented. 
 This criticism would hardly be appropriate. For 
 the topics treated in the Academy actually covered 
 the whole range of needful knowledge as then 
 realized. From the course, which extended over 
 five years, nothing deemed desirable was deliber- 
 ately omitted. The defects were partly the 
 defects of the educational ideas of the time ; but 
 largely also due to the fact that a later time has 
 
AND EDUCATION 79 
 
 witnessed the rise of new knowledges. What real 
 grasp of history, or of ecclesiastical history for 
 that matter, had men's minds before Gibbon ? 
 As for not teaching history of doctrine, we might 
 as well blame the old Academies for not teaching 
 Geology. 
 
 This further we must remember, lest we sup- 
 pose that the alumni were necessarily subjected 
 to the disadvantages of a one-man system in all 
 departments. As the Academies multiplied, it 
 soon became apparent to stud.ents of quick parts, 
 eager for the best instruction, that each had its 
 specialty or specialties. One Tutor had a reputa- 
 tion for philosophy; another for science, and 
 so on. The student bent on reaping in all 
 the most profitable fields would migrate from 
 Academy to Academy, to his own advantage, and 
 also to that of his new associates. For he would 
 bring with him something, as well as learn some- 
 thing that to him was fresh. To finish their 
 studies abroad, or at a Scottish University, was 
 no uncommon thing with Nonconformist students, 
 whether lay or clerical. 
 
 There was another ground of choice, deciding 
 the reputation of Academy and Academy, apart 
 from the special qualifications and accomplish- 
 ments of Tutors. That was the question of 
 books. There were no Academy libraries in those 
 days. Doddridge, I think, was the first to 
 establish one. The pupils, however, had the free 
 
8o EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 run of their Tutor's often scanty shelves. A new 
 arrival would tell of a better store under the roof 
 of some other Tutor, and so tempt to a migration 
 on this ground alone. 
 
 Thus, Thomas Emlyn left John Shuttlewood's 
 Academy at Sulby, simply because Shuttlewood 
 "had very few books, and them chiefly of one 
 sort." It was, indeed, hardly likely that he 
 should have many, or rejoice in a rich variety; 
 for he was one of the hunted Tutors. He had 
 seen the inside of a gaol at least four times ; and 
 Sulby was an obscure hamlet, in Northampton- 
 shire, extra-parochial, where he kept his Academy 
 in hiding, and held himself ready for a further 
 flitting at a moment's notice. Eventually, Em- 
 lyn went back to Shuttlewood; for though he 
 found more books at the Bodleian, he did not find 
 what he felt he could gain from Shuttlewood 
 himself. 
 
 John Chorlton, of the first Manchester Academy, 
 had many books, yet, as Emlyn puts it, " chiefly 
 of one sort." On the other hand in Manchester 
 there was — and is, though few people seem to be 
 fully aware of the fact — Chetham's Library. 
 James Clegge, who became Chorlton's pupil after 
 Frankland's death, tells us that he placed himself 
 in Manchester for the benefit of this " library, 
 and the conversation of other young scholars," 
 who had previously benefited by it. Chorlton's 
 students listened in the mornings to the exposition 
 
AND EDUCATION 8i 
 
 of a sound Galvinistic theology. In the after- 
 noons they helped themselves to the quartos of 
 Episeopius, and the folios of Socinus and Crellius, 
 with the result of broadening their outlook. 
 Clegge, who was always what is called " moder- 
 ately orthodox," very significantly remarks: 
 " The writings of Socinus and his followers made 
 little impression on me ; only I could never after 
 be entirely reconciled to the common doctrine of 
 the Trinity." He became a Clarkean in this 
 respect. Then he goes on : "I admired the clear 
 and strong reasoning of Episeopius; and, after 
 that, could never well relish the doctrines of rigid 
 Calvinism." It is safe to say, that among the 
 liberalising influences which have acted upon Lan- 
 cashire Nonconformity, the Chetham's Library, 
 during the thirteen years of the life of the first 
 Manchester Academy (1699-1712), is entitled to 
 no mean place. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the teaching of the 
 old Academies was in all cases consciously one- 
 sided. This is true of some of them, but (if we 
 except Atterdiffe, where Mathematics was ta- 
 booed as "tending to scepticism") it was not 
 true of the best. Choice of systems was freely 
 allowed, perhaps more freely in Philosophy than 
 in Theology. In Frankland's Academy, we read 
 "one Tutor was a Ramist," but Aristotle and 
 Ramus were permitted to rival each other in their 
 attractions for the studious mind. At Taunton. 
 
82 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 Frankland's contemporary, Matthew Warren (as 
 one of his students, who was afterwards a Tutor, 
 tells us), " though bred himself in the old philo- 
 sophy, and little acquainted with the improve- 
 ments of the new, yet encouraged his pupils in a 
 freedom of inquiry, and in reading those books 
 which would better gratify a love of truth and 
 knowledge, even when they differed widely from 
 those writers on whom he had formed his own 
 sentiments." When we recollect how deeply the 
 theology of that age was rooted in its philosophy, 
 we can appreciate the necessarily liberalising 
 effect of this procedure. Of Warren, too, we 
 read (and this is true of all the best of the earlier 
 Tutors) that he " encouraged the free and critical 
 study of the Scriptures, as the best system of 
 theology." Perhaps to-day we should be in- 
 clined to add: best, because least systematic. 
 
 One other and kindred feature of the old 
 Academies must not be passed over; that is to 
 say, the fostering of freedom of discussion among 
 the students themselves. Of course, the most 
 conspicuous example of this is to be found at 
 Daventry, at a later date, but, in truth, the 
 freedom of the students' discussions began with 
 Frankland. Every evening, after supper, their 
 English toiagues were loosed; the day's work was 
 passed in review ; they were invited to canvass it 
 freely among themselves, not hampered by any 
 Tutor's presence. 
 
AND EDUCATION 83 
 
 It may be said, and has been said, that this 
 large liberty of discussing topics, forming opinions, 
 and speaking them out, led to a sort of un- 
 restraint, injurious to the Nonconformist temper 
 and training. This was the burden of the 
 frequent attacks upon the Academies in the early 
 part of the eighteenth century. They were repre- 
 sented as hotbeds of faction and revolution, 
 political and religious. Especially was this 
 charge brought against the London Academies, 
 and made an argument, even in Parliament, for 
 their suppression. So far as it is based on any 
 truth, it applies to London only. I think I have 
 studied all the evidence on the subject; and it is 
 true that behind their Tutors' backs the alumni of 
 rival Academies lampooned each other; that 
 those of Independent Academies held calves' 
 head feasts under the rose on January 30th, and 
 ■were not too respectful to the memory of the 
 Royal Martyr and his anointed offspring; and 
 that religious opponents, whose weapon had been 
 persecution, were made the subject of disparaging 
 Temarks, more pointed than polished, after the 
 xough humour of those days. It is equally true 
 that, had these dangerous youths not been Non- 
 conformists, no charge of really serious import 
 would or could have been founded on such un- 
 authorized effervescences of boyish spleen and 
 displays of rude juvenile wit. The discipline 
 within the Academies was surprisingly good ; the 
 
84 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 charges here mentioned would not be worth 
 referring to, save as an indication of the atmos- 
 phere of the time, and of the eagerness with which 
 the enemies of Nonconformity sought an excuse 
 for ignoring and suppressing its invaluable 
 services. 
 
 The immediate work of the Nonconformist 
 Academies was to fit and equip men for public 
 duty, not in the ministry alone, but in all the 
 professions; it was to make them thinkers — not 
 closing their minds with fixed opinions, but open- 
 ing their intelligences, and giving them an im- 
 petus towards the acquirement of further know- 
 ledge ; it was to make them workers for the good 
 of their kind, to train them for the application of 
 knowledge in all the departments of life. Far 
 more was this their aim than to make Noncon- 
 formists. They had to deal primarily with a 
 class of people. Nonconformist already, expelled 
 from the unity of the nation into Nonconformity ; 
 and they made it their task to develop in that 
 class the powers of thought and powers of life 
 which would qualify them to fill their places in the 
 work of their country ; to do their part in forming 
 its future, to take their share in building up on 
 sound principles its prosperity, to advance its- 
 culture, and to ensure its progress. Small wonder 
 that many who were not Nonconformists were 
 ready to avail themselves of an education thus- 
 conceived and thus pursued. Nor need we grudge 
 
AND EDUCATION 85 
 
 that infusion of new blood into the older institu- 
 tion of religion, for which the Anglican Church 
 stands indebted to able and conspicuous men, 
 made what they were, in the obscurity of the 
 Nonconformist Academy. It was not Oxford, it 
 was Tewkesbury, that nurtured the mind of 
 Butler. 
 
 In addition to its immediate work, the Non- 
 conformist Academy rendered a service of the 
 first importance to the education of England. 
 The founders of the old Academies were (to quote 
 Charles Morton again) " willing to have know- 
 ledge increased, and not confined to the clergy or 
 learned professions, but extended or diffused, as 
 much as might be, to the people in general." 
 They taught the teachers. The ministers of the 
 old Nonconformity, not merely in some cases, but 
 as a general rule — almost as a part of their 
 recognized duty — ^were the educators in their 
 several neighbourhoods. To their schools, simply 
 because they were good schools, where real 
 teaching was done, came pupils from outside their 
 own flocks. They did not increase their con- 
 gregations by their school-keeping, it is said. 
 Quite so; but that is not the point. The point 
 is that, up and down the country, they were the 
 great spreaders of an education, serviceable to 
 the people, and not otherwise supplied. Up to 
 a time which many of us can remember, this 
 function of the liberal Nonconformist minister. 
 
86 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 the cultured alumnus of the Nonconformist 
 Academy, was not merely a tradition, but a 
 reality. Your own recollection will furnish many 
 an instance of men, never in any sense associated 
 with Nonconformity by religious connection, but 
 owing to Nonconformist scholarship an initial 
 education, conducted for education's sake, and 
 not for a sect's sake. 
 
 We cannot easily over-estimate either the 
 actual good thus done, or the force and value of 
 its example. The conditions of our public 
 education are now entirely changed, and changed, 
 on the whole, doubtless, for the better. Let not 
 the pioneers be forgotten. With an admirable 
 modesty, Morton expressed the hope that the 
 work done by him, and his like, might move " a 
 noble emulation. A poor hackney," says he^ 
 " may put a racehorse upon his brisker career." 
 The good work of the despised and shackled Non- 
 conformist " may stir up to greater diligence and 
 industry in the Universities." With the advent 
 of greater diligence and industry, he thought that 
 Nonconformists might be readmitted, at least to 
 " some of the meaner Colleges and Halls." Then 
 the goal of his desires would be in sight. 
 
 All this does but touch the fringe of a great 
 subject: What Nonconformity has done for 
 Education. Had that been the theme of this 
 Address, its readers would reasonably have com- 
 plained that whole sections of the answer to this 
 
AND EDUCATION 87 
 
 question had been left unnoticed. It has been 
 treated simply at the upper end ; and for a good 
 reason. Later developments of the zeal of Non- 
 conformists for the instruction of the people— 
 their activity, for example, in their Sunday 
 schools, indispensable nurseries of all useful 
 knowledge, freely opened to the uninstructed 
 masses during the major part of the century past 
 — these and the like are familiar in most men's 
 minds. The memory of man is short and fitful; 
 and it is desirable to have refreshed in our im- 
 aginations the clear and patent fact that, in the 
 art of Education and the love of Education, Non- 
 conformists are no novices. From the very be- 
 ginning of their history they have striven man- 
 fully in the sacred cause of the educational wel- 
 fare of all classes in the land. For on their 
 hearts was inscribed indelibly the motto which of 
 old the Franklands bore: Libera terra, liberque 
 animus ; and thus they understood it : " 'Tis no 
 free country till the mind be free." On their 
 work might fittingly be written that which was 
 Cradock's chosen motto: Nee ingrdtus nee 
 inutilis videar vixisse. By rendering services to 
 their own generation, they have sought to approve 
 themselves grateful to their teachers in the past. 
 
 In concluding, it may be allowable to quote 
 Morton once more. I suppose this eminent Cor- 
 nishman is better known in America than in 
 England, though here he educated Defoe and the 
 
88 EARLY NONCONFORMITY 
 
 father of the Wesleys. He became the first Vice- 
 President of Harvard, and is honoured as one of 
 its benefactors. Among his writings is an 
 " Advice to Candidates for the Ministry," from 
 which it may be worth whUe to cull a couple of 
 brief sentences. His advice is often quaint 
 enough, and even a little sarcastic, especially 
 when it is of a negative character, setting forth 
 what not to do. Thus, in giving some sermon 
 hints, he deprecates what he is pleased to call " an 
 impertinent filling up some interstitial time with 
 an ill-favoured heap of superfluous words " — a 
 practice which we must presume that Morton 
 had encountered in America. 
 
 This, however, is the quotation from his 
 " Advice," and it is both a wise and a kindly word 
 of counsel from a Tutor of an older time. " I 
 would not," says he, "have young men so per- 
 sonate Fathers, as to put on an affected gravity, 
 or conceit to themselves greater authority than 
 indeed they have; this would render them and 
 their discourse more ridiculous than reverend. 
 But yet they should, with a modest and humble 
 seriousness and boldness, so address themselves 
 to the consciences of men, that there may be 
 perceived in them a hearty desire to do real ser- 
 vice to God, and real good to men's souls." So 
 speaks to-day, out of the past, one who made it 
 his aim, both in the Old World and in the New, 
 to imbue those whom he was training with a 
 
AND EDUCATION 89 
 
 high and true sense of their spiritual calling. 
 In the legal phraseology of ancient Rome, duo 
 Jaciunt collegium. The sentiment is expanded in 
 the wise saying of the old Book : " Two are 
 better than one, because they have a good reward 
 ior their labour; for, if they fall, the one will lift 
 up his fellow. But woe unto him that is alone 
 when he falleth, for he hath not another to help 
 Mm up." By earnest and conscientious co- 
 operation. Teachers and their Pupils, alike learners 
 together, may expect from the Divine Hand a good 
 reward for their labour, granted to their efforts 
 and their prayers. If the Tutor droop or tremble, 
 may the brighter hearts of those among whom and 
 with whom he conducts the common studies, com- 
 bine to help him up ; it being the joint resolve of 
 •each and all, not merely to " prove his own work," 
 but, in comradeship, in the spirit of united 
 ■endeavour, to learn that great lesson of human 
 ■service and sympathy, which teaches how, in 
 •every relation of life, to bear one another's 
 burdens, " and so fulfil the law of Christ." 
 
 S October, 1902. 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 
 UNITARIAN PHILANTHROPIST 
 
Thomas Firmin. — Born (Ipswich) June, 1632; 
 Befriended Bidle, 1655; First provision of em- 
 ployment for the destitute, 1665; Governor of 
 •Christ's Hospital, 1673 ; Started factories for the 
 poor, 1676; Issued the first Unitarian tract, 
 J.68y; Died (London) 20th December, 1697. 
 
IV 
 
 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 UNITARIAN PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 IT is five o'clock on a Sunday evening in the- 
 latter half of King Charles the Second's reign^ 
 and the boys of Christ's Hospital, arrayed ia 
 their picturesque costume of long blue coat and. 
 bands, are filing in for their evening service and 
 evening meal. They say their prayers, recite 
 their catechism, sing an anthem, and then comes- 
 supper. Conspicuous in the scene is a little man, 
 nimble and dapper, of complexion fair and bright ,_ 
 bustling about with an eager face, easily moved 
 to smile or to frown. His pocket is filled with 
 Scripture catechisms, in case any lad has lost his 
 book, or any new boy needs one ; in the corner of 
 his fob lurks a silver sixpence, for the urchin who- 
 knows his lesson well. When the pudding-pies,^ 
 one for each young man, are set upon the long 
 tables, he scans them with a critical, eye. Woe- 
 be to the cook if these appetising delicacies are 
 not up to the mark in size and quality. He has 
 been known to rush off to the kitchen with a, 
 diminutive specimen, expostulating on its defects^ 
 
94 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 and hardly to have been appeased when the 
 scales proved that the viand, though small, was 
 heavy. 
 
 This indomitable little personage, quick-witted 
 and indefatigable, a boy among boys, a leader 
 among men, friend everywhere of the friendless, 
 is Thomas Firmin, known in one aspect of him as 
 " almoner-general for the poor "; in another, as 
 " curator of the Unitarian religion "; and, more- 
 over, if I may quote the character given him by 
 the biographer of a nonjuring saint, " a gentleman 
 of universal goodwill." Pepys the diarist, in a 
 remarkable letter to the Lord Mayor, declares 
 that Firmin's " good works have been too many 
 and too conspicuous not to have covered errors of 
 a much greater magnitude than any I hear him 
 charged with." " I am satisfied," writes a con- 
 temporary, " that he might, perhaps, have been a 
 better believer; but he could not have been a 
 better man." Till he had become an old man 
 (eighty-three) John Wesley does not appear to 
 have read any account of Firmin's life. When he 
 had done so, "I was exceedingly struck," says 
 he, " having long settled it in my mind that the 
 entertaining wrong notions of the Trinity was 
 inconsistent with true piety. But I cannot argue 
 against matter of fact ; I dare not deny that Mr. 
 Firmin was a pious man, although his notions of 
 the Trinity were quite erroneous." 
 
 It is the object of this Address to induce some 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 95 
 
 contemplation of the spirit which was character- 
 istic of the pioneers in the seventeenth century 
 of the naovement known as English Unitarianism, 
 with the specific purpose of exhibiting the in- 
 timate connection of two closely associated lines 
 of their activity. These men of the past, of 
 whose worth we are content to form, perhaps, a 
 rather vague estimate, were interested in theology, 
 and were equally interested in philanthropy. 
 Their work lay in both directions. They were 
 interested in clearing and improving the ideas of 
 men on two great subjects, and I believe that 
 they were in no small degree successful in purify- 
 ing and enlightening public opinion on these 
 topics. They themselves would have reckoned 
 lightly of any success won simply in the world of 
 thought and the realm of speculation. They 
 were practical men. Their aim was, while 
 rendering all homage to theology as a science, to 
 go further than this: to find in it elements of 
 life, as well as materials for thought ; in short, to 
 apply its data to the suggestion and the mainten- 
 ance of a better kind of religion. Not less, but 
 more religious were they than others around 
 them; and this, on the confession of their con- 
 temporaries, who marvelled at the paradox, 
 while recognizing, and endeavouring to dis- 
 charge, the universally admitted duty of minis- 
 tering to human needs, it was their further aim 
 to discover right methods of helpful service* 
 
96 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 methods tending to improve the conditions of 
 human life, and lift society on to a higher level. 
 Above all, they sought to introduce into the 
 sphere of religion, as into the sphere of common 
 life, a broadened and a softened spirit; being 
 convinced that the word and the example of the 
 Founder of Christianity were not meant to be 
 buried in the Bible, but were really worth trying 
 in the England of the seventeenth century, and 
 would reward the trial. So much by way of 
 preamble. Now to disinter some of the facts. 
 
 In the year 1635 a Puritan divine of Ipswich, 
 Samuel Ward, was in the clutches of the High 
 Commission Court for reviling the Book of 
 Sports, and for affirming (with a suspected refer- 
 ence to the designs of Archbishop Laud) that 
 " the Church of England was ready to bring 
 changes in religion." It was possibly in a hope 
 of mending his own position with the authorities 
 that, in the same year. Ward placed two of his 
 parishioners within the tender mercies of the same 
 court, for certain " erroneous tenetts by them 
 held and divulged." Though not specified, I con- 
 ceive there can be little doubt that the incrimin- 
 ated tenets were those of " the queasie stomacked 
 Brownists " (as Ward styles them), the pre- 
 cursors of Independency. One of these erring 
 Ipswich parishioners was Henry Firmin, who, 
 after suffering imprisonment, making renuncia- 
 tion, and paying costs, was set free to return 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 97 
 
 home to his wife Prudence, and his little son 
 Thomas, then but three years old. 
 
 Henry and Prudence reared their boy in a 
 good stiff type of Calvinism, the Calvinism of 
 Dort, with its five bristling points of Dutch 
 orthodoxy, directed against the inroads of 
 Arminian novelty. In due time they sent him 
 to London to get his living, apprenticing him to a 
 mercer, who in religion was a member of the Inde- 
 pendent Church, organized by John Goodwin, at 
 St. Stephen's, Coleman Street. Young Firmin's 
 education was slight ; but, like nearly every good 
 Puritan, he could write shorthand; and perhaps 
 this influenced his ordinary spelling, which, to the 
 end of his days, was as original as Sir Isaac 
 Pitman's, though not so uniform. In his auto- 
 graph will he adopts the spelling " leagesies," an 
 original orthography which suggests an original 
 pronunciation. Pen in hand, inkhorn at his. 
 breast, our prentice took down John Goodwin's 
 sermons. 
 
 Now Goodwin, a republican in politics, was in 
 religion one of the broadest minded men of his 
 time. Anticipating George Fox, he maintains 
 that the Word of God " was extant in the world, 
 nay, in the hearts and consciences of men, before 
 there was any copy of the Word extant in writ- 
 ing." Without the letter of the Gospel, he 
 argues, heathens may be saved. Discarding the 
 distinction of Jeremy Taylor, who pleaded for the 
 
 H 
 
98 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 toleration only of those whose errors were not 
 fundamental, he affirms that error even on funda- 
 mental points may be innocent. Toleration he 
 bases on the difficulty of arriving at truth; and 
 bids men " call more for light, and less for fire, 
 from heaven." Even a denial of the Trinity he 
 will not treat as a " damnable heresy," for 
 orthodoxy is a doctrine of inference. One who 
 is fond of Goodwin will often open one of his 
 dusky brown quartos, simply for the pleasure of 
 gazing upon his luminous old sagacious face ; his 
 clear-cut features, delicate and manly; his high 
 forehead, and higher skullcap; and the fingers 
 of his right hand, seizing a fine point and pinching 
 it firmly. A wrathful contemporary (George 
 Walker) does not hesitate to call him " Socinian 
 John "; which simply means that he could not 
 answer him. Goodwin himself claimed to be a 
 Calvinist ; but his Calvinism was of the immature 
 type, before Holland had improved upon Geneva. 
 Unhandsome critics have been known to put the 
 difference thus. Calvin, they say, devised a way 
 by which no more than ten in a hundred would 
 be saved ; the Dutch divines, by patient industry, 
 discovered a method of damning nine of these ten. 
 Most people thought that between Goodwin and 
 Arminianism there was only very thin ice. 
 Firmin, on the strength of the shorthand sermons, 
 dropped into Arminianism directly. He adopted 
 Goodwin's republicanism; simply, however, in 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 99 
 
 theory. Goodwin's width of heart, and breadth 
 of spirit, took full possession of him ; his attitude 
 towards the whole question of religion was 
 formed by Goodwin. 
 
 Meanwhile, in his master's shop he was learning 
 his business . Customers called him "the sprite . ' ' 
 He showed tact as well as quickness. His 
 apprenticeship over, he set up for himself as a 
 mercer, having a patrimony of £100 as capital. 
 The date was apparently 1655 : the place. Three 
 Kings Court, Lombard Street. Of his purely 
 business life it may suffice to say that, after 
 twenty years' trade, he was worth ;f9,ooo odd. 
 Twenty years later he died worth about ;^3,300. 
 According to the calculation of his nephew and 
 partner, Jonathan James, his philanthropies had 
 cost him upwards of £16,000. 
 
 Soon after setting up in business, Firmin made 
 the acquaintance of a real "Socinian John," 
 namely, John Bidle, who in 1652 had started in 
 London an Independent Church, closed in 1654 
 in consequence of his antitrinitarian opinions. 
 It is assumed that Firmin had attended this 
 church ; of this there is no evidence, and the idea 
 seems improbable. It is stated also, on the 
 authority of a relative, John Mapletoft, M.D. 
 <i63i-i72i), but not at first hand, that, while yet 
 an apprentice, he had interceded with Cromwellfor 
 Bidle's release from Newgate (prior to 1652), and 
 had been met with this answer: " You curl-pate 
 
100 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 boy, you, do you think I'll show favour to a man 
 that denies his Saviour — and disturbs the Govern- 
 ment ? " Very neat; but this vein of humour 
 is obviously not in the Cromwell strain. " Curl- 
 pate boy " may be a true fragment of Crom- 
 wellian speech, and doubtless the description 
 would fit Firmin's looks even in his twenty- 
 fourth year (1655). It was then, as his bio- 
 grapher distinctly tells us, that Firmin " hap- 
 pened on " Bidle, gave him hospitality, and on 
 his banishment to Scilly, obtained from Cromwell, 
 with the help of a friend, a yearly allowance for 
 the banished man. For a short time, during that 
 year, Bidle lived under Firmin's roof. It was 
 long enough for his influence to tell decisively 
 upon Firmin in two paramount directions. 
 
 First, then, Bidle taught Firmin " that the 
 unity of God is a unity of Person as well as of 
 Nature." This remained with Firmin a central 
 point of conviction, through all the subsequent, 
 developments of his belief. 
 
 Secondly, from Bidle he learned to distrust the- 
 efficacy of mere almsgiving for the relief of the 
 necessitous ; but rather to make it his business to 
 fathom the condition of the poor by personal 
 investigation, and to reduce the causes of social, 
 distress by economic effort. Of this guiding, 
 principle, also, he laid firm hold, and shaped the 
 main lines of his philanthropic course with full 
 intelligence of its truth ; though it must be con- 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN loi 
 
 f essed that, whenever he came close to individual 
 cases, his heart insisted on having its own way, 
 in triumphant rebellion against the dry logic of 
 the situation. His critics sometimes found his 
 charity as heretical as his theology. They 
 counselled him to leave to their own punishment 
 the undeserving poor, and the improvident 
 debtors, who had rightly earned the straits and 
 miseries of their conditions. " It would be a 
 miserable world, indeed," replied Firmin, " if 
 Divine Providence should act by that rule . . . 
 should grant no help ... to us, in those calamities 
 that are the effects of our sins. ... Do we dare to 
 argue against the example set by Him, and . . . 
 without which no man living may ask anything 
 of God ? " It is not' every philanthropist that 
 has a heart ; and one would hardly have expected 
 that a London tradesman, twice married, and 
 with two families to provide for, would have 
 spoken and acted thus directly as a knight- 
 errant imbued with the compassions of the 
 Most High. 
 
 Firmin's, religious home was the parish church 
 of St. Mary Woolnoth. The parish minister 
 {1655-9) ■^^.s Samuel Jacombe ; and with Jacombe 
 began that succession of intimacies with London 
 clergy which formed so remarkable an element, 
 both in his private life and his public influence. 
 From the very beginning of his housekeeping, he 
 rarely dined without ministers at his table. The 
 
102 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 conversation of the dinner-hour was Firmin's 
 opportunity for informing his mind on the current 
 topics of the theological world of his time, for he 
 was no reader. The learned divines, whom he 
 welcomed to his board, attacked his theological 
 opinions without mercy. They found him im- 
 movable, but always willing to listen, always 
 ready with a reply; and the battle of argument 
 did but make them better friends, for Firmin was, 
 as the redoubtable Daniel Burgess observes, 
 " complaisant and sweet even to such as detest 
 and oppose his heresy." Queen Mary at one 
 time took an interest in his conversion, and bade 
 Tillotson " Set Mr. Firmin right." " I have often 
 endeavoured it," was all the Archbishop could say. 
 There was scarcely a divine of note whom he did 
 not know. His closer intimacies, as we should 
 expect, were with the men of latitude, the broad 
 churchmen of the day, men of the Cambridge 
 school, such as Whichcote, Worthington, Wilkins, 
 Fowler. 
 
 When the Restoration came, Firmin was on the 
 side of conformity, perhaps naturally. I do not 
 doubt that he would have wished the terms of 
 conformity to have been made easier. Noncon- 
 formity, broadly speaking (there were, of course, 
 exceptions among the Baptists, and a few among 
 the Independents), was not prepared to tolerate 
 Arminianism, much less Socinianism. In the 
 Establishment no questions were asked of the 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 103 
 
 laity ; neither at the font nor in the sick-room was 
 the parishioner asked to pledge himself to any- 
 thing beyond the Apostles' Creed, which Firmin 
 always endorsed. That Fowler, after refusing 
 conformity, ultimately conformed, was probably 
 due to Firmin. That TUlotson, originally a 
 Nonconformist, took the same course, was not 
 improbably a result of the same influence. These 
 surmises may be drawn from the exceedingly con- 
 fidential relations which Firmin maintained with 
 Tillotson, and scarcely less with Fowler, in spite 
 of their differences of opinion. When Tillotson 
 became Dean of Canterbury (1672), he frequently 
 needed substitutes to take his place as Tuesday 
 Lecturer at St. Lawrence Jewry. He " gener- 
 ally left it to Mr. Firmin to provide them," 
 knowing that he would send acceptable preachers 
 and that his freedom of opinion did not bias his 
 judgment of men. As his friends rose to positions 
 of dignity in the Establishment, it was a re- 
 cognised thing that, by their means, he helped 
 young clergymen to preferment. It was not 
 their theology that recommended them to his 
 good of&ces, but their religion and their personal 
 worth. 
 
 There was, indeed, a species of Nonconformity 
 in which Arminianism found a home, while much 
 of the technical language of Trinitarianism was 
 discarded. For a moment it seemed as though 
 Firmin might have been drawn toward the Society 
 
104 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 of Friends. This was in 1668, the year of the 
 publication of William Penn's " Sandy Founda- 
 tion Shaken." With this book Firmin, it seems 
 was " wonderfully taken," and " fell into great 
 intimacy " with its author. In the following 
 year he " broke all bonds of friendship " with him. 
 He thought Penn had not stood to his colours; 
 his " apology " of 1669 was indistinguishable from 
 a retractation. Such, at least, was Firmin's 
 opinion ; nor did he hesitate to express it ; a fact 
 which accounts for the disparaging terms in which 
 Penn (in 1672) alludes to Firmin as a " little 
 great " man and a " pragmatical " person, " all 
 tongue and no ear." 
 
 Among the ejected of 1662 was one who found 
 his way to Firmin's hospitable board, with good 
 results both to host and guest. To look at the 
 portrait of Thomas Gouge, the ejected vicar of 
 St. Sepiilchre's, is to be always reminded of John 
 Hamilton Thom. Not that there is much facial 
 resemblance, but there is the same unmistakable 
 stamp of serene benignity, joined with a majesty 
 of bearing, which marks a nature that seems to 
 have come among men from a loftier height. 
 Gouge was shy of Firmin at first, till he found 
 that, in matters of practical Christianity, the 
 lieretical mercer was willing both to learn from 
 liim and to aid him. Having a large and poor 
 parish, and alive to the evils of indiscriminate 
 almsgiving, Gouge had maintained, up to the date 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 105 
 
 of his ejection, a local industry of flax and hemp 
 spinning. This had furnished employment, 
 though it had involved him in loss. The scheme 
 supplied to Firmin a model for the larger indus- 
 trial enterprises to which he ultimately devoted 
 the largest share of his energies and his resources. 
 Thus Gouge completed for Firmin the education 
 in philanthropy which Bidle had begun; giving 
 him a clue to the working method by which he 
 was to attempt to realize the ideal which Bidle 
 had raised before his mind. Firmin did some- 
 thing to discharge the debt. When Gouge, 
 silenced in England, turned his thoughts to the 
 •evangelization of Wales, and to the circulation of 
 Bibles and religious books in the Welsh tongue, 
 Firmin found money for the project; interested 
 Tillotson and Whichcote in the plan (which was, 
 we may say, the first public platform of united 
 religious and educational work in which Anglicans 
 and Nonconformists found it possible to co- 
 operate); acted as treasurer for the book fund; 
 and, after Gouge's death, continued zealously to 
 ■discharge the trust bequeathed to him. Nor 
 must the point be omitted that from Gouge, a 
 lover of children, Firmin derived his warm interest 
 in Christ's Hospital, which, indeed, he remodelled, 
 and did much to rebuild. 
 
 Gouge was Firmin's senior by twenty-three 
 years. It was to a younger clergyman that 
 Firmin owed the development of his theological 
 
io6 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 ideas and the materials for his theological pro- 
 paganda. Stephen Nye was Firmin's junior by 
 sixteen years. By his father's side he was 
 grandson of Philip Nye, the well-known Inde- 
 pendent leader, Philip of the " thanksgiving 
 beard," the same who, dispatched into Scotland 
 as a commissioner for framing a Covenant for 
 the three kingdoms, astounded the elect of Auld 
 Reekie by preaching in the Tron Kirk "from a 
 paper book " and, taking for his topic " a spiritual 
 life," based it on " a knowledge of God as God, 
 without the Scripture, without grace, without 
 Christ." By his mother's side Stephen Nye was 
 grandson of Stephen Marshall, the greatest pulpit 
 orator of the Commonwealth Presbyterianism ; 
 whose rolling eyes and " shackling " gait made 
 him but an uncouth figure in private, but whose 
 fervid eloquence constituted him a political force 
 of the first magnitude from the opening of the 
 Long Parliament to the close of the Civil War. 
 Thus mixed in blood, Stephen Nye found his 
 vocation in a heretical conformity. He was 
 rector of a Hertfordshire parish (Little Hormead) 
 having fewer than a hundred inhabitants, and 
 possessing one of the tiniest churches in England. 
 In what year he became acquainted with Firmin 
 has not been disclosed, but it was some time after 
 our friend had been fairly launched on his career 
 of public philanthropy. 
 
 Nye approached Firmin with thorough sym- 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 107 
 
 pathy as regards the central doctrine of the Uni- 
 personality of God. He found, however, that 
 Firmin held with Bidle (and with John Milton) a 
 doctrine of the Divine Personality curiously rigid 
 in its adherence to the letter of that picture speech 
 which is familiar to us in the older Scripture. 
 According to this reading of symbol, the Almighty 
 exists in an organized body corresponding to the 
 human frame. Hence there is no literal omnipres- 
 ence of the Divine Being, who views the world 
 from afar, and rules the universe by delegated 
 agencies, carrying out his will. This theory the 
 two friends discussed, both by discourse and by 
 letter. Firmin had an able coadjutor (Henry 
 Hedworth) a Bidellian like himself. Nye con- 
 vinced both of them that the spirituality of the 
 Divine Being is absolute, bringing them to confess 
 the actual omnipresence of the all-pervading 
 Spirit. There followed a total change in Firmin's 
 adjustment of the theological problem of Christ's 
 relation to God. Hitherto he had held a Trinity 
 which was a triad of unequals; there was the 
 Father, the Most High God, the only true God, 
 God by inherent right ; there were our Lord and 
 the Holy Ghost, minor Gods by delegation. Now 
 he embraced under Nye's tuition the doctrine of 
 indwelling. The Father and the Holy Spirit 
 became to him synonymous expressions. He 
 still thought it right, because Scriptural, to apply 
 to Christ the title of God, as the Man in whom 
 
io8 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 pre-eminently the Godhead dwells, and in whom 
 the divinity, discoverable throughout the uni- 
 verse by those who have eyes to see, is exhibited 
 in an unmistakable manifestation. 
 
 Moulded in his ideas, as we have seen, by the 
 impress communicated to him by a few influential 
 minds (Goodwin, Bidle, Gouge, Nye), Firmin was 
 drawn into action by the salient events of his 
 time. His philanthropy first took large shape in 
 1665, on occasion of the trade disorganization 
 induced by the Great Plague. He provided em- 
 ployment in making up clothing, for hands 
 thrown out of work. It was the only one of his 
 enterprises by which he suffered no pecuniary 
 loss. Next year his premises were burned in the 
 Great Fire. He at once got temporary accom- 
 modation ; drove a great trade while others were 
 bemoaning their losses, and soon rebuilt. 
 
 Ten years later (1676) he gave the sole manage- 
 ment of his private business into the hands of his 
 nephew and partner, Jonathan James, and opened 
 premises in Little Britain for the employment of 
 the poor in the linen manufacture. He had 1,700 
 spinners, with flax dressers, weavers, etc., in pro- 
 portion. In the matter of actual wage, he would 
 never go above the current rate; but at normal 
 wage it took sixteen hours' work to earn sixpence. 
 Philip II, had long before established in Catholic 
 Spain the eight hours day, but it had not yet 
 reached Protestant England. Firmin, therefore, 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 109 
 
 gave all sorts of bonuses, in coal or in coin, to good 
 workers; and sometimes to indifferent ones. His 
 arrangements for the comfort and cleanliness of 
 his hands, and for the industrial training of 
 children rescued from the streets, were admirable. 
 The scheme never paid its way, and the annual 
 loss tended to increase. He invoked the aid of 
 the Press, in the vain hope of getting the Corpora- 
 tion of London to take up the matter as a civic 
 enterprise. In 1690 the patentees of the Linen 
 Company took over the scheme ; Firmin was to be 
 managing director at £100 a year, but he was 
 never paid, and soon the whole burden was again 
 transferred to his shoulders. Sooner than dismiss 
 any of his hands, he put down his coach, the 
 coach which conveyed him to his beloved garden 
 out at Hoxton. So the work went on till he died. 
 Similarly he started a woollen factory in 
 Artillery Lane ; but this description of handicraft 
 proved too di£&cult for his waifs and strays. 
 Meanwhile he was visiting prisons, on the track, 
 not unfrequently, of his missing hands. The 
 release of debtors, the amelioration of the bar- 
 barous conditions of prison life, the prosecution 
 of inhuman officials, occupied much of his time. 
 No call of distress from any quarter reached him 
 unheeded. He did not employ exclusively his 
 own money. He was a most admirable and per- 
 tinacious beggar. Likely people he would assess 
 at so much, say, ;fioo at a time. It was not bis 
 
no THOMAS FIRMIl^ 
 
 plan to tease them, but to watch the right 
 moment, when his victim was in fit humour, and 
 then strike home. Many thousands of pounds, 
 to be reckoned in hundreds rather than tens, 
 passed through his hands. Scarcely was there a 
 public work of charity whose projectors did not 
 look to Firmin as collector, treasurer, distributor 
 of the funds. According to his methodical plan, 
 to every donor he sent a minute account, copied 
 out of his books, detailing the application of each 
 man's bounty, with names, addresses, and 
 particulars . His contributors, tired of the details, 
 said they could trust him absolutely, and wanted 
 no vouchers. It is characteristic of the society of 
 his time that he raised little sums for relieving the 
 poor by insisting on the statutable fines for pro- 
 fane swearing. An ordinary person he charged 
 five shillings, according to the Act ; but if a noble- 
 man swore, or if a clergyman swore, he charged 
 a double and a treble penalty. They sometimes 
 kicked. "Very well," quoth Firmin, "I shall 
 put your name in my list of ' Incorrigible Swear- 
 ers,' and I shall not speak to you again." That 
 bled them. 
 
 A glance must suffice at a few of his more con- 
 spicuous beneficences, leaving untold the multi- 
 tude of details, and the touching narratives of 
 his personal kindness to individuals. In 1662 
 he had raised money, partly by collections 
 in churches, for the exiled antitrinitarians of 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN iii 
 
 Poland. When, in 1681, the Polish Calvinists 
 met the same fate which they had rejoiced to see 
 inflicted on their heretical countrymen, Firmin 
 was foremost in efforts for their relief. He was a 
 good patriot, as regards English manufactures, 
 strenuously opposing the importation of French 
 silks. Yet when, in 1680, the Protestant refugees 
 came over from France, he was the first to assist 
 them to set up their trade in Spitalfiields, and in 
 his native Ipswich. 
 
 When the conservative Anglicans refused the 
 oaths to William of Orange, Firmin remon- 
 strated with one of them, Robert Frampton, 
 Bishop of Gloucester. " My lord," said he, "I 
 hope you will not be a Nonconformist now in 
 your old age." Frampton was nettled by the 
 term Nonconformist. It made him wince, as 
 modern Anglicans winced when Leo XIII, in his 
 prayer to the Virgin, called them his " dissenting 
 brethren . " He gruffly replied that he was getting 
 old, no doubt, but not old enough " to be up- 
 braided with Nonconformity by you, that are a 
 Nonconformist to all Christendom, besides a few 
 lousy sectaries in Poland." Firmin administered 
 the retort Christian by starting a fund for the 
 relief of the deprived Nonjurors. It was the 
 only one of his plans which the Government 
 interfered with and stopped. 
 
 His exertions for the relief of the Irish Pro- 
 testants, rendered destitute by the miseries of 
 
112 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 the civil war of 1688-91, were acknowledged in a 
 manner which is probably without parallel. In 
 October, 1692, John Vesey, Archbishop of Tuam, 
 and seven other Irish bishops (one of them, 
 Wetenhall, a liberal in theology), sent him a letter 
 of thanks under their hands. They just allude 
 to his opinions, with some episcopal unction : 
 " We doubt not that you and they [the other con- 
 tributors] have the earnest of your reward in the 
 peace of your minds, which we pray God to fill 
 with His comforts and illuminate with His truths ; 
 making His grace to abound in them who have 
 abounded in their charity to others." An Irish 
 dean addressed to " this God-like man " a long 
 string of grateful verses, of which the sentiment 
 is much more melodious than the refrain. He 
 exclaims : 
 
 Who'll then call that faith bad, that does so well ? 
 Without works to believe, belongs to hell. 
 ***** 
 
 Goodness attempers all, in man and Maker, 
 And may, for aught I know, e'en save a Quaker. 
 
 The occasion of Firmin's first resort to the 
 Press in behalf of his theological convictions, was 
 furnished by the arbitrary dispensations of 
 James II. Our friend was far too good a lover 
 of his country to fall in with the pretensions of a 
 Stuart to dispense with the constitutional safe- 
 guard of English freedom. Indeed, for the first 
 time in his life, he came out as a politician, against 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 113 
 
 the measures of the court, and was deprived for a 
 time of his governorship of Christ's Hospital in 
 consequence. Liberty is liberty, however fleeting 
 its foundation ; and when James's Declaration for 
 unrestricted liberty of conscience came out in 
 1687, Firmin saw his chance, and availed himself 
 of the immediate opportunity. For the first time 
 in English history, heretics of all kinds were pro- 
 mised free play. Up to this date, no anti- 
 trinitarian book had ever been published with 
 impunity; now, for the moment, the Press lay 
 open. Again, I think, Firmin took a hint from 
 Gouge. Might not the Gospel be recommended 
 through the Press, as well in a Unitarian garb as 
 in a Welsh one ? At any rate it seemed worth 
 while to make the experiment. Firmin resolved 
 upon the circulation of Unitarian literature. It 
 was part of his philanthropy to do so. He 
 thought it would be good for men. He got Nye 
 to write " A Brief History of the Unitarians, called 
 also Socinians," which, in fact, is little of a history,, 
 but clear and powerful as an argument. He 
 printed it in 1687, in a tiny octavo. 
 
 The name Unitarian, which Bidle had pro- 
 bably never heard, certainly had never used, and 
 which first appears in an obscure pamphlet of 
 1672, was introduced by this little book as a 
 generous term, of a very broad and most un- 
 grudging hospitality; a term of union and of 
 comprehension. It was recommended as a roomy 
 
 I 
 
114 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 naxae. There was room in it for the votaries of 
 Bidle, room in it for the disciples of Nye, room in 
 it for the Arians, room for the Sabellians. All 
 these, and others (who with whatever differences, 
 and with whatever peculiarities, concurred in the 
 one great central conviction that Almighty God 
 is in Person, as in Nature, one and undivided) 
 were invited to make common cause for this para- 
 mount truth, and to take the Unitarian name as 
 the symbol of their religious fellowship. Firmin 
 did not expect to reconcile Christians with non- 
 Christians by the magic of a name. What he did 
 anticipate was, that by relieving Christianity of 
 the encroachments of Trinitarian dogma, a way 
 would be opened which would facilitate the 
 entrance of the Jew, the Muhammadan, and the 
 "wise heathen," into the pure faith of Christ. 
 
 In 1689 came the Toleration Act, excluding a 
 Nonconformist from toleration if he preached or 
 wrote against the Trinity. Neither Firmin nor 
 Nye was a Nonconformist, and though, doubtless, 
 there was the c6mmon law as well as the canon 
 law, yet till .1698 there w:as no statute, enabling 
 you to deal with an Anglican utterance against 
 the Trinity. So Nye Went on writing, anony- 
 inously, I grant; and Firmin went on printing, 
 and niade no secret of it. A graceless antagonist, 
 .Luke Milbourne, one -of the only two men who 
 vented calumnies about Firmin (Daniel Burgess 
 being the other), speaks of him as." the Socinians' 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 115 
 
 hawker to disperse their newfangled divinity." 
 Between 1691 and 1697 were issued, chiefly at 
 his expense, a uniform series of Unitarian tracts, 
 already filling by 1695 three squat quarto 
 volumes, printed closely in rather small type, 
 with double columns, not particularly comfort- 
 able to read, but worth reading, well worth 
 reading, to this day. Subsequent volumes in- 
 clude tracts, some collected, others issued, after 
 Firmin's death. 
 
 These " double columned tracts," as the wits 
 styled them, were by no means all of them ex- 
 pressive of Firmin's own opinions. He reprinted 
 in them the works of Bidle, and did not refuse 
 place to an Arian tract, if it were well done, and 
 seemed to be a valuable contribution to the 
 theological discussions of the time. "I don't 
 remember ever to have met with any person," 
 writes John Toland, the Irish Deist, " who spoke 
 with such disinterestedness and impartiality of 
 our various sects in religion, except Thomas 
 Firmin, whose charity was as much extended to 
 men of different opinions as it was to the poor of 
 all sorts in good works." 
 
 The immunity enjoyed by these anonymous 
 prints was certainly remarkable, and perhaps 
 (though, of course, they were not licensed) there 
 is something in. the suggestion of William Penn, 
 that Firmin's dinner-table helped him to stand 
 well with "the licensary chaplains." WhUe 
 
ii6 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 Firmin's tracts were " openly sold by the book- 
 sellers," there were two prosecutions for issuingr 
 pamphlets of similar matter and appearance > 
 That of William Freke (1693) was provoked by 
 the temerity of the pamphleteer. Freke had 
 posted one of his pieces to every member of both 
 Houses of the Legislature. Parliament voted the 
 tract an " infamous libel," burned it by the 
 hangman, and brought its author to trial and 
 punishment. That of John Smith (1695) was a 
 prosecution in the Spiritual Court, due appar- 
 ently to the " unusual confidence " with which 
 the worthy clockmaker had put his name upon 
 one of his tracts. When Freke and Smith wrote 
 for Firmin, as they both did (anonymously), 
 nobody touched them. 
 
 Towards the end of his life, Firmin began to 
 have qualms about the practical effect of con- 
 formity oh the part of Unitarians. He did not 
 doubt that it was right in principle, but it was not 
 working well. His working rule had been to take 
 the Scriptural parts of the prayers and formularies, 
 and interpret them as they are meant in Scripture, 
 however they may have been understood by 
 liturgical compilers. As for the non-Scriptural 
 parts, the worshipper must put a good construc- 
 tion upon them, and read them in a Unitarian or 
 Sabellian sense. Nye confirmed Firmin in the 
 persuasion that this Unitarian sense was the true 
 original meaning, and expressed the real mind and 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN 117 
 
 intention of the Church, any other interpretation 
 being a merely vulgar misconception. Hence he 
 published (1697) a clever tract of Nye's com- 
 position, called " The Agreement of the Unit- 
 arians with the Catholick Church." There is no 
 reason to doubt the perfect sincerity of the plea 
 made in this tract ; and its argument is certainly 
 ingenious, if short of convincing. Moreover, it was 
 incumbent on those who reprobated Firmin's plea 
 for a Unitarian sense of the formularies, to tell 
 him what their true sense was; here his critics 
 were hopelessly at issue among themselves. This 
 struck shrewd men like Pepys, who hinted pretty 
 plainly that the real scandal was not Firmin's 
 heterodoxy, but the inability of " our own 
 doctors " to arrive at any accofrd in their pro- 
 nouncements of the Church's doctrine. 
 
 Clear as he was that his own reading of the 
 formularies was the just one, Firmin had come to 
 perceive that the continual use of phrases in 
 worship which, in their ordinary acceptation, 
 were taken to imply a plurality in the Godhead, 
 was, to say the least, a dangerous habit. The 
 ritual language of Christendom, being every- 
 where associated with corrupt ideas, was but too 
 likely to " paganize " the minds of men. He pro- 
 posed, therefore, to form what he termed " Unit- 
 arian congregations "; in a different sense, how- 
 ever,* from that which we now understand by the 
 expression. They were to be societies of Unitar- 
 
ii8 THOMAS FIRMIN 
 
 ian believers, whose business it should be to 
 maintain the faith, and hold meetings for a wor- 
 ship couched in unambiguous forms; yet not as 
 separatists from the Church, but as " Fraternities 
 in the Church." The plan was never tried. 
 Firmin's death intervened. Nor was any en- 
 deavour to establish a distinctively Unitarian 
 worship permanently successful, till the secession 
 of Lindsey from the Establishment in 1773 
 induced a fresh conviction at once of Unitarian 
 duty and of Unitarian possibilities. 
 
 The question may arise. To what purpose this 
 rattling of the bones of dead men ? A valid 
 answer may be found in the suggestion that they 
 are not entirely dead. Among real and living 
 forces may be counted the impulse and the 
 vitality of their example. They shine as a glori- 
 ous group of men ; even to those who are by no 
 means blind to their limitations, or unaware of 
 their defects. Some things, indeed, they have 
 done, and well done ; others they have made more 
 possible to be done by their successors. They 
 have kft plenty of work behind them, labour of 
 thought, and toil of life. It may be that, in some 
 moments of slack resolve and self-distrust and 
 weakening purpose and flagging endeavour, their 
 memories may confront us with the steady, if 
 silent, plea: "Quit you like men, be strong." 
 It may be that the thought of forerunner^ may 
 make us glad to gird our loins with a closer 
 
THOMAS FIRMIN ii^ 
 
 faithfulness for our own race. It may be that, 
 when our course is ended, those whose images 
 have encouraged us, may prove the angels to wel- 
 come us. So may we echo the last words of 
 Firmin, when he took affectionate leave of his old 
 friend Fowler, then Bishop of Gloucester, who 
 " did not doubt but his works would follow him." 
 " I trust," said the dying man, " that God will 
 not condemn me to worse company in the other 
 world than I have loved, and delighted in, 
 in this." 
 
 6 October, 1896. 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
V 
 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 LET us go back to the year 1719, four years 
 after the first of the rebellions which were 
 intended to replace the Stuarts in the stead of the 
 Hanoverians upon the throne of this country. In 
 the year 1719 two things happened which have 
 had results. One was the publication of " Robin- 
 son Crusoe," by Daniel Defoe. If you have read 
 " Robinson Crusoe," in full, you will perhaps 
 remember that the book contains one of the most 
 remarkable endeavours to present Christianity 
 to the heathen, with a full perception of the 
 difficulties which Christianity would offer to the 
 heathen and untaught mind; and, also, that it 
 contains — ^wonderful to say, in that age, and from 
 such a writer as Defoe, himself a strong Calvinist 
 in his religious views^one of the most sym- 
 pathetic presentations of the possibility of a 
 modus Vivendi in matters of religion between the 
 Roman Catholic and the Protestant.- It is 
 presented in. the person of a Roman Catholic 
 clergyman of the Order of St. Benedict, who 
 explains his own views as regards the relation of 
 his own Church and the Protestant Church, to the 
 
124 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 •conversion of the heathen. Observe that Defoe's 
 writings were always didactic; he did not write 
 ^' Robinson Crusoe " as a mere story of adventure ; 
 he meant it to point a moral, to have an ethical 
 value, and intended it also to have a religious 
 meaning. 
 
 Now while Defoe was thus preaching the value 
 of Christianity in itself, whatever its special form, 
 in contradistinction to a wild, untrained, un- 
 taught, savage state of mind outside the Christian 
 pale ; at this very time Dissenters, alike in London 
 and in the West of England, were accentuating 
 -their differences, bringing these to the front rather 
 than their points of agreement, and leading the 
 way to a rift in their body. So far they had been 
 included together in the body of Protestant Dis- 
 senters. That was their legal name, and that 
 was their common standing. At Salters' Hall 
 they came to a split. Our subject is the story of 
 that split, with a view to estimate, if possible, its 
 causes — its consequences may be left to speak for 
 themselves. It is a somewhat complicated story, 
 and some points of it may lead, perhaps, to 
 tedium in narration. 
 
 To begin with, let us try to set clearly before 
 our minds, and before our imaginations, if possible, 
 three prominent figures. There is James Peirce, 
 there is Thomas Bradbury, and there is John 
 Shute, afterwards John Barrington Shute, and 
 finally Viscount Barrington. All these three had 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 125 
 
 belonged to the same section of the Protestant 
 Dissenting body; they were all Independents in 
 the first instance. James Peirce and Thomas- 
 Bradbury were both of them members, in Lon- 
 don, of Stepney Meeting. Still to be seen are the 
 entries of their admissions. James Peirce was a 
 ward of Matthew Mead, the Minister of Stepney 
 Meeting; Bradbury was admitted somewhat 
 later. Peirce was a Londoner, and Bradbury was^ 
 a Yorkshireman. 
 
 James Peirce was, at that time, perhaps the 
 most' learned of the Dissenters, on several lines.- 
 He had gained for himself the position of being the 
 champion of the Nonconformist cause against 
 Conformity, by his " Vindication of the Dis- 
 senters " in reply to William NichoUs, the cham- 
 pion of the Anglican position. He had been 
 minister at Cambridge, then at Newbury, and was- 
 now minister at Exeter. 
 
 Thomas Bradbury came to London from the 
 North, and had filled some positions there; but 
 in the North he had never met that recognition? 
 which he considered, and rightly considered, to- 
 be due to his remarkable talents. He was not a 
 man of learning; he was, however, a man of 
 humour, and of great popular ability. It had. 
 been his ambition to become the minister of the- 
 old Dissenting congregation in Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne. He had been proposed as minister of the 
 old congregation at Cross Street, Manchester. But 
 
126 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 it was not until he came to London that he really 
 found a sphere which was consonant with his own 
 very just estimate of his striking abilities. 
 
 John Shute, of Hertfordshire birth, came of a 
 family which had connexions with Exeter, and 
 represented the political side of " the Dissenting 
 interest." He was, of course, a Whig politician; 
 and I am not sure that he was quite free from 
 some of the peculiarities which attached to the 
 Whig politician, both in his century, and in the 
 century through part of which we all have passed. 
 He was looked upon as the leading Parliamentary 
 representative of Dissent; and, in such part as 
 he took in the Salters' Hall matter, you must 
 observe that he was actuated by political con- 
 siderations. He desired to keep Dissenters at 
 one, as a political force, as a force on behalf of the 
 Hanoverian regime. 
 
 Now, in Peirce's " Vindication of the Dis- 
 senters " there is a chapter — in the original 
 edition, 1710 — in which he vindicates the absolute 
 orthodoxy of Protestant Dissenters; and says 
 that, whereas in the Established Church it was 
 well known that there were Socinians, in the 
 Protestant Dissenting body there were none. He 
 pledges himself to the fact; and no doubt he is 
 right, unless we except possibly some obscure 
 Independent and some few Baptist Congregations. 
 ■Certainly some of the latter could not even at 
 that date, 1710, be regarded as strictly Trinitarian 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 127 
 
 in their orthodoxy, as we shall see later on. The 
 second edition of his " Vijndication " — the Original 
 was in Latin — ^was published in English in 1717 ; 
 and in the second edition; he omitted this chapter. 
 Why did he do So ? What had happened in the 
 meantime ? 
 
 A very important development had taken 
 place in the meantime. In the year 1712 Dr. 
 Samuel Clarke, who was the rector of St. James's, 
 Piccadilly, otherwise St. James's, Westminster, 
 published a work to which he gave the title, " The 
 Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity." Many of 
 those who read it said : Well, it may be Scripture, 
 or it may not ; it certainly is not the doctrine of 
 the Trinity. That book exercised an extremely 
 important influence. It created in the Church of 
 England what we might call a school of theo- 
 logians, who were known as " Clarkeans." They 
 did not admit that " they Were unorthodox. 
 Clarke himself was sometimes described as a 
 semi-Arian ; but at any rate he endeavoured, on 
 Scripture ground and in Scripture terms, so to 
 state the doctrine of the Trinity that, though it 
 might not agree with the ancient creeds, it should 
 nevertheless be seen to agree with the Word of 
 God. His work, while thus it created an Anglican 
 school, which lasted on until quite the end of the 
 eighteenth century, was even more operative 
 upon and among Dissenters. It was eagerly read 
 by them.- It was read. .by the young men in the 
 
128 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 Dissenting Academies, who were going to form 
 the ministry of the future. It made them pause 
 and think. It turned their attention away from 
 the old. scholastic definitions of the Trinity, to the 
 Biblical data on which the doctrine of the Trinity 
 was founded. So it was that, in the intervening 
 period between the publication of this book in 
 1712, and the publication of Peirce's second 
 edition in 1717, it had become no longer possible 
 for him to say that there were, among the Pro- 
 testant Dissenters, no symptoms of unorthodoxy. 
 
 He might perhaps have repeated literatim what 
 he had actually said; because the tendency was 
 not to Socinianism at all. It was not to what we 
 call, restricting the term to its most modern 
 acceptation, Unitarianism. It was rather to- 
 wards that which is usually referred to under the 
 denomination of Arianism. That tendency had 
 exhibited itself in 1717 in London, and it had 
 earlier exhibited itself in Exeter. It had exhibited 
 itself at Exeter in an Academy there; and I 
 grieve to say (as there is a Baptist minister 
 present) that the students found that, while they 
 were not allowed to talk their heresies in the 
 Academy, they were welcomed at the house of the 
 Baptist minister in Exeter, and they might talk 
 there as much heresy as they pleased. This was 
 a safety valve for these young spirits. 
 
 Things in Exeter were becoming uneasy. There 
 was one of the students — Hubert Stogdon by 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 129 
 
 name — who, as early as 1716 was let into the 
 ministry on easier terms than had hitherto been 
 possible. He was not so much questioned about 
 the Shorter Catechism — then an invariable stand- 
 ard of Protestant Dissenting orthodoxy — as about 
 the Bible itself; and he managed, by confining 
 himself to Scripture terms, to satisfy his licensers, 
 and so got his licence. By the year 1718 things 
 had come almost to a crisis in Exeter. The Judge 
 of Assize, whose name was Sir Robert Price, in 
 charging the Jury, had referred to the spread of 
 crime in the city. He had said that there was 
 also a spirit of Arianism, and he thought there was 
 some connexion between the two. Moreover, in 
 Peirce's own pulpit a neighbouring divine, who 
 thought the Atonement was in danger, had 
 created impressions unfavourable to the ortho- 
 doxy of Peirce himself. 
 
 Before going further, we must try to lay before 
 our minds the condition of things as regards 
 Church government among Dissenters in Exeter. 
 The situation was very peculiar, and very com- 
 plicated. The first Dissenting congregation in 
 Exeter was a French Huguenot Church, and one 
 cannot help thinking that some French manners 
 and customs had influenced the special state of 
 affairs which prevailed in Exeter at that date. It 
 is well known that, in France, Presbyterianism is 
 so organized that, in any given city, however 
 many congregations there may be, there is but 
 
 K 
 
130 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 one Church Session (consistoire). That is to say, 
 each congregation has not its own separate and 
 independent eldership, but there is a joint 
 .eldership for the whole city. Recent discussions 
 between persons of different views of theology in 
 Paris, have shown how this arrangement gives 
 to the general majority an absolute power over 
 every single congregation. 
 
 Well now, in Exeter there were three meeting- 
 houses, called Presbyterian — due stress is in- 
 tended upon the word " called." Two of these 
 had congregations duly organized, with two 
 pastors apiece. In each of these two meeting- 
 houses the two pastors preached alternately ; one 
 in the morning, the other in the evening. The 
 four took in rotation the preaching iir the third 
 meeting-house, which had no pastor of its own- 
 Then there was a self-elected body of thirteen. 
 They are always called " the Thirteen," though 
 in the lists of them I have never seen more than 
 twelve names. The Thirteen acted very much as 
 a finance committee. They had control of the 
 financial administration; they collected stipends 
 from all three meeting-houses, and apportioned 
 them amongst the four ministers. They assumed, 
 too, some of the powers which ordinarily belonged 
 to the Eldership or Church Session. Then there 
 were three smaller bodies, known as Proprietors, 
 who owned the buildings; four Proprietors for 
 each. They seem to have been more than 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 131 
 
 trustees; they are always spoken of as Pro- 
 prietors; and it may be true that the buildings 
 were, as used not infrequently to be the case in 
 the older history of Dissent, proprietary chapels, 
 not put in trust at all (partly for fear of the inse- 
 curity of Toleration) but belonging to certain 
 persons who might devote them to such purposes 
 .as they pleased. 
 
 Further, the four ministers were members of 
 what was known as the Exeter Assembly. It was 
 in point of fact a Devon and Cornwall Assembly, 
 but the Cornish element at this time was no more 
 than a minimum. This Assembly was not a 
 Presbyterian body, it was a council of ministers 
 which contained Presbyterians and Independents ; 
 the only section of the Three Denominations 
 which was absolutely non-represented, and practi- 
 cally excluded, was the Baptist section. Baptist 
 principles were not in high favour in that part 
 of the world at that time ; indeed, they were not 
 in high favour in Dissenting circles generally at 
 that time . This clerical body had no j urisdiction ; 
 but this it could do. If any member were dis- 
 pleasing to the majority of the members, on any 
 matter, it could say, " You had better not come 
 here any more." It certainly did administer cer- 
 tain funds ; but at that date this was a very minor 
 matter. There were larger funds then adminis- 
 tered by the Thirteen, than were administered by 
 the Assembly. 
 
132 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 In 1718, early in the year, a deputation of the 
 Thirteen called upon Peirce and his colleagues, and 
 asked them to preach on the Eternity of the Son 
 of God. They did so; and the result was satis- 
 factory. Later on in the same year, though 
 Peirce's preaching was satisfactory at the time to- 
 his own people, the Assembly of Ministers wanted 
 — I do not know whether it was satisfaction from 
 Peirce — but at any rate they did want a more 
 general satisfaction on this subject of the Trinity. 
 Therefore, in the Assembly, in the month of 
 September, it was proposed by one of the Exeter 
 ministers, the youngest of them, John Lavington 
 by name, who was supposed to be the most 
 orthodox of the four, that each member of this 
 Assembly should then and there make a declara- 
 tion in regard to his views respecting the Trinity. 
 They all did this except three : and Peirce was not 
 one of the three, nor was any other Exeter min- 
 ister. All the declarations but one — that of John 
 Parr — were accepted; then Lavington moved 
 that it be recorded, as " the general sense " of the 
 Assembly, " that there is but one' living and true 
 God, and that Father, Son and Holy Ghost are 
 the one God." This was accepted,, as " the 
 general sense " of the Assembly. 
 
 The fact that the matter had been canvassed 
 in the Assembly, and that the declarations had 
 very considerably varied — Parr had merely' 
 quoted a Scripture text without comment — 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 133 
 
 xe-excited the suspicion of the Thirteen. Lav- 
 ington, they knew, was all right; so. they did riot 
 go to him. They went to the other three minis- 
 tersj and said, " We are not satisfied with a 
 ' general sense,' we want to know what your 
 sense is." Not getting what they wanted, the 
 Thirteen wrote up to London, addressing them- 
 selves to five ministers, including the four lecturers 
 at Salters' Hall. To be a lecturer in London was, 
 among Dissenters, something like beiiag an Arch- 
 deacon, or a Dean, or it might almost be a Bishop, 
 in the Anglican communion. There were two of 
 these lectureships. The Merchants' Lecture had 
 been started as far back as 1672, and there was a 
 split from it at Salters' Hall. The feeling was 
 that the general tone of the Merchants' Lecture 
 was in favour of Independency, whereas the 
 general tone of the Salters' Hall lecture was in 
 favour of the Presbyterian form of government. 
 So the Thirteen sent to the Salters' Hall lecturers, 
 among whom was Calamy, who had visited Exeter, 
 and was probably then the most distinguished 
 Nonconformist in London. These five London 
 ministers, thus appealed to, put their heads 
 together and decided not to touch the Exeter 
 bother. They said, " You had better apply to 
 ministers in your own neighbourhood, who know 
 your own particular circumstances better than we 
 can be expected to do." The Thirteen took the 
 advice. They picked out seven West of England 
 
134 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 divines, and sent to ask them what was the proper 
 thing to do in the situation above described. They 
 got an answer from these seven divines on the 
 4th of March, and the answer deserves to be 
 remembered. It was to the effect that denial of 
 the " true and proper divinity " of Christ is a 
 disqualifying error, and therefore warrants con- 
 gregations in withdrawing from their ministers. 
 That was their position ; they did not go further. 
 This was on the 4th of March. On the next 
 day the Thirteen, armed with this opinion, 
 approached the four ministers. Lavington satis- 
 fied them at once. John Withers, the senior 
 minister, after some hesitation, said he would 
 subscribe the Nicene Creed. John Hallett, the 
 next in seniority, declined to give an answer. 
 Peirce parried the question. The matter of the 
 elements and conditions of Dissenting orthodoxy, 
 he told them, was now under coiisideration in 
 London; and therefore he did not wish to give 
 any answer in this individual case until it was 
 known what the general body, meeting at Salters' 
 Hall, had to say about the matter at large. The 
 Thirteen were not satisfied. " Salters' Hall ! " 
 said they, " why, we understand that into that 
 conference Baptists are admitted. We are not 
 going to listen to the advice or decision of any 
 body of ministers including Baptists." Peirce by 
 this time had got his back up, and he said he 
 would not subscribe or make answer to anything 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 135 
 
 that was hot in Scripture. " If you ask me whet- 
 her three and two make five," said he, " I will 
 give you no answer, because it is not in the 
 Bible " — a rather foolish utterance, but that was 
 the ground on which he took his stand. Next day 
 the four Proprietors of James's Meeting stepped 
 in and shut him out of his pulpit, and Hallett 
 with him. They were allowed on the following 
 Sunday to preach at the third, the Little Meeting, 
 by the Proprietors thereof; but on the loth of 
 March the three groups of Proprietors had a 
 meeting together, and, "without consulting the 
 people," refused to allow either of the recalcitrant 
 divines to preach again in any of the three 
 meeting-houses. Accordingly on the 15th of 
 March they started a new (Mint) meeting-house of 
 their own; and that was the Exeter split. 
 
 Meanwhile many things had been going on in 
 London, as Peirce was very well aware. The 
 real man who, as early as January, had appealed 
 to a general conference in London, was undoubt- 
 edly Peirce himself. He was in close relations 
 with Barrington Shute. Peirce had been in the 
 habit of going up to London periodically for 
 literary purposes. Barrington Shute and he were 
 friends, and worked together both in politics and 
 religion; though, in religion, Shute ultimately 
 went a good deal further than Peirce ever did. 
 As regards Peirce, I should say that he was 
 one of those men who, orthodox to a fault, or 
 
136 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 obstinate to a fault, as you like to put it, are so 
 determined to be punctiliously exact that, in 
 point of fact, they satisfy nobody. He was well 
 able to draw extremely fine distinctions; but in 
 his own mind he was from first to last unquestion- 
 ably a man who kept tight and firm to the rigid 
 limits of nicely formulated and precisely definite 
 doctrine. He was not an emotional man; al- 
 though they say that, in his prayers, he exhibited 
 a fervour which rarely came out in his preaching. 
 
 Shute was a member of Bradbury's congre- 
 gation. It is unfortunately true, and not of 
 Dissent alone, that the big man and the minister 
 do not always get on as they should do. It turned 
 out that, in the Salters' Hall dispute, Bradbury 
 was the visible head of one side, and Barrington 
 Shute the invisible head of the other. Shute was 
 anxious to secure the repeal of the Schism Act, 
 passed under Queen Anne, and designed to pro- 
 duce the collapse of Dissent by shutting up all the 
 Dissenting Schools and Academies. The inten- 
 tion, presumably, had been to follow it by an Act 
 which should also shut their meeting-houses ; and 
 in some places the prospective legislation was 
 actively anticipated. In Ireland, particularly, 
 persons full of faith and — ^no, not the other 
 qualification — had gone about nailing up Dis- 
 senting meeting-houses. 
 
 Shute was anxious about the repeal of this 
 unworthy Act. He wanted its unconditional 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS" HALL 137 
 
 repeal, like the good Independent that he then 
 was ; whereas there was a party among the Pres- 
 byterian members of the House of Commons, 
 against repealing it without a test in regard to the 
 Trinity. Shute defeated their amendment, and 
 in order to facilitate the repeal, he was extremely 
 anxious that there should be no appearance of any 
 rift, doctrinal or otherwise, among the forces of 
 Dissent. He therefore called together a body of 
 laymen, who were in the habit of meeting as a 
 committee to protect the civil rights of Dis- 
 senters. He put the matter before them. It was 
 essential, in his view, that ministers whose 
 opinions would carry weight, should be got to 
 issue a joint manifesto, calculated to compose the 
 Exeter difference. 
 
 The draft of such a manifesto, under the name 
 of Advices for Peace, was drawn up by him, and 
 passed by the select committee of laymen. These 
 laymen were in fact the cream of the Dissenting 
 magnates in London, including several members 
 of Parliament. The Advices, if we strip them of 
 their setting — the opening, exhortations, details 
 of procedure, and so forth — really consisted in the 
 statement of two points of principle. The First 
 was this: There are doctrinal errors which 
 warrant congregations in withdrawing from their 
 ministers. Of course, we know what that 
 meant. It meant stopping the supplies; and 
 therefore, the ministers must go. The position 
 
138: THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 of the minister was saved, by putting it the other 
 way' and allowing the congregation to go. The 
 Second was this: The people are to determine 
 what these errors are. These were the two 
 points of principle. 
 
 How would it have been if these two principles, 
 had been adopted and applied at Exeter ? The 
 people there had no opportunity of expressing, 
 their voice in the matter, in any constitutional 
 way. It was the Thirteen first, and the Pro- 
 prietors next, who had acted on their own respons- 
 ibility. The congregations, as such, had never 
 been consulted. No one can say that the main 
 result would have been entirely different. Yet it 
 is certain that Hallett and Peirce carried away 
 with them, from the three meeting-houses, enough 
 people to fill a fourth. Had therefore the Advices, 
 been tendered in time to be put into action at 
 Exeter, it is quite possible that there might have 
 been a different issue. The people when called 
 upon, might have said : " No, we are not prepared 
 to withdraw either from Hallett or from Peirce."' 
 
 The next step in Shute's programme was to get 
 the Advices accepted by the most representative 
 and influential body of ministers that could be 
 got together. For this purpose the Baptists were 
 convened to Salters' Hall, as well as the Presby- 
 terians, so called, and the Independents; both 
 those in London and those in the neighbourhood 
 of London, were convened; and we may fairly 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 139 
 
 say that the total number of those who attended 
 was one hundred and ten. 
 
 Reference was made above to " Presbyterians 
 so called " — and why ? As soon as the Toleration 
 Act was passed, when the year 1689/90 was young, 
 there was raised in London a common Fund for 
 Protestant Dissenters, who with the exclusion of 
 Baptists, and of course Quakers, at that time 
 formed a common body. Their ministers called 
 themselves United Brethren. They formally 
 agreed to drop the dividing names, Presbyterian 
 and Congregational, and, if they called themselves 
 anything, simply to call themselves United 
 Brethren. This was a ministerial compact, and 
 nothing more ; and ministerial compacts are not 
 always carried out or backed up by congre- 
 gations. The Union in London was followed else- 
 where. In London it soon came to a rupture; 
 elsewhere it was taken up when London dropped 
 it, and it managed to endure for a very long period. 
 In London it came to a rupture owing to the 
 suspicions of the section formerly known as Pres- 
 byterians, in regard to Independent doctrine. 
 The Independents were more free in doctrinal 
 matters than the Presbyterians, or, to put it in 
 another way, they went to further extremes. You 
 could find at that time, among the Independents, 
 men whose orthodoxy was suspected. You 
 could find also men whose Calvinistic orthodoxy 
 was so high that it was spoken of as Antinomian. 
 
T40 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 It was this last manifestation which had excited 
 the suspicions of those who had formerly been 
 counted as Presbyterians. They were very 
 -anxious to sharpen their controversial swords 
 against the rise of what they deemed to be . 
 Antinomianism. Daniel Williams was put out of 
 his lectureship by the Merchants because he 
 had attacked Independents, on the ground of 
 their alleged leaning to Antinomianism. Richard 
 Baxter was living at the time when the fray 
 began, and he had been eager to do what Williams 
 ■did; but John Howe kept him from publishing. 
 Williams was a younger man, and a Welshman 
 at that ; and Williams was not to be kept down. 
 The end was that Williams was put out of the 
 lectureship. The common Fund ceased to be the 
 common Fund. The Congregationalists raised 
 {Dec. 1695) a separate Fund of their own; and 
 from that time the old Fund, originally a Fund 
 for both forms of Protestant Dissent, came to be 
 ■called the Presbyterian Fund, though it was not 
 fully recognized officially as such till 1784. This 
 rupture in London exhibited itself mainly in 
 ecclesiastical matters. When it was a question 
 ■oi pleading before Kings, in the general interests 
 ■of Dissent, the two sections came together. Pro- 
 bably that was why the Baptists were at length 
 brought in, to go with them on deputations to the 
 throne. For sometimes, when you quarrel with 
 an old friend, you find it eases your feelings to 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 141 
 
 have a third party in, at the subsequent meeting. 
 So it happened, at any rate, that the Baptists 
 found themselves in what was to them the un- 
 usual position of being recognized as part and 
 parcel of London Protestant Dissent. The Dis- 
 senters would even take their addresses to their 
 Sovereign with a Baptist at their head, perhaps- 
 as a compromise. " Better have a Baptist than 
 a Presbyterian," some might say. " Anything 
 is better than an Independent," some might 
 rejoin. 
 
 The inclusion of the Baptists in the Salters' Hall' 
 conference was important. In the year 1700, 
 an event occurred which is very often forgotten.- 
 It is sometimes forgotten by Baptists, as well as by 
 those who are not Baptists. The General Baptist 
 Assembly passed, in that year, the very first 
 formal resolution of tolerance for heterodox- 
 opinions on the subject of the Trinity, that was 
 ever passed by any Nonconformist union of con- 
 gregations, in other words, by any co-operating 
 religious body in this country. That was in the 
 case of Matthew Caffyn. The General Baptist 
 Assembly did not endorse Caffyn's views, but 
 they tolerated them. They tolerated the man, 
 opinions and all (and some of his opinions were- 
 queer enough) because he was a good, sound, 
 and Christian man, who was doing good, sound 
 Christian work. Consequently, there was among 
 the Baptists a habit of tolerance, of some standings- 
 
142 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 which would incline them to go for conciliation, 
 looking, perhaps, rather more at character and 
 ■conduct, than at peculiarities of opinion, when 
 giving advice as to what congregations had better 
 do when ministers were suspected of heresy. 
 
 This threefold body came together, then, at 
 Salters' Hall, and first met the very day following 
 that on which the royal assent had ratified the 
 repeal of the Schism Act. It was thus repealed 
 on the i8th February, 1719, and they met on the 
 19th. Bradbury was at once to the front. He 
 knew about the Advices, and he did not quite like 
 the look of them. He therefore proposed that, 
 instead of sending any Advices to Exeter, the 
 ministers should pause, and fast, and pray, and 
 ■then go to Exeter by deputation, and try to settle 
 matters on the spot. This proposition was not 
 well received. Whether the suggestion of fasting 
 was not satisfactory, we cannot say; whether it 
 was thought the selecting of a deputation would 
 be an invidious procedure, we are not told At 
 .any rate Bradbury was defeated, and the Advices 
 were discussed. Though, as above said, there 
 were but two fundamental propositions embodied 
 in these Advices, there was of course a good deal 
 •of subsidiary matter, tending to smooth their 
 way, and the document was discussed clause by 
 clause. 
 
 Bradbury saw clearly that the Advices were 
 ^oing to be carried. Consequently at the next 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 143 
 
 meeting, which was on the 24th February, he 
 proposed that to them should be prefixed a pre- 
 amble. This, preamble was to set forth the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, and Bradbury drew up a 
 formulary with this view. Now it is rather 
 singular that, when Bradbury was ordained, he 
 made his confession, which was strongly Cal- 
 yinistic, and strongly Trinitarian, in words of 
 Scripture only. The confession is in print, and is 
 a very remarkable effort. He managed — and for 
 the most part legitimately, from his point of view 
 — ^by the aid of Scripture terms alone, to construct 
 a very strongly Trinitarian and very strongly 
 Caivinistic confession of faith. Now in drafting 
 the preamble he departed from this former usage 
 of his; the defining terms were taken from the 
 Shorter Catechism; and why ? Clearly because 
 now the question was how best to satisfy out- 
 siders; and outsiders would say, "Oh! Bible, 
 yes; but everybody takes the Bible in his own 
 sense. We want something which is pat and 
 plain, the language of which is indisputable." 
 
 On the production of this preamble came the 
 first, and in point of fact the most memorable 
 division; the division which has been described, 
 and indeed satirized, by Sir Joseph Jekyll, who 
 was present as a spectator on the occasion, when 
 he said, " The Bible has it by four." Those who 
 were against the preamble were asked to go up 
 into the gallery, while the others remained on the 
 
144 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 floor of the house — the old way of making a 
 division. Fifty-seven went up into the gallery 
 to divide against Thomas Bradbury. Fifty-three 
 remained on the floor with him. Consequently 
 his preamble was lost by four votes. A good 
 many stories are told about the amenities of the 
 occasion. When some of the (let us hope, 
 younger) divines, as they went up to the gallery, 
 hissed Thomas Bradbury while he sat in his seat, 
 he replied, " The seed of the serpent ! " Very 
 apt at retort was Tom Bradbury. When the 
 Dissenting clergy went to their German King in 
 their black cloaks, " Pray, gentlemen," sneered 
 a courtier, " is this a funeral ? " " Ay, my lord," 
 replied brave Tom, " 'tis the funeral of the 
 Schism Act, and soon you will see the resurrection 
 of Liberty." However on this occasion, in re- 
 gard to the preamble, he was beaten; and then 
 they adjourned. 
 
 In the meantime both parties sent out whips. 
 These do not seem to have had much effect ; for 
 the numbers were pretty much the same in the 
 next division as in the first, though both sides 
 tried to increase their strength. Nothing would 
 induce Calamy to attend the conference. Watts 
 also stayed away, and so did some other men of 
 mark. On Bradbury's side, four Presbyterian 
 divines whipped up their men in defence of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, which was thought to be 
 at stake; and others whipped up their men on 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 145 
 
 behalf of the liberty of private expression. Both 
 parties took the line of saving the Dissenting 
 interest from division. The underlying interest, 
 with the leaders, was politics on one side and 
 orthodoxy, or presumed orthodoxy, on the other. 
 When they met again, Bradbury proposed that 
 the preamble be put once more; the Moderator 
 ruled this out of order. Then he proposed that 
 they should do as the Exeter ministers had done 
 ^-call upon each minister present to make his own 
 declaration. The Moderator, Joshua Oldfield, 
 ruled this out of order also. Then Bradbury said 
 he would call upon all those who were of his mind 
 to follow him up into the gallery, and then and 
 there subscribe the Anglican article in reference 
 to the Trinity, and two answers of the Shorter 
 Catechism. Sixty are said to have gone up with 
 him,, while fifty remained below. Among the 
 sixty, there were no General Baptists, but of the 
 Particular Baptists more favoured Bradbury than 
 went against him. 
 
 While Bradbury, you observe, thus got a 
 majority to subscribe the recognized formularies, 
 this majority, you also observe, was quite out of 
 order. Going up into the gallery was, in the cir- 
 cumstances, much the same as going out of the 
 house. The Moderator had ruled that no business 
 could be taken except what we may call the com- 
 mittee stage of the Advices, which were now under 
 discussion. Out of the house, when the sub- 
 
146 THE StORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 scription was accomplished, Bradbury went with 
 his sixty ; they betook themselves to another hall, 
 elected a Presbyterian as their moderator, con- 
 tinued their meetings, and adopted the two 
 principles governing the Advices, just as the 
 others had passed them; varying, it is true, the 
 mode in which these principles were to be carried 
 into effect, and taking care to prefix Bradbury's 
 preamble. 
 
 So far, we may say that those who remained 
 behind, and had refused to subscribe in the gallery, 
 were taking a consistent position. When it came 
 to the finish, and they were to send their Advices 
 to Exeter, what did they do ? They had declined 
 individually to make their declaration of belief in 
 the Trinity. They had declined to approve the 
 preamble setting forth their belief in the Trinity. 
 They had not gone up to subscribe. Yet now 
 they drew up a letter to be signed and sent by 
 their Moderator, in the name of all present, in 
 which they declared their adhesion to the doctrine 
 of the Trinity. More than that, in this letter they 
 departed further from Scriptural terms than the 
 rejected preamble had done. In addition, they 
 expressly denounced Arianism. Finally, they 
 added that nevertheless they were not prepared 
 to quarrel with anyone, supposing that he held 
 the true doctrine, if he were not prepared to adopt 
 their terms, or even if he preferred to limit him- 
 self to Scripture terms only. Thus both parties, 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 147 
 
 it is important to notice, put themselves before 
 the world as genuine Trinitarians; and both par- 
 ties absolutely agreed on the cardinal principles of 
 the Advices which they sent to Exeter. 
 
 Obviously, the Advices came to Exeter too late 
 to be of any effect whatever. They first reached 
 Exeter as forwarded by the non-subscribers on 
 the 17th of March; the meeting-houses having 
 been closed on the loth of March against Hallett 
 and Peirce, who set up their separate tabernacle 
 on the 15th. The Advices were not dispatched 
 by the subscribers until the 7th of April. The 
 subscribers were, however, the only Advisers to 
 whom any attention was paid in Exeter. The 
 Thirteen wrote (nth April) stating that, having 
 got nothing from London in reply to their own 
 application but a put-off, they had hardly ex- 
 pected to hear further ; and having already taken 
 their own action, there was no more to be said. 
 
 Now there is one thing which it is well to under- 
 stand as clearly as possible. It must be pretty 
 ■obvious to anyone following the course of things, 
 that this Salters' Hall split was not a split between 
 Independents and Presbyterians. The most pro- 
 minent men on both sides were, or had been, 
 Independents. The political mover was an Inde- 
 pendent, the orthodox mover was an Independ- 
 ent. If Peirce himself had ceased to be a genuinfe 
 Independent, he certainly had never become a 
 Presbyterian in any sense of the word known 
 
148 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 before his time. Personally, he declined the 
 name, and called himself merely a Christian. He 
 hg,d got out of Independency and on towards 
 Presbyterianism to a certain extent. It is a 
 curious point which he had reached. He pub- 
 lished a couple of sermons on Ordination. In the 
 one published later of the two, he gave his own 
 idea as to what a regular Ordination was. He 
 claimed it as the privilege of ministers to make 
 ministers; the people cannot make them. How 
 they were originally made he does not say, for he 
 does not expressly claim Apostolic continuity for 
 the Dissenting clergy. Ministers, and they only^ 
 have the power of licensing a man to preach. 
 When the ministers have done this, the congre- 
 gations may take their choice among those whom 
 the ministers present to them. If they select one, 
 again it is the ministers, and they only, who are 
 to say whether they will or will not ordain him 
 as pastor. That is as far as he got in a Presby- 
 terian direction; but anyone who knows any- 
 thing about Presbyterianism, knows that this is- 
 not Presbyterianism at all. The Presbyteriaa 
 polity is not a clerical aristocracy of this kind, but 
 an organized democracy, in which laymen sit side 
 by side with clergy in every court. 
 
 The split, then, was not one in which the Pres- 
 byterians, as such, took one side, and the Inde- 
 pendents the other. Both bodies were divided. 
 Doubtless among the Independents there were 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 149 
 
 more in number who went with Bradbury than 
 went against him; but, if you pass from number 
 to quality, among the Independents who went 
 against Bradbury, there were Hunt, and Lowman, 
 and Jennings ; and Lardner, the best acquainted 
 with early Christian history of any man in his 
 century; to say nothing of Watts, and Daniel 
 Neal, the Nonconformist historian, who kept aloof 
 from both parties. On the other hand, among the 
 Presbyterians, the old stagers were mostly with 
 Bradbury, and actively with him, as we have seen. 
 Seven out of the twelve Presbyterian trustees of 
 Dr. Williams' foundations who voted at Salters' 
 Hall, were subscribers with Bradbury. The 
 younger Presbyterians, no doubt, did make up 
 the majorities against Bradbury; though even 
 here, there were exceptions. Daniel WilcoX, 
 Bradbury's henchman at the conference, was a 
 Presbyterian. 
 
 What became of the younger non-subscribing 
 Presbyterians ? A considerable number of them 
 did not remain in the Dissenting interest at all, 
 but shortly after conformed. One sees instances 
 of the same proclivity, or something like it, at the 
 present day. A man may say in effect : " I am 
 not going to pledge myself to this opinion or that 
 — ^but I will sign, the Anglican articles ; because 
 that does not pledge anybody to anything, beyond 
 keeping the peace of the Church." That seems 
 to have been something like the position which 
 
150 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 some of these younger Presbyterian divines took. 
 They were pressed into conformity by Hoadly, 
 the great Whig Bishop, who let men in on easy 
 terms of examination, satisfied with their mo- 
 mentary use of the goose-quill. 
 
 Again, it is clear that the split was by no means 
 a decisive rupture between Trinitarianism and 
 Unitarianism. Both parties stoutly and staunch- 
 ly affirmed that, ta the best of their knowledge 
 and belief, they held as clearly as they could the 
 doctrine of the Trinity. What then was it on 
 which the division really turned ? It was a con- 
 flict precipitating a, cleavage between the spirit 
 of uniformity, and the spirit of liberty. We may 
 fairly claim that the Salters' Hall rift worked out 
 — perhaps not altogether well — but worked out 
 so as to sever two tendencies, and let each do its 
 best in making English history. Pass a few 
 decades, reach the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, and from that point, no doubt, those who 
 were for doctrinal uniformity got the name of 
 Independents, and those who were not for uni- 
 formity, but for tolerance and liberty, got the 
 name of Presbyterians. If you ask why this 
 distinctive nomenclature, the answer must be 
 that in this, as in sundry other cases, there was 
 a close connexion between ecclesiasticism and 
 finance. The old Fund, the Fund instituted for 
 Dissenters in common, came, as we have seen, to 
 be called the Presbyterian Fund. Thus the Press- 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 151 
 
 byterian name attached itself to that position 
 which, in theory at any rate, was of broader scope. 
 
 Yet the important thing to remember is that, 
 whatever distinguishing name they then bore or 
 afterwards acquired, both parties registered them- 
 selves at Salters' Hall as Independents, pure and 
 simple. The Advices, to which all agreed, em- 
 body a charter of Independency in its most un- 
 restricted form. Of doctrinal truth and error, 
 the people are to be judges. Each congregation 
 is to say whether in their judgment the doctrine 
 preached from the pulpit is, or is not, right and 
 good. This judgment is to be subject to no 
 exterior jurisdiction whatever. There is to be no 
 constitutional appeal to any deliberative body 
 outside. Each congregation is to be responsible 
 to itself, under its Divine Head, for its own ortho- 
 doxy, or non-orthodoxy, as other men may choose 
 to deem it. 
 
 For the moment, as it proved, these Advices 
 made strongly for the Trinitarian cause. Con- 
 gregations in the West of England followed the 
 example of the Thirteen at Exeter, stranding all 
 rninisters whose orthodoxy was questioned. This 
 was the effect at first; but of course when the 
 tiffle came for Unitarian notions, be they true or 
 be,; they false, to gain ground in congregations, 
 these congregations were authorized to take pre- 
 cisely the same action that had been taken by 
 Trinitarians before them. They found their 
 
152 THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 
 
 warrant in the Salters' Hall Advices, and made 
 appeal to them as the charter of their liberties. 
 So that, in a very real sense, the Salters' Hall rift 
 issued in what proved to be an all-round charter 
 of the liberties of congregations, whether Unitar- 
 ian or Trinitarian. 
 
 It must, in estimating the full result of the 
 break at Salters' Hall, be added that the general 
 prosperity of Dissent from that time began very 
 considerably to decline. Its unanimity was lost. 
 People became suspicious of each other. In in- 
 dividual congregations a critical spirit was en- 
 gendered. In the clerical unions — the only 
 pledged tokens of the corporate unity of Dissent 
 — the old bonds of common association were 
 relaxed. Old men looked anxiously at the 
 future, as did Calamy. Young men, unless they 
 had the enthusiasm of a Doddridge, began by 
 writing tracts lamenting the decay of Dissent, and 
 ended by slipping into the Establishment. We 
 know what caused the revival of Dissent; but 
 that is neither here nor there. We must remem- 
 ber that every gain in this world iiavolves a loss, 
 and in the order of Providence gain is compensa- 
 tion for loss. 
 
 Barrington Shute saw clearly that, as a political 
 iorce, Dissent was no longer what it had been. 
 The Viscount Barrington, of 1720, soon slackened 
 in his hopes of the political future of the Dissent- 
 ing interest; and in -religion left Bradbury for 
 
THE STORY OF SALTERS' HALL 153 
 
 Hunt, and Hunt for parish Church; still, as 
 "" Papinian," corresponding with Lardner on the 
 latest developments of theological criticism. 
 Many others saw that, as a religious force. Dissent 
 "was no longer what it once was, and what it had 
 been hoped it might continue to be, in increasing 
 measure — a spiritual power, battling with united 
 ■strength against the common enemies of all 
 morals and all religion. This, its true mission, 
 was for a time impeded ; this, its best work, was 
 for a time delayed. Not for naught. The re- 
 larding check was the condition of the assimilation 
 •of a permanent boon. The rift at Salters' Hall 
 will be for ever memorable; for then and there 
 the future of the liberties of English Dissent was 
 at high cost secured. 
 
 31 October, 1902. 
 
PETER BAYLE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 DICTIONARY 
 
Pierre Bayle. — Born, 1647; Professor of 
 Philosophy at Sedan, 1675-81, and at Rotterdam, 
 1682-93; Author of Dictionnaire Historique et 
 Critique, 1696-7; Died, 1706. 
 
VI 
 PETEli BAYLE OF THE DICTIONAKY 
 
 IT is too probable that for centennials, bi- 
 centennials, tercentennials, and quatercen- 
 tennials we have by this time not much appetite 
 left. The present offer to attempt another resur- 
 rection of this kind may be received with a yawn,. 
 or even with the ejaculatory interruption ascribed 
 to the Scottish bailie, who, at a public ceremony, 
 when the length of the dedicatory prayer had 
 proved visibly trying to the patience and to the 
 nerves of her late Majesty, twitched the official 
 robe of the Moderator of the General Assembly, 
 and muttered the hoarse whisper, " Dash it, man t 
 Can ye not hand your gab ? " Still, an impulse of 
 gratitude is upon me, urging me to call forth 
 before your imaginations, if I can, the figure, 
 remarkable and even picturesque, of one who first 
 saw this world's daylight in 1647, and passed into> 
 the light beyond in 1706. 
 
 It has not, I think, ieen observed in any of our 
 public prints or literary organs that the bi- 
 
158 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 centennial of the death of Peter Bayle falls in the 
 last month of this year (1906). Alexander Chal- 
 mers, in his General Biographical Dictionary, which, 
 published as long ago as 1812-17, is still the only 
 English work of the kind on the same generous and 
 inclusive scale, opens his account of Bayle with the 
 description of him as " a French writer who once 
 made a great figure in the literary world." The 
 Abb6 Glaire, whose Dictionnaire Universelle des 
 Sciences Ecclesiasiiques (1868) is as terse, compre- 
 hensive, and irnpartial as any I know, begins his 
 article on Bayle by affirming that " he made him- 
 self celebrated particularly by the deplorable 
 scepticism which led him into incredulity." With 
 more appreciation of the true basis of his renown, 
 the tenth edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica 
 introduces him as " author of the famous Histori- 
 cal and Critical Dictionary." 
 
 Certainly it is as the greatest, and perhaps the 
 wickedest, of dictionary makers that Bayle is 
 remembered and known, where he is remembered 
 and known at all. In fact, when you speak of 
 Bayle, it is the book you mean, not the man. 
 This was in the mind of the^ law student, after- 
 wards a distinguished judge, who, lamenting his 
 lack of books, exclaimed " I wish some damned 
 fool would give me a Bayle." 
 
 My possession of a Bayle is due to the munific- 
 ence of the Trustees of the Hibbert Fund. A 
 worthy divine, on withdrawing from the ministry 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 159 
 
 to agricultural pursuits in a remote locality, 
 reduced his library to little other than a collection 
 of dictionaries. He more than once asserted in 
 my hearing that experience had amply vindicated 
 the wisdom of his preference. Accordingly, when 
 my Hibbert Fellowship was followed at an inter- 
 val by a grant of books, I went in largely for 
 •dictionaries, and Bayle headed the list. Nor have 
 I repented of my choice, for though one of them 
 has lost value, and one been quite superseded, 
 Bayle in his way is perennial. We shall see that 
 Bayle the book was the alter ego of Bayle the man. 
 Peter, the second of three sons of John Bayle, 
 a stiff and stern Huguenot divine, was born on 
 November i8th, 1647, at Carlat, a little place in 
 the South of France, within the domain of the 
 Counts of Foix, and in the diocese of Rieux. Till 
 his nineteenth year he was educated by his father, 
 who then sent him to a Protestant Academy at 
 Puylaurens. His studies there were seriously 
 interrupted by successive illnesses, due to over- 
 application. Dissatisfied with his opportunities 
 at this academy — where, however, . he acquired 
 his lifelong predilection for Plutarch and for 
 Montaigne — he betook himself, when just twenty- 
 two, to the University of Toulouse, going for his 
 philosophy to the Jesuits' College. In this, says 
 his biographer (Des Maizeaux), there was nothing 
 remarkable. Not infrequently did the Protest- 
 ants of France send their sons to receive the 
 
i6o PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 benefit of the excellent instruction provided by 
 the Jesuits, though to do so was prohibited by 
 their Synodical regulations. 
 
 Now, it seems that at Puylaurens young Bayle 
 had dipped into books of Catholic controversy, 
 had held talks with the Catholic cure, and been 
 shaken in his hereditary faith. At Toulouse a 
 priest was his fellow lodger. Bayle became his 
 convert within a month. This shows him to have 
 been of an easily sympathetic nature. The exact 
 line of his divergence from Calvinistic orthodoxy 
 is not clear. It may be inferred from a letter in 
 which he endeavoured to convert his elder br jther, 
 now his father's colleague, that the modernity and 
 schism of Protestantism, with its innovations of 
 doctrine, had made a strong impression upon him. 
 Being a young man of parts and promise, his 
 conversion was regarded as a catch. The Bishop 
 of Rieux, who belonged to one of the great 
 families of Toulouse, became his patron, under- 
 taking the cost and direction of his studies. His 
 family intervened. A cousin, repairing to Tou- 
 louse, took rooms in the same lodging, and the 
 cousin's influence proved stronger than that of the 
 priest. The advantage was followed up by an 
 able friend of his father; and, when the elder 
 brother arrived on the scene, the convert was 
 ready to avow, with tears, that reason and 
 Scripture were adverse to the claims of Rome, the 
 innovator. Bayle's Catholicism, in short, had 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY i6r 
 
 melted away after no more than seventeen 
 months' trial. He specifies the cultus of Saints 
 and the dogma of Transubstantiation as the deter- 
 mining factors of his return. 
 
 Slipping quietly out of Toulouse, Bayle made 
 his formal recantation, before his brother and 
 three other Huguenot divines, at a country house 
 on the way from Toulouse to Carlat. He was at 
 once packed off to Geneva. Introduced at its 
 University to the system of Des Cartes, he 
 abandoned in its favour the Aristotelian philo- 
 sophy which he had learned from the Jesuits. For 
 several years he acted as tutor in families of dis- 
 tinction, thus gaining some few of the advantages 
 of travel. In particular he was able to make a 
 stay in Paris, where the fine libraries, and the 
 facilities for learned intercourse, made him some 
 amends for the ill paid drudgery of the despised 
 position of a tutor. 
 
 It was now that, through the good offices of 
 his friend Basnage, he was invited to compete 
 for a chair of philosophy in the Protestant 
 Academy at Sedan, at the head of which was 
 Peter Jurieu (1637-1713), a famous theologian in 
 his day. For a time he held back, alleging that 
 his philosophy had got rusty ; he had been obliged 
 to forsake Des Cartes for Homer and Virgil; he 
 had even forgotten his logic. The secret of his 
 reluctance was this. At present, no one in that 
 part of the world suspected that he had flirted 
 
 M 
 
i62 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 with Catholicism; should he take a public posi- 
 tion, the decree against the Relapsed might be 
 put in force to his injury and that of Sedan. 
 Jurieu, who was anxious to have him, and knew 
 nothing of the relapse, wormed this secret out of 
 Basnage, and decided that, as nobody else knew 
 about it, there would be no risk. Hastening then 
 to Sedan, Bayle triumphed in disputation over 
 three local competitors, and was appointed pro- 
 fessor in 1675, being then just under twenty-nine 
 years of age. 
 
 The striking ability with which he fulfilled the 
 duties of his chair, the charm of his personal 
 qualities, and the blameless excellence of his 
 private life won him favour with all. We can 
 hardly recognize in the Bayle of Sedan, noted for 
 his sweetness, his modesty, and his straight- 
 forwardness, the impious sceptic of his later 
 reputation. Jurieu himself, who had fine capa- 
 cities, though adding an irritable temperament 
 and a turbulent disposition to a dogged and con- 
 tentious orthodoxy, wrote of Bayle, even after 
 their bitter estrangement, that the beauty of his 
 genius and the nobility of his principles had 
 attached him to the young professor with a 
 warmer regard than he had felt for anyone else. 
 
 In July of 1681 the Sedan Academy was sud- 
 denly suppressed by Louis XIV. Bayle, how- 
 ever, was not long without similar employment. 
 At Sedan he had entertained, as boarder and 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 163 
 
 pupil, young Van Zoelen, a near relative of the 
 burgomaster of Rotterdam of that name. Van 
 Zoelen had interest enough with his friends to 
 procure for Bayle an invitation to Rotterdam. 
 Simultaneously, efforts were being made to bring 
 him over to the Catholic Church, in utter ignor- 
 ance of his previous conversion and lapse. 
 Naturally Bayle preferred Rotterdam, though 
 unseen, to Rome whose acquaintance through its 
 emissaries he had already made. He stipulated, 
 however, that a post should be made for Jurieu as 
 well; and managed to smooth over some diffi- 
 culties created by the demeanour of Jurieu, whose 
 temper had not been improved by the mortifica- 
 tion consequent on the suppression of his 
 Academy. The civic authorities of Rotterdam 
 established them, in December, 1681, as pro- 
 fessors of philosophy and theology respectively; 
 but the popularity of Bayle as philosopher was 
 greater than that of Jurieu as theologian. Hence 
 the beginning of a rankling jealousy, which 
 ripened into a persistent antagonism. 
 
 To Rotterdam, Bayle had brought with him a 
 manuscript of which he had vainly sought to 
 procure the printing in Paris. In December of 
 1680 the superstitious fears of men had been 
 aroused by the apparition of a great comet. 
 Halley viewed it in Paris ; but it was not what is 
 known as Halley's Comet, made familiar to many 
 of us who are not astronomers by Dr. Martineau's 
 
i64 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 noble sermoiij " Views of the World from Halley's 
 Comet " — this was the comet of 1682, and the 
 sermon is reprinted in a volume of Martineau's 
 " Essays." 
 
 Bayle was beset by anxious inquirers, who 
 insisted on regarding the 1680 comet as a super- 
 natural phenomenon, a presage of coming woe,. 
 a warning to return to religion. Early in 1681 
 he embodied his own views on the matter in a 
 Letter, which grew to a treatise. No Paris 
 printer would touch it. At Rotterdam he found,, 
 in 1682, a printer who was willing to print but 
 not to own it. It was still entitled " A Letter,"" 
 addressed to a doctor of the Sorbonne; it was 
 anonymous; it was written as from a Catholic; 
 it professed on the title-page to be printed at 
 Cologne. Very soon it became known that Bayle 
 was the author, and the treatise was loudly- 
 applauded. Ultimately — but not till after the 
 quarrel with Jurieu, who at first joined the 
 applause — it led to charges of pernicious teaching, 
 amounting even to secret Atheism. It became 
 the cause, at any rate the nominal cause, of Bayle 's 
 subsequent dismissal from his chair. 
 
 Let us see what ground there was for the 
 accusation. Bayle maintained that a comet was- 
 a purely natural phenomenon, and urged that no- 
 merely natural effect could possibly be the 
 presage of a contingent event. Assuming it, 
 however, to be supernatural, then he reminded 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 165 
 
 his readers that the pagans of old had been visited 
 by comets, had likewise taken them as announcing 
 celestial displeasure, and had actually been driven 
 by them to renewed and increased practice of 
 their own religion, naniely, idolatry. Is it likely, 
 he asked, that the Divine Being would work a 
 miracle, knowing that it would reinstate idolatry ; 
 and with that result as the very object of the 
 miracle ? This seems at first sight a harmless query ; 
 but there was more in it than at once appeared. 
 For it may be shrewdly suspected that Bayle, to 
 whose mind the Catholic religion,by allowing crea- 
 ture-worship, promoted idolatry, meant to insinu- 
 ate that God would never work a miracle in sup- 
 port of the Catholic Faith. Even so, the treatise, 
 when this point had been perceived, would not 
 thereby offend Protestants. Bayle had still 
 another question to ask. It was this: Which 
 would the Divine Being prefer, that men should 
 be in entire ignorance of the existence of God, or 
 that they should practise the vile worship of false 
 gods ? The question is a searching one. Not all 
 serious minds would give the same answer to it. 
 Bayle's answer was readily surmised. The term 
 Agnostic was not then coined ; so Bayle was con- 
 strued as implying that blank Atheism was better 
 than idol-worship; better, that is to say, than 
 Catholicism, which included idol-worship. On 
 reflection, the charitable inference was drawn — 
 Bayle is an Atheist at heart. 
 
i66 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 His critical pen once allowed free exercise, 
 Bayle engaged in many of the religious and 
 philosophical controversies of his day, measur- 
 ing himself against such men as Leibnitz and 
 Le Clerc, and gainiflg no small renown in this 
 country, to which, at a later period, Shaftesbury 
 and others vainly tried to induce him to remove. 
 He wrote always anonymously, and his publica- 
 tions appeared with false imprints. The disguise 
 was easily penetrated ; it was adopted, partly as a 
 protection to the printer, partly, too, because 
 anonymity whets curiosity, and curiosity aids a 
 sale. In the same year (1682) in which his dis- 
 sertation on comets appeared, he brought out a 
 trenchant critique of Maimbourg's " History of 
 Calvinism," in which, with great effect, he exposed 
 the blunders and the bad faith of that able and 
 even brilliant, but most unfair writer; whose 
 " History of Arianism " exhibits the same type of 
 shining but slipshod unscrupulousness. Bayle's 
 work won the admiration even of Catholic writers. 
 M6nage speaks of it as a fine book, the work of an 
 honourable man, contrasting it with another and 
 very inferior effort against Maimbourg, by Jurieu. 
 We cannot, in this slight sketch, follow Bayle into, 
 his controversies, interesting as they are. This 
 may be said. The air of Holland seems to have 
 had a decisive influence on the spirit of Bayle. 
 For the first time he lived in a land of Tolerance. 
 Nor is it without significance that for the first 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 167 
 
 time he came into personal contact with exiled 
 Socinians from Poland. Their position, it is 
 evident, he had studied with close and appreci- 
 ative attention. 
 
 A word must be added about that mysterious 
 publication which brought about his estrange- 
 ment from Jurieu. It was issued anonymously 
 in April, 1690, and bore the title " Important 
 Advice to the Refugees on their Approaching 
 Return to France." Written in the person of a 
 Catholic, it criticized severely the general attitude 
 and temper of the French Protestants in exile; 
 dwelling on the virulence of their pens, the de- 
 famatory spirit of their polemics and lampoons; 
 accusing them of seditious tendencies; contrast- 
 ing the violence of their intemperate pamphlets 
 with the moderation of English Catholic refugees 
 in France, and with the general tone of French 
 writers on religion; and somewhat peremptorily 
 counselling an amendment of their courses. 
 Jurieu took this advice as meant for himself (as 
 probably it was, among others), accused Bayle of 
 its authorship, and attacked him furiously. The 
 question of authorship is stUl a problem. Bayle 
 expressed great indignation at the charge, and 
 disclaimed many of the views put forth by the 
 alleged Catholic, as well he might. Yet it would 
 be hard to say that he ever directly and cate- 
 gorically denied the authorship. It is true that 
 he wrote a critique of the pamphlet ; but he had 
 
i68 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 already displayed his powers in this respect, by 
 vs?riting a ludicrous Defence, in the name of a 
 French marshal accused of witchcraft, and then 
 an equally ludicrous demolition of the Defence. 
 It is certain, in any case, that Bayle was equally 
 sensible of the dangers of intolerance, whether 
 practised by Protestants or by Catholics, whether 
 exercised in word or in deed. Entering the lists 
 against Jurieu, he did not spare his adversary, 
 though he employed keener and more polished 
 weapons than those he had to encounter. The 
 quarrels of literary men are not altogether plea- 
 sant reading. They are too common, and they 
 tend to detraction. Dr. Johnson once said: 
 " The Irish are a fair people, they never speak well 
 of one another." Something of this exaggeration 
 might be applied to literary men, when they form 
 parties and fall out. 
 
 It was during his occupancy of the Rotterdam 
 chair that Bayle, dissatisfied with a kindred 
 venture in which he had taken some part, founded 
 and conducted a literary journal, the first con- 
 siderable effort of the sort, and, indeed, unique 
 in its kind. Its aim was, under the title of 
 News of the Republic of Letters, to furnish a 
 monthly guide to the European Press. It lasted 
 from March, 1684, to February, 1687, its discon- 
 tinuance being due to Bayle's iU health. In this 
 magazine he first developed his remarkable power 
 of interesting and entertaining his readers, while 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 169 
 
 ■epitomizing aiid criticizing, with a fine mixture of 
 shrewdness and tact, a wide range of current 
 literature. A keen remark in the number for 
 April, 1686, led to his famous correspondence with 
 •Queen Christina of Sweden. In response to an 
 -appeal by a zealous Catholic, this royal lady (who 
 had renounced Protestantism to embrace the 
 •Catholic Faith) had published her sentiments in 
 regard to the extirpation of heresy in France. 
 In a strain at once vigorous and wise she declared 
 that she would have nothing to do with a mission 
 -of persecution. " Dragoons are strange Apostles," 
 she affirmed. " Our Lord made no use of that 
 method of converting the world." " Do you really 
 believe in the good faith of such converts ? " 
 Bayle reprinted the piece in his magazine, and, 
 briefly commenting on it, made this observation : 
 — " This is a remnant {un reste) of Protestantism." 
 Deeply hurt by the phrase, the good Christina 
 remonstrated with Bayle through an agent. 
 After a little correspondence Bayle, who assured- 
 ly, as he explained, had never meant to throw 
 -suspicion on her Catholic allegiance, wrote to the 
 Queen herself, offering an apology at once com- 
 plete and dignified. She replied in handsome 
 terms, imposing on Bayle, as penance, that he 
 rshould henceforth make it his business to supply 
 her with any books of note that might be pub- 
 lished, whether in Latin, French, Spanish, or 
 Italian, and on any subject, provided they were 
 
170 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 worth reading. She made room in her order 
 even for romances, satires, " and, above all^ 
 chemistry." " And don't forget to send me your 
 magazine, and the bill for all expenses. God 
 prosper you." Truly a royal lady of catholic 
 tastes. One thinks that, perhaps, there may 
 really have been a little " remnant of Protest- 
 antism." 
 
 In November, 1693, Bayle was summarily 
 dismissed from his chair by the magistrates of 
 Rotterdam, and even prohibited from private 
 teaching. Nominally, as already said, this was^ 
 on the ground of the pernicious tendency of his- 
 Comet publication eleven years before; in 
 reality, as he maintained, the injury and affront 
 were due to local faction. Bayle's personal 
 friends belonged to the party which was losing 
 ground in general politics, consequently in 
 municipal management. Every efEort was being 
 made by their opponents to humiliate them in 
 gaining the upper hand. It was to show their 
 power, and to spite the other side, that they 
 found a shabby excuse for striking at Bayle, 
 Such things, of course, never occur in our own 
 municipalities. Hence, perhaps, we may find it 
 difficult to credit the true explanation of the case. 
 
 Advantageous offers were made to Bayle fromi 
 our own country and froim France; but he had 
 work in hand which induced him to stay where he 
 was. Already had he conceived the idea of his- 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 171 
 
 Dictionary; to its cdrapilation and perfection he 
 devoted the' thirteen years which remained to 
 him of life. He would have issued this great 
 work anonymously, but could not obtain a licence 
 for the printing, without his name. Its first 
 edition appeared in two volumes, 1696-7. The 
 second edition, in which, out of deference to pre- 
 judice, the article " David " was modified by 
 evisceration, was issued in 1702. The author 
 left improvements, incorporated in subsequent 
 editions, the best being that of 1740, four volumes. 
 All these were in folio. There is a modern edition, 
 in octavo, i8'2b-4, sixteen volumes, with additions 
 not by Bayle, and some serviceable criticisms. 
 There is also an anonymous English version, 171G, 
 four volumes folio; and an expanded edition, 
 1734-41, ten volumes folio, by Birch and several 
 coadjutors, including Sale, the Orientalist. I 
 have seen the 1710 translation ascribed to Birch. 
 This would be a somewhat remarkable feat for a 
 little Quaker boy in his fifth year, so perhaps the 
 translator was some one else. 
 
 This work is called an "•Historical and Critical 
 Dictionary." Yet there is nothing in it of 
 history, in the modern understanding of that 
 science ; no grasp, or even vision, of the chain of 
 events. On the other hand, there is none of that 
 magnificent waste of power which makes Sir 
 Walter Raleigh's "History of the World " (1614), 
 an eloquent and monumental torso of sage and 
 
172 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 learned nescience. Bayle guessed, if he did not 
 know, that the view which took primeval history 
 as simply controlled by the Bible must yield to 
 the view which places the very Bible itself in the 
 control of historical science. His work is 
 biographical, sometimes geographical, always 
 critical, yet never free from learned gossip. 
 
 Voltaire has said of Bayle's Dictionary that it 
 is the first work of the kind in which a man may 
 learn to think. He had even better have said, 
 which compels a man to think. For Bayle does 
 not help a man through the problems that he 
 starts. He forces you perpetually to say : What 
 does he mean ? What does this lead to ? What 
 does he not mean ? He leaves you no option. In 
 Bayle's pliant and pleasant hands you find your- 
 self, without a word of warning, flung easily and 
 suddenly into deep and sometimes dirty water; 
 you don't know where you are, or where he is; 
 but there is no mistake about it, you must begin 
 to learn to swim or, faith, you'll sink. Such is 
 the mystery and the magic of Bayle. 
 
 How his Dictionary 'began to be, and achieved 
 its growth, he tells us in his inimitable preface. 
 He had originally intended a " Dictionary of 
 Errors," and had issued the prospectus of one, 
 after compiling it to the first three letters of the 
 alphabet. There is such a dictionary, bearing the 
 too proud sub-title " Errata and Supplement to 
 All Historical Dictionaries," by Augustin Jal 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 173. 
 
 (1867) a useful book, though apparently little 
 known. For when you refer to Jal, people look 
 as if they had never heard of him. Bayle found 
 his first project did not take. He says people 
 don't mind about errors; one thing will do as 
 well as another if they " like the spirit of it," 
 as John James Tayler used to say. He quotes 
 ludicrous examples from sermons . Here is one : — 
 " How now, Christians, you are not touched by 
 the spectacle of our Saviour Christ nailed to the 
 wood of the cross ! Why, the Emperor Pompey 
 was moved to pity, when he beheld the elephants 
 of Pyrrhus pierced with arrows ! " The effect of 
 this, says Bayle, was just as good as if it had been, 
 true. The resources of present day students are 
 quite equal to efforts of this kind — especially in 
 Examination papers — ^but the effect is sometimes 
 disappointing. 
 
 What put Bayle on the correction of errors ? 
 It was the appearance in 1688 of the posthumous 
 fifth edition of the " Great Historical Dictionary," 
 originally published in 1674 by Louis Moreri, D.D.. 
 (1643-1680). It must not be supposed that 
 Moreri's was an exceptionally bad book. On the 
 contrary, it was, as Bayle fully allows, an ex- 
 ceptionally good one, and that was just why he 
 thought it worth while to show how it could be 
 bettered. In many respects Moreri's is a much 
 more generally useful compendium than Bayle's.. 
 Under successive editors (greatest among them. 
 
174 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 Le Clerc) it has swelled from a single folio to the 
 ten huge folios which have an honoured place 
 among my books, as a really indispensable work 
 of reference. 
 
 Perceiving that Moreri was especially weak in 
 mythological and classic articles, Bayle had de- 
 voted himself to the correction of these. He 
 found that people did npt care for exact informa- 
 tion, either about heathen gods or Raman heroes. 
 So he discarded all the gods, and most of the 
 heroes, from his plan. It then occurred to him to 
 compile a Dictionary, which, as far as possible, 
 should contain nothing that was to be found in 
 other dictionaries. Popes, emperors, kings, car- 
 dinals, Fathers of the Church, and so on, were 
 common property; he resolved to let most of 
 them severely alone. , Hardly had he begun, when 
 he heard of an English version (1694) of Moreri, 
 with national additions; this stopped him from 
 including the illustrious men of Great Britain. A 
 similar publication cut off from him the illustrious 
 men of the United Provinces. A new Biblical 
 Dictionary checked his design of including most of 
 the persons mentioned in the Bible. D'Herbe- 
 lot's Bibliotheque- Orientals came out, and inter- 
 fered with him in that department. Church 
 History, too, was otherwise provided for. Think 
 of the erudition of the man who would wUlingly 
 have undertaken any or all of these special 
 branches, and robbed of them all, still had 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 175 
 
 matter in abundance on which to fall back. 
 Yet here it is well to interpose a caveat. Bayle, 
 a man of extraordinary erudition, was not (as Jal, 
 for example, was) a man of research, as we under- 
 stand that term. He probably knew by heart 
 more books, of all sorts, than any man before or 
 since his day. He did not, as we try to do, go 
 beyond books in quest of things knowable. Par- 
 don the egotism of a small illustration of the 
 difference. Some time ago I was in company 
 with certain scholarly friends, who know much 
 more about books than I can pretend to do. One 
 day they benevolently informed me that I had 
 given in the Dictionary of National Biography a 
 wrong year-date for the birth of, John Cotton, who 
 came from Boston No. i, and was the means of 
 giving its name to Boston No. 2. " It is very 
 likely," said I, " for the Pope of Rome is the only 
 infallible person, and he wisely avoids the exer- 
 cise of his prerogative in regard to dates." They 
 brought me five books, all placing Cotton's birth 
 a year later than I had ventured to put it. I 
 demurred. " These are few and modern, and all 
 American." Well, by dint of their labour and my 
 insistence, they found above eighty printed 
 authorities for their date, and wondered what I 
 had to say. " Only this, gentlemen: I took the 
 trouble personally to visit St. Alkmund's, Derby, 
 where Cotton was baptized, and here is the record 
 of that event, copied by me on the spot, and 
 
176 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 certified by the custodian. As a child is not 
 usually born a year after his baptism, I think you 
 will admit that research sometimes beats eru- 
 dition." Let me add that the whole honour of the 
 discovery is due to Mr. B. Tacchella, who in a 
 small and unnoticed publication had put me on the 
 right line of search. So, to all students I would 
 say: Never feel quite sure, before you have got 
 at the original sources for yourself. Till then, 
 don't say, " It is so," but, with Bayle, be content 
 to say, " So-and-so says it is so." For Bayle 
 knew the limits of his erudition, and was careful 
 always to distinguish between things his authori- 
 ties personally vouched for, and what they merely 
 cited from others. Indeed, one express purpose 
 of his toil was to induce rising scholars, and youth 
 generally, to form an idea of, and taste for " the 
 most scrupulous exactitude." 
 
 How had he gained this vast range of reading, 
 amid the frequent interruptions of failing health ? 
 " Little use do I make," says he, " of Cato's 
 motto : Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis. 
 Diversions, parties of pleasure, games, treats, 
 excursions to the country, visits and such-like 
 recreations, necessary (so they say) to many 
 studious persons, are not in my line. I waste no 
 time in them. Nor waste I any in domestic cares, 
 in seeking favours, courting patrons, or anything 
 of that sort. Happily freed from many dis- 
 tractions not much to my taste, I have enjoyed 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 177 
 
 the most complete, the most delightful leisure 
 that a literary man could possibly long for." 
 There was a time when Madame Basnage had 
 tried hard to yoke him to a wife she had picked 
 out for him. The lady, whose name is not given, 
 had, we are assured, youth, beauty, sense, sweet- 
 ness, modesty, self-command — and fifteen thou- 
 sand crowns. Bayle persistently shook his head, 
 disinclined to be drawn from solitary study by 
 his married friend's encouraging example. 
 
 It must be owned that the arrangement of his 
 Dictionary is of the most inconvenient kind. 
 Opening just now a volume at random one finds, 
 divided between three successive folio pages, only 
 four lines of text, all the rest being notes. Un- 
 luckily, he has had imitators in this, who have 
 followed him as following a fashion, without his 
 reason or excuse. Kippis, in his Biogra-phict 
 Britannica, is a tiresome sinner in this respect. 
 He tells you half a thing, and must needs put the 
 other half into a note or notes. He reminds one 
 of George IV's saying about Sir Robert Peel: 
 " Peel is not a gentleman; he always parts hi& 
 coat tails before he sits down." Bayle, however, 
 has a purpose in his system. As he truly says, 
 his text is complete in itself. Read it, and you 
 get a plain story. No one need trouble himself 
 with the notes, unless he has a mind to do so. Yet 
 the notes are Bayle : Bayle at his best and Bayle 
 at his worst. He pours into them without stint 
 
 N 
 
178 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 the many-coloured, recondite, and appetizing con- 
 tents of his commonplace books and memoranda, 
 with chapter and verse for every statement. 
 
 There is one element in them which stains his 
 workmanship. Lord Acton said, oddly enough, 
 of Charles Dickens: " His great merit is that in 
 all his books there is no indecency." From' the 
 negative eulogy of this faint praise Bayle is 
 undesirably exempt. His elaborate excursus in 
 defence of his fault is rather an aggravation of 
 it, being little more than an impudent tu quoque. 
 Plenty of other writers, some of them general 
 favourites, he says, deal in improprieties — " as I 
 will proceed to show you." His offence is delib- 
 erate, and its motive is frankly propounded. In 
 his preface he affirms that the booksellers and 
 their friends had assured him that a dull folio, 
 appealing only to the learned, scarcely ever pays 
 the printer, and that he must brighten up his 
 book. Lord Acton, to quote him again, alleges 
 that the future Cardinal Newman, anxious about 
 the Rambler (the liberal Catholic organ), wishing 
 it to be clever and amusing as well as instructive, 
 " wants us to have rather more levity and pro- 
 faneness, less theology and learning." In the 
 course of his reading, Bayle had dived into all 
 sorts of holes and corners, whence he brought out 
 scandalous anecdote, in unheard-of variety. 
 Something of this seasoning had already spiced 
 his literary magazine. He sprinkled it about, 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 179 
 
 ■especially when it concerned grave persons, with 
 an impish malice — ^perhaps more often found, in 
 combination with a native sweetness of temper, 
 in the ladies of creation than in the lords thereof. 
 Yet Bayle, who knew more than most men, 
 actually makes a point of his reticence. " Of 
 the two inviolable laws of history," says he, " I 
 have religiously observed the one which enjoins 
 upon us to say nothing that is false. As for the 
 other, which enjoins on us to dare to say all that 
 is true, I cannot boast of having invariably fol- 
 lowed it. I think it sometimes opposed, not 
 merely to prudence, but to reason as well." One 
 would wish that oftener he had thus thought, and 
 when dealing with the seamy side of human 
 nature, bestowed a little drapery upon his nuda 
 Veritas. Without question Bayle is a cure for 
 optimism, if such be needed; though optimism, 
 it may be observed, commonly cures itself. 
 
 This last remark about our author gives 
 occasion to say, in drawing to a close, all that I 
 have either ability or inclination to say respecting 
 Bayle's philosophy, so called. I know not wheth- 
 er I have read or dreamed that some one once 
 averred, " The real philosopher is the man who 
 has no philosophy." Bayle is ranked as a sceptic ; 
 and if we take the literal sense of the word, Bayle 
 was that, and something more. For the sceptic 
 is the man who stops to look at a thing ; and Bayle 
 was prone not only to look things in the face, but 
 
i8o PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 to see them all round, if he could. Vulgarly, 
 however, a sceptic is taken to mean a person of 
 superficial views, who doubts if there is anything 
 beyond surfaces. Montaigne, in a well-known 
 essay by Emerson, is taken as the type of a 
 sceptic; yet Montaigne's motto was not, "What is 
 there to know ? " but "What do I know ? " which 
 is a very different thing, I opine. We have seen 
 that Bayle was early a disciple of Montaigne, as 
 also of the anecdotical and sententious Plutarch, 
 both of them men of insatiable curiosity. Now, 
 it would appear that Bayle had discovered, both 
 by the experience of his personal history and by 
 his study of all the literature accessible to him, 
 this staring and disturbing fact, that there is 
 much to be said on both sides of many more 
 questions than is either convenient or agreeable 
 to our complacency. This is what is meant by 
 saying that Bayle is a cure for optimism. Per- 
 sons fundamentally in the wrong may have some- 
 thing to say which we should do well to hear . The 
 system of the Manichseans, said Bayle, is to me 
 absurd; yet Christians cannot answer the 
 Manichaean objections to their own theology, 
 committed as that is to the doctrine of eternal 
 torments. There seems no reason to doubt that 
 Bayle's affirmations of his own beliefs are genuine 
 and honest. He claimed to hold, on the authority 
 of revelation, what he could not maintain by the 
 force of reason ; but Bayle was not the man to say 
 
PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY i8i 
 
 that every genuine and honest thinker must needs 
 hold with him. 
 
 Evidently we have, as a rule, advanced beyond 
 the view-point of Bayle's century. Occasionally, 
 it is true, we may encounter people ready to 
 repeat, in all seriousness, the old jibe that every 
 Cardinal is necessarily an Atheist. There still 
 may be those who think the same of every 
 Unitarian, though too polite to tell us so. Yet, 
 on the whole, we have come very near to per- 
 ceiving that it is possible, on the one hand, to hold 
 strong views of one's own ; on the other hand, to 
 feel not condescension, nor compassion, nor 
 tolerance, but deep and true respect for the 
 opposite views of others. That we have got so 
 far, or nearly so far, is largely owing to the courage 
 of those men who braved obloquy and misunder- 
 standing in the determination that, in defiance of 
 every prejudice to the contrary, the most un- 
 popular opinions, should be pressed, in their 
 integrity, upon the reluctant attention of the 
 public. Great, in this respect, were the services 
 of Bayle. 
 
 For this reason it has seemed not unbefitting to 
 conjure up the memory of the man who passed 
 suddenly away on the morning of 28th December, 
 1706, with the questioning words on his lips: 
 " Is my fire lighted ? " Sundry among the bigots 
 might then have been inclined to answer "Yes," 
 with a stolid accent of gloomy exultation. Some 
 
i82 PETER BAYLE OF THE DICTIONARY 
 
 among us may now feel satisfied to echo the 
 affirmative, in another spirit and sense. For, if 
 the heart must be purified by the cleansing fires 
 of love, no less does the mind demand for its 
 clarification the searching, sometimes the scorch- 
 ing, it may even be the blasting, flame enkindled 
 by the critic's art, that it may pass " ex umbris et 
 imaginihus in veritatem," from the spectres and 
 shadows of its own thought, into the reception of 
 the realities of the Most High. 
 
 4 October, 1906. 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 AND THE CATHOLICITY 
 
 OF THE OLD DISSENT 
 
Philip Doddridge. — Born in London, June 
 26th, 1702; Minister at Kibworth, 1723-29; 
 Began Academy at Market Harborough, 1729; 
 Minister and Tutor at Northampton, 1729-51; 
 •Ordained, March 19th, 1730; Married, December 
 22nd, 1730; D.D., Aberdeen, 1736; Died at 
 Lisbon, October 26th, 1751. 
 
VII 
 
 PHILIP DODDRIDGE AND THE 
 CATHOLICITY OF THE OLD DISSENT 
 
 THE eighteenth century was in its eighteenth 
 year when Philip Doddridge, desiring to 
 enter the Dissenting nxinistry, sought to open the 
 way by addressing himself to Edmund Calamy, 
 D.D. (1671-1732). The interview is known only 
 by its unpromising result, yet the historic imagina- 
 tion may be forgiven if it pause to picture the 
 momentary contact between these two great 
 liberal unionists in English Nonconformist polity. 
 Calamy was now in the prime of his life, and 
 at the height of his public influence. He had 
 added lustre to the eminent inheritance of his 
 name, by his services as biographer of the Ejected, 
 and as custodian of the fame of Baxter. A genial, 
 full bodied divine, he walked before God in the 
 healthy enjoyment of human life and human 
 liberty. When his Scottish friends made him a 
 doctor in divinity, he rallied them on the pertina- 
 city of their church courts, which reminded him 
 of the thumbscrews of the Inquisition; but he 
 found no fault with the theology of their claret or 
 the orthodoxy of their salmon. An absolute 
 
i86 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 stranger to enthusiasms, he rode past Winder- 
 mere, and recollected that this was the lake " so 
 famous for the fish called charrs, which come 
 potted- to London, and are reckoned so very 
 delicious." Seated in full view of one of the 
 finest of Lancashire landscapes, he charmed a 
 Tory lady by suggesting that the spot seemed 
 specially adapted by boon Nature for the pleasant 
 use of " a pipe of tobacco and a glass of October." 
 Perhaps in Oxford, where he spent some studious 
 months, and preached his first sermon, these finer 
 tastes may have been cultivated. His devotion 
 to Nonconformity was genuine and virile. He 
 had espoused its principles with the full strength 
 of reasoned conviction, and believed them 
 essential to the maintenance of English liberties- 
 and English religion. He served his cause with 
 a diplomatic prudence; no rash ventures were 
 his, and few mistakes; his strong mundane 
 sagacity told him what was timely, what was 
 practicable, and then with courtly ease he man- 
 aged men and made obstacles melt. If any 
 ambition to go too far menaced a breach of accord 
 in the forces of Nonconformity, he made his bow 
 and stood aside, a mere cool-headed spectator of 
 parties; he never mixed up in a quarrel, and 
 would touch nothing quixotic. 
 
 Such was the man who turned his eyes upon, 
 young Doddridge, with keen yet kindly glance^ 
 He saw before him a slight and sickly orphan boy,. 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 187 
 
 too tall for his sixteen years, too near-sighted to 
 bear his height erect, the hectic flush of a con- 
 sumptive habit showing through his olive cheek 
 and seeming to explain the feverish and pre- 
 mature anxiety to encounter, with sanguine lack 
 of prescience, the hardships of a calling full of 
 trials for the robust. He learned that the 
 resolve, vaguely formed at the ripe age of four- 
 teen, had started into definite shape on the sudden 
 disclosure of a reverse of fortune, which had 
 stripped the schoolboy of his means and left hini 
 penniless. To overstock the ministerial market 
 by training up a superfluous host of poor lads on 
 small bursaries, Calamy had condemned as a cruel 
 policy in the Presbyterians of Scotland. What 
 wonder that he gave Doddridge " no encourage- 
 ment, but advised " him " to turn " his " thoughts 
 to something else." The counsel, though a bitter 
 disappointment, seemed beneficently wise; and 
 for the moment Philip felt that to gainsay it 
 would be a forcing of Providence. 
 
 Doddridge was a year older than John Wesley, 
 and, like Wesley, he came of Nonconformist 
 ancestry on both sides of the house. His grand- 
 father, on the one side, was an Ejected minister, 
 nephew of a famous judge. His other grand- 
 father was a Bohemian exile, who, after sojourning 
 in Germany as a Lutheran divine, settled in Eng- 
 land as a schoolmaster. The twentieth child of 
 his parents, Philip at his birth showed no sign of 
 
i88 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 life. In point of fact, he and a sister were the 
 ■only ones reared out of this abnormal family. The 
 story is well known of his learning Bible history 
 from his mother with the aid of " blue Dutch tiles 
 in the chimney-place." Losing both parents 
 before he had well entered his fourteenth year, he 
 fell into the hands of a well-meaning but incom- 
 petent guardian, who sacrificed his property in 
 foolish speculations. In Samuel Clark (or Clarke) 
 of St. Albans, compiler of the " Scripture Pro- 
 mises," he found a second father. 
 
 His uncle Philip had been steward in the 
 Bedford family, and the dowager duchess offered 
 to provide handsomely for his education, with a 
 view to the Anglican ministry. It was on his 
 conscientious rejection of this tempting provision 
 that the boy had carried his young hopes to 
 Calamy. Following the sage advice he got, he 
 now thought of the law ; but before he had closed 
 with an advantageous prospect of study for the 
 bar, a letter from Clark, offering him facilities for 
 a ministerial training, decided his vocation. With 
 Clark he made his first communion ; through the 
 influence of Clark he got a little bursary from the 
 Presbyterian Fund. 
 
 He did not resort to a Presbyterian tutor, 
 though Clark ranked with that denomination; 
 nor to a London Academy, though there were 
 several close at hand. Reasons of health may 
 explain the preference for an Academy in the 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE iSg- 
 
 country; the choice of an Independent Academy- 
 will be accounted for later on . I simply note here 
 that Doddridge's student life began in October, 
 1719. In March of that year the ghost of the 
 parliamentary Presbyterianism had been finally 
 laid at Salters' Hall. There and then the so- 
 called Presbyterians, whether subscribing or non- 
 subscribing, joined with the other denominations 
 in issuing a formal ratification of the absolute in- 
 dependency of all Dissenting congregations. Such 
 vestiges of Presbyterianism as they retained were 
 retained as peculiarities of individual congre- 
 gations. Even Calamy had admitted, as early as- 
 1704, that his Presbyterianism might be fairly 
 described as " a meer Independent scheme." 
 
 The picture of Doddridge as a student is- 
 drawn by his own hand in his most engaging 
 correspondence. We see him robed in his dark 
 blue gown of cheap calimanco, carefully saved and 
 often turned, seated at Kibworth in a study so 
 spacious that, if the lower shelves were but re- 
 moved, the greater part of a hoop-petticoat might 
 at a crush be accommodated within it. We find 
 him describing himself as "an animal that locks- 
 himself up in his closet for ten hours in the day, 
 and romps away the rest of his time in blind- 
 man's buff, or such-like elegant entertainments." 
 There is some truth veiled in the poetry of this 
 overdrawn delineation. He pursued the studies 
 of his vocation with high purpose and a willing: 
 
igo PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 heart. Most young men of devout intent have 
 formed some guiding rules for the apportionment 
 of their time and the discipline of their conduct. 
 Those of young Doddridge, written on the fly- 
 leaf of his New Testament, are simple and 
 straightforward, the self-reminders of a frank and 
 genuine nature. Promising himself to prove 
 " agreeable and useful to all about " him " by a 
 tender, compassionate, and friendly behaviour," 
 he struck the keynote of his life. 
 
 It is characteristic that a chief recreation of his 
 student days was found in playful and quasi- 
 confidential correspondence with ladies : with his 
 " mamma," his " aunt," and other and younger 
 recipients of imaginative titles. Of Doddridge's 
 part in this correspondence, one may say (bor- 
 rowing his own description of the letters of his 
 " dear, sedate, methodical Clio ") that he writes 
 ^' with such unaffected wit, pleasantry, and good 
 nature, that it must be a gloomy animal indeed 
 that can lay them down with a grave face, and 
 ask for something more inspiring." The ease and 
 polish of his address, and Jiis knowledge of 
 human nature, are amazing in a lad under age. 
 His sister's " kind advice " he meets with the 
 expostulation: "Did you ever know me marry 
 foolishly in my life ? " A little later, his first 
 serious passion produces a series of letters to 
 Catherine Freeman, anticipating in the analysis 
 ■of female motive the best efforts of Richardson. 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE i,ji 
 
 At some of his overtures we may smile, but his 
 gentlemanly feeling was perfect, and his purpose 
 sincere. " If a lady could have called me a faith- 
 less lover," he declares, " I should be ashamed 
 to call myself a Christian or a man." When at 
 length he wedded Mercy Maris, his marriage proved 
 a continued romance. He never lost the feelings 
 of a lover, still writing in middle life with all the 
 intensity and fluctuating anxieties of a courtship. 
 His wife was not only fair to see, but, if we view 
 her with her husband's eyes, was " the dearest 
 of all dears, the wisest of all my earthly coun- 
 sellors, and of all my governors the most potent, 
 yet the most gentle and moderate." The im- 
 pression, however, conveyed by her own few 
 letters is that of a well-bred, well-mannered, com- 
 monplace personage, to whom transports were 
 foreign, indeed without very acute feelings, who 
 better knew the meaning of " honour and obey " 
 than that of the preceding vocable. 
 
 Perhaps the depth and tenderness of Dod- 
 dridge's affectionate heart were nowhere more 
 apparent than in the upheaval of his whole 
 nature on the death of his first child, a tiny girl. 
 Some foolish fellow preached at the funeral on 
 " Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd ? " 
 " I hope God knows," wrote Doddridge in his 
 diary, "that I am not angry; but sorrowful He 
 surely allows me to be." The preface to his own 
 sermon on this occasion, while calm and free from 
 
192 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 solicitude, is a singularly honest avowal of pain 
 still snaarting, grief unappeased, the plain dealing 
 of a man who could not but be true to his own 
 feelings. " Formed in such a correspondence to 
 my own relish and temper as to be able to give 
 me a degree of delight, and consequently of dis- 
 tress, which I did not before think it possible I 
 could have received from a little creature who 
 
 had not quite completed her fifth year 
 
 It is comparatively easy ... to speak in the out- 
 ward language of resignation. But it is not so 
 easy to get rid of every repining thought, and to 
 forbear taking it, in some degree at least, un- 
 kindly, that the God whom we love and serve, in 
 whose friendship we have long trusted and 
 rejoiced, should act what, to sense, seems so un- 
 friendly a part; that He should take away a 
 child ; and if a child, that child ; and if that child, 
 at that age ; and if at that age, with this or that 
 particular circumstance; which seems the very 
 contrivance of providence to add double anguish 
 to the wound. In these circumstances . . . 
 cheerfully to subscribe to His will, cordially to 
 approve it as merciful and gracious. . . . This, 
 this is a difficult lesson indeed; a triumph of 
 Christian faith and love, which I fear many of us 
 are yet to learn." 
 
 It is this strength of human emotion that gives 
 health and animation to the religious genius of 
 Doddridge. There was never anything very 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 193 
 
 puritanical about his tone of mind, or his ideal of 
 life ; nor any abrupt severance of his professional 
 character from his wholesome and genial human- 
 ity. The cleric and the man were, in him, not 
 two but one. Why should we not speak of 
 clerical men (I mean, if we can find any) as we 
 speak of medical men ? Doddridge allowed him- 
 self in relaxations proper to his age, and could 
 write gaily of his social amusements, even in- 
 cluding among these, in his early days, a hand of 
 cards ("a chapter or two in the History of the 
 Four Kings ") after a dish of afternoon tea. But 
 his diaries and his letters prove that he wasted no 
 time, that his calling was ever in his thoughts, 
 that his religion was no conventional department 
 of his life. His piety was a devotion of the whole 
 human being to an ideal of consecrated service, 
 perpetually renewed in filial communing with the 
 Lord whom he truly loved, and served with a 
 continually deepening attachment. 
 
 His religious genius is seen at its height in the 
 powerful addresses which make up his volume on 
 the " Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," 
 published (1745) in his forty-third year, and since 
 translated into almost as many languages as the 
 " Pilgrim's Progress." Watts had suggested this 
 work, had framed its plan, and had revised, its 
 earlier sections. But Watts could not have 
 written it. The verve of its language; the 
 pressure and piquancy of its appeal; the power 
 
 o 
 
194 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 of making conscience speak, in piercing tones, 
 the secrets of the heart; the naturalness, the 
 appositeness, the fervour, the pathos with which 
 exhortation soars constantly into the domain of 
 prayer; the prophetic faculty that betimes can 
 even chant the plea of the awakening voice of 
 God; these make the work unique. It is not a 
 treatise to be calmly read; those whom it does 
 not find will quickly drop it from their hands; 
 those whom it captivates will follow it upon their 
 knees. Its aim is to rouse religious feeling into 
 a regenerative force. The practical pith of Dod- 
 dridge's faithful appeal is summed up in these 
 words: — "This must be the language of your 
 very heart before the Lord. But then remember 
 that in consequence thereof it must be the langu- 
 age of your life too . . . the most affectionate 
 transport of the passions, should it be transient 
 and ineffectual, would be but like a blaze of 
 straw, presented instead of incense at His altar." 
 In an earlier publication (1736) he had asked, 
 " What is true religion ? Is it to repeat a creed, 
 or subscribe a confession, or perform a ceremony ? 
 If it be, I am sure religion is much changed from 
 what it was, when the Scriptures were writ ; and 
 the nature of God must be entirely changed too, 
 before such a religion can be acceptable to Him, 
 or before it can have the least value in His sight." 
 While speaking of his religious genius one 
 thinks of Doddridge's hymns. On these I make 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 195 
 
 but one remark. The hymns of Doddridge, 
 which never rise so high nor fall so low as those 
 of Watts, have sometimes, what Watts never 
 achieves, a rare quality of sustained joyousness, 
 as in " Hark ! the glad sound," which sings itself 
 through every verse, through every line, in every 
 tone. It is worth noting, in this connection, that 
 Orton speaks of Doddridge as " a man who had 
 no ear for music." 
 
 In theology Doddridge classed himself at the • 
 outset of his career (1724) as " in all the most 
 important points, a moderate Calvinist " ; and 
 such he remained to the last. He attentively 
 read John Taylor on " Original Sin " (1740), and 
 was by no means shaken by it. He speaks of 
 it as "a vain attempt to prove that impossible, 
 which, in fact, evidently is." 
 
 Calvinism is compatible with \>-arious views of 
 the doctrine of the Trinity ; Calvin himself has 
 not escaped the censure of purists; and it is on 
 this doctrine that Doddridge's theological sound- 
 ness has been chiefly called in question. The 
 period of his student life was one of keen dis- 
 cussion of this topic, following the rupture of 
 Salters' Hall. Many adopted the semi-Arian 
 position of Samuel Clarke, the metaphysician; a 
 few went beyond it. Doddridge admits that he 
 was " wavering . ' ' Some of the proof -texts against 
 Arianism never seemed to him in point. The 
 recollection of his hesitancy always disposed him 
 
196 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 to respect the difficulties, and deal dispassionately 
 with the conclusions, of other minds. His own 
 doctrine tended towards heresy in a direction the 
 opposite of the Arian. It was essentially Sabel- 
 lian, a Trinity of divine aspects; "persons" 
 {frosopa, vizors) as they were called by Sabellius, 
 who introduced this term, into Christian theology. 
 A cruder, pre-Sabellian form of the doctrine, 
 identified historically with the name of Praxeas, 
 and polemically disparaged as Patripassianism, 
 was, according to Peirce, the common creed of 
 the unlearned among Dissenters. There is plenty 
 of footing for it in the hymns of Watts. Dod- 
 dridge held the Sabellian doctrine in its later or 
 post-Sabellian form. This mode of thought, 
 while admitting eternal distinctions in the God- 
 head, denies that they amount to co-ordinate 
 personalities. Its advocates claim to be in good 
 accord with the teaching of St. Hilary and St. 
 Augustine. Wallis's exposition of the Trinity on 
 these lines was left unchallenged by the Oxford 
 decree (5 Nov., 1695) which condemned as " im- 
 pious " the alleged Tritheism of Bingham and 
 Sherlock. 
 
 A Sabellianism of this kind is often accom- 
 panied by a Socinian view of the nature of the 
 Mediator. Doddridge escaped this by borrowing, 
 from Watts a doctrine of the pre-existence of 
 Christ's human soul, which has ever been insepar- 
 ably united to the Godhead. Barling treats this 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 197 
 
 doctrine as a " graft of Arianism "; but its an- 
 cestry is not referable to the Arian school, being 
 of older date and of different complexion. Watts 
 got it from Henry More, the Platonist. In the 
 estimation of Doddridge, this scheme guarded, on 
 the one hand, against the error of reducing Christ, 
 to a mere creature, and on the other, against that 
 of conceiving him as another God, either inferior 
 to or co-ordinate with the Father. Except in his 
 theological lectures, this rationale of his Trini- 
 tarian confession makes no show. In his practical 
 writing, as in his hymns, the mediatorial work of 
 Christ occupies the field. To all who are one with 
 him in embracing this central and cardinal idea, 
 his religious teaching will be acceptable, and will 
 fall into harmony with theological systems 
 diverging from his own on either hand. 
 
 In truth, the details of a technical theology 
 were brought home to Doddridge by no necessity 
 of his own mind; and, perhaps, had it not 
 become part of his duty to act as an exponent of 
 systematic theology to others, he would have 
 himself lost interest in this department of study. 
 Practically the theological text-book which was 
 always in his hands, which formed his habitual 
 phraseology and inspired his living thought, was 
 the Bible. The Bible to him was the New Testa- 
 ment. I do not mean that he discarded the Old 
 Testament, but that he read it as a part of the 
 New. To him its theme from end to end was the 
 
198 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 Christian salvation. There is no evidence that 
 he anywhere detected in it a failure of the 
 evangelical spirit, though, of course, there were 
 degrees in the completeness with which that spirit 
 was apprehended by those whom the Biblical 
 writers from time to time addressed. Watts, in 
 his paraphrases of the Psalms, thought it neces- 
 sary, as he says, to make David " speak like a 
 Christian." I do not know where there is in 
 Doddridge any similar confession of the discovery 
 of a jarring note, a felt discord between successive 
 strata of revelation. He brought the harmonizing 
 element with him in the evangelical fullness of his 
 own spirit. 
 
 We are using the language of very thoughtless 
 ingratitude when we permit ourselves to speak of 
 the eighteenth century as a period of religious 
 stagnation. It was not an age which readily 
 responded to an enthusiasm, or suffered itself to 
 be led by. a sentiment ; it was an age of strong and 
 resolute thinking. It was not an age of fluent 
 preachers ; but why ? Because the preachers were 
 not allowed to take anything for granted. 
 Christianity was put upon its trial; everything 
 was brought to the test of fact ; everything was 
 examined with full use of all the resources of 
 reason. Bishop Butler told Wesley (1739) it was 
 " a horrid thing, a very horrid thing " to pretend 
 to " gifts of the Holy Ghost " ; and advised him, 
 " You have no business here, you are not €om- 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 199 
 
 missioned to preach in this diocese." Anglicans ' 
 were not alone in failing to comprehend Wesley, 
 or to estimate the value of those religious forces 
 of which Methodism was the instrument in the 
 hand of God. Doddridge was an exception, but 
 his goodwUl to the Methodists brought down upon 
 him the indignant remonstrances of his London 
 friends. These good people honestly held that 
 to encourage Whitefield was to play into the 
 hands of infidelity, that the enthusiasts were 
 simply making fresh ground for the deists. They 
 pointed triumphantly to the fact that Henry 
 Dodwell's anonymous brochure, " Christianity 
 not founded on Argument " (1742) was so well 
 calculated to serve the interests either of enthusi- 
 asm or of deism indifferently, that men did not 
 know to which school it should be assigned, and 
 remained in doubt as to the quarter from which 
 it had been launched. 
 
 An age of religious stagnation is an age when 
 religion ceases to provide matter for the exercise 
 of independent thought, when tradition and 
 superstition send the mind to sleep. In the 
 eighteenth century, all who thought at all, 
 applied a keen and alert intelligence to religious 
 matters, with the robust mtention of distinguish- 
 ing realities from shams. Certainly it was an 
 age of controversy within Christianity, rather 
 than of conquests by Christianity, though these 
 also were not wanting. Yet we must not forget 
 
200 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 that we owe to it, through Watts, the modem 
 Christian hymn, and through Doddridge, as we 
 shall see, the forecast of the modern Christian 
 mission. 
 
 Near the close of the seventeenth century (1689) 
 the Nonconformists had accepted the Anglican 
 articles as their authorized doctrinal standard of 
 public toleration. Hence upon Dissent there 
 lay, till 1779, the dead-weight of a Toleration Act 
 which was practically another Act of Uniformity. 
 This was a serious bar to the bolder enterprises of 
 religious thinking within the recognised bounds 
 of Nonconformity. To mark the progress of 
 ideas by the proclamation of new results was 
 penal. It is said that the example of the early 
 Quakers might have been followed, in defying the 
 law, and extorting privilege by persistent and 
 invincible efforts of self-assertion. I have often 
 thought that it might ; I have sometimes wonder- 
 ed that it was not. The truth is, that this course 
 would have been impossible to the ordinary 
 Dissenter. He looked to Parliamentary law as 
 to a divine institution. It was the very founda- 
 tion of the State, the only basis of the throne. 
 He believed in its omnipotence. Already it had 
 done much for him, and could do more. A 
 martyrdom of restriction and repression, mean- 
 while, he was prepared to endure; but to come 
 into open and avowed conflict with the safeguard 
 of society would have appeared to him suicidal, 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 201 
 
 and a flying in the face of Providence. So he 
 bided his time and guarded his course; but his 
 mind was wakeful and his thought progressive. 
 
 The stream of learning and the currents of 
 thinking were kept in movement within his 
 borders by the action of the Dissenting Academies ; 
 institutions, to the history and scope of which a 
 very insufficient attention has been directed, 
 considering their national and permanent im- 
 portance. The Dissenting Academy was the 
 Nonconformist University, the university of 
 private enterprise. Richard Frankland has the 
 honour of being the first to set on foot (1670) in 
 the North an institution for "university learn- 
 ing." The succession of Academies descending 
 from Frankland has its lineal heir in Manchester 
 College. Frankland's, however, was not a school 
 for theology alone, nor were his first pupils either 
 designed for the ministry, or drawn only from the 
 ranks of Dissent. He represented the Crom- 
 wellian tradition of a Durham University, and he 
 pursued in his northern refuges the methods of 
 his Cambridge training. Frankland's institution 
 set the model for all the older Academies whose 
 Tutors ranged themselves under the Presbyterian 
 name. Philosophy and theology formed the 
 solid nucleus of study; philology, science. 
 Biblical apparatus were added in varying pro- 
 portions, according to the aptitudes and particular 
 .tastes of individual Tutors. It was not uncom- 
 
202 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 mon for a studious youth to keep terms in 
 succession at two or three of these Academies, 
 selecting those whose departmental advantages 
 promised to reward his curiosity on specific topics. 
 Seeker, for example, was at three Academies, one 
 in the North, one in the West, and one in London. 
 He was also at Paris, and at Leiden to boot,, 
 before he went to Oxford. Perhaps all this was- 
 overdoing it a little . For Tom Seeker in his young 
 days had a merry wit. He was not born to be the 
 block for a bishop's wig, and to crown a Lord's 
 anointed such as George the Third-rate. 
 
 The first of Seeker's many alma matres was the 
 Academy of Timothy JoUie at Attercliffe. Now 
 JoUie's Academy, though an offshoot from Frank- 
 land's, was an example of the Independent 
 Academy, as contrasted with those of the Pres- 
 byterian type. How did these types differ ? To 
 fancy that the Independents cared less for learn- 
 ing than the Presbyterians did, or were excelled 
 by them in point of attainment, is to fall into a 
 ludicrous mistake. The pursuit of learning was 
 equal in these bodies ; but the Independents, 
 numerically the smaller of the two, can claim a 
 larger proportion of scholars distinguished by 
 great achievements. . In illustration of this point, 
 it may suffice to recall the " Vindiciae Fratrum 
 Dissidentium " (1710), by James Peirce; the 
 " Credibility of the Gospel History " (1727-57), by 
 Nathaniel Lardner; the "History of the Puri- 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 203 
 
 tans " (1732-38), by Daniel Neal. Again, there 
 was no denominational difference in the matter 
 of an entrance subscription to the Academies, so 
 long as these institutions were regulated by pri- 
 vate enterprise. Subscription on entrance was 
 later introduced into some Academies founded 
 and managed by societies. The Presbyterian 
 Academies had their origin in private enterprise 
 till 1754, when Warrington Academy was pro- 
 jected (opened 1757). The London Independents 
 had founded the King's Head Society, for 
 establishing an Academy, in 1730. When sub- 
 scription began in it I do not know, perhaps in 
 1730, certainly not later than 1744- This was the 
 Academy which Priestley would not enter because 
 of its subscription. Its Divinity tutor, Zephaniah 
 Marryatt, was a Presbyterian, while the Academy 
 to which Priestley repaired on account of its non- 
 gubscription had an Independent divinity tutor, 
 Caleb Ashworth, and was managed by Inde- 
 pendent trustees. 
 
 Not less learned than the Presbyterians, the 
 Independents were, however, less conventional; 
 hence, perhaps, sometimes more free. They were 
 readier for extremes on either hand than was con- 
 sonant with the steadfast Presbyterian middle 
 way. They showed this in their Church admin- 
 istration, and they showed it in their Academies. 
 
 Thus, among teachers of philosophy, Thomas 
 Rowe, the London Independent, was the first 
 
204 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 to desert the traditional text-books, introducing 
 his pupils, about 1680, to what was known as 
 ^'free philosophy." Rowe was a Cartesian at a 
 time when the Aristotelic philosophy was domin- 
 ant in the older schools of learning ; and while in 
 physics he adhered to Descartes against the rising 
 influence of Newton, in mental science he became 
 one of the earliest exponents of Locke. Watts, 
 Neal, Hunt, Grove were among his pupils. None 
 were sent to him from the Presbyterian Fund. 
 
 On the other hand, at Attercliffe, JoUie, in 
 1689, put under a ban " the mathematics," a 
 term of wide significance then, on the supposition 
 that this class of acquirement tended to make 
 sceptics. The prohibition acted as usual : " Don't 
 read this." There was much private study of the 
 mathematics among JoUie's young men, one of 
 whom ultiniately held a mathematical chair at 
 Cambridge. Whether from this spur of revolt, 
 or from whatever reason, I believe it may be ad- 
 mitted that JoUie turned out men more prominent 
 in the gifts of leadership than Frankland, his 
 master, had done. Among Frankland's pupils, I 
 suppose the best known name is that of William 
 Tong, the biographer of Matthew Henry. JoUie's 
 much shorter list includes such types as Thomas 
 Bradbury, the zealot of orthodoxy, leader of the 
 subscribers at Salters' Hall, and Benjamin 
 Grosvenor, equally a zealot, though a Calvinist, 
 for freedom in religious opinion. 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 205. 
 
 Again, Jeremiah Jones, of Nailsworth, was an 
 Independent tutor; and Jones' posthumous 
 " Method of settling the Canonical Authority of 
 the New Testament " (1726), a work of original 
 plan, and, for its day, exhaustive research, was 
 certainly the most valuable outcome of the tutorial 
 work of the old Academies, or, indeed, of English 
 contemporary scholarship. It was several times 
 reprinted at the Clarendon Press. Next to it in 
 permanent importance among the fruits of the 
 erudition of the old Dissenting lecture-room may 
 be ranked the posthumous " Jewish Antiquities " 
 (1766) of David Jennings, a London Independ- 
 ent tutor. 
 
 Moreover, it was a London Independent 
 Academy which furnished the solitary instance of 
 a theological chair filled by a layman, John 
 Eames, F.R.S., whom Watts considered the most 
 learned man he knew, and whose reputation was 
 made in natural science, Sir Isaac Newton being^ 
 his patron and friend. The appointment (made 
 by the Congregational Fund in 1734) was as- 
 successful as it was unprecedented; but the 
 Presbyterian Fund sent no bursars to this Acad- 
 emy while Eames filled the Divinity chair. 
 
 I mention these facts, in order to bring out, 
 what I think some have missed, the character of 
 variety, fresh force and unconventionality, which 
 distinguished the Independent Academies from 
 their more staid competitors in the Presbyteriara 
 
2o6 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 Dissent. Doddridge, you remember, entered as 
 a pupil in the Independent Academy at Kibworth. 
 His tutor was John Jennings (d. 1723), son of an 
 Ejected minister, elder brother of David Jennings 
 above mentioned, and grandfather of Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld. In theology Jennings was an eclectic. 
 " He encourages," writes Doddridge, while at his 
 Academy, " the greatest freedom of inquiry, and 
 always inculcates it, as a law, that the Scriptures 
 are the only genuine standard of faith." How 
 did this work out ? Doddridge writes again : "I 
 have almost finished Mr. Jennings' system of 
 divinity, and the better I am acquainted with it, 
 the more I admire it. He does not entirely accord 
 with the system of any particular body of men, 
 but is sometimes a Calvinist, sometimes a Re- 
 monstrant, sometimes a Baxterian, sometimes a 
 Socinian, as truth and evidence determine him. 
 He furnishes us with all kinds of authors upon 
 every subject, without advising us to skip over 
 the heretical passages for fear of infection. It is 
 evidently his main care to inspire us with senti- 
 ments of Catholicism." 
 
 The four years' plan of studies under Jennings 
 was very comprehensive. Mathematics suffered 
 no exclusion; Jennings was himself an .elegant 
 mathematician. His pupils learned French, this 
 being somewhat of a rarity; and they learned it 
 " without regarding the pronunciation, with 
 which Mr. Jennings " was " not acquainted." 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 207 
 
 They learned anatomy, a subject which Eames, I 
 think, had been the first to add to his curriculum. 
 They learned architecture; probably that they 
 might be able to plan additions to their meeting- 
 houses. For some occult reason they also learned 
 heraldry, an accomplishment cultivated in other 
 Independent Academies. These were some of the 
 ornaments of a solid course of philology, philo- 
 sophy, physical science and divinity. There is a 
 very curious little manual, published (1721) by 
 Jennings as a conspectus of lectures in certain 
 departments. It begins with vocal music, and 
 winds up with a philosophical alphabet. Jen- 
 nings compiled his own logic, which, though 
 written in Latin, is founded on Locke. His meta- 
 physical compend is scholastic to a fault. It 
 still contains (it is true, in a recreative appendix) 
 such refreshing problems as the following: "Si 
 bucephaleitas separaretur ab equinitate, , utri 
 istorum adhaerebit hinnibilitas ? " One exceed- 
 ingly important branch of study came off badly in 
 all the old Academies. While general history, and 
 especially chronology, received some attention, it 
 is not a little surprising that both constitutional 
 history and ecclesiastical history were ignored. 
 Priestley was the first to call attention to these 
 serious defects, and to introduce the study of 
 constitutional history, on his own motion, at 
 Warrington in 1761 . His lectures when published 
 (1788) were recommended at Cambridge by John 
 
2o8 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 S5anonds, professor of modern history. It does 
 not appear that the curriculum included any 
 special provision for the teaching of ecclesiastical 
 history till the appointment of John James Tayler 
 at Manchester in 1840; nor was there any 
 attention paid to the history of doctrine. 
 
 It had been felt for some time that the sudden 
 and early death (1723) of Jennings had created a 
 serious void in the list of Dissenting institutions 
 for theological training. The need existed for an 
 Academy in the Midlands, at once liberal in tone 
 and evangelical in spirit. There was a Presby- 
 terian Academy in the Midlands, that of Ebenezer 
 Latham, at Findern, and this at first was left to 
 supply the vacancy; but in the opinion of 
 Doddridge's London correspondents Latham, who 
 practised also as doctor of medicine, was not an 
 ef&cient tutor. Doddridge's detailed account of 
 Jennings' plan of studies brought him overtures 
 which led to his becoming Jennings' successor 
 after an interval of six years. Isaac Watts de- 
 clared that the reopening of the Academy might 
 well be undertaken by one who had " so admir- 
 ably described "it. The suggestion was followed 
 up by the unanimous approval of a meeting of 
 ministers at Lutterworth. At this time Dod- 
 dridge, whose residence was at Market Har- 
 borough, had been for six years minister at Kib- 
 worth, on a stipend of £36, piled up to that 
 enormous sum by help from eleemosynary funds. 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 209 
 
 since the Kibworth Independents were unable to 
 reach the modest figure of £30. His Academy had 
 hardly been begun (July, 1729), when he removed 
 (December, 1729) to the more important congre- 
 gation at Northampton, where for twenty-one 
 years he discharged the duties of Pastor and 
 Tutor. 
 
 To Doddridge's Academy some reference has 
 already been made above, in the section on Early 
 Nonconformity and Education. Here it may be 
 well to pursue the topic in more detail. His first 
 idea was to take only divinity students into his 
 Academy. It was David Jennings, younger 
 brother of John, who strongly advised him to 
 admit lay pupils also. This he did in the fourth 
 year of his enterprise. Almost immediately he 
 was called upon by the ecclesiastical authorities 
 to take out a licence in the bishop's court. He 
 refused to do this, and carried the case to West- 
 minster Hall. It went in his favour, but an 
 appeal would probably have been decided against 
 him on a technicality, had not George II in- 
 timated his displeasure at the revival of such 
 prosecutions. 
 
 Perhaps it may be interesting to learn the cost 
 of an education at Doddridge's Academy. The 
 figures cannot be compared with modern estimates 
 without an appreciable allowance for subsequent 
 decrease in the value of money. Doddridge's 
 charges were somewhat above the average. Every 
 
210 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 student had to pay, on entrance, a guinea for his 
 rooiii, another towards the naaintenance of the 
 library, a third for the wear and tear of scientific 
 apparatus. His tuition cost him four pounds a 
 year, his board sixteen. He had to find his own 
 candles, settle his laundry bill, and provide a pair 
 of sheets. What he did while this pair was in 
 washing, is not stated. The fixed charges, then, 
 were : entry money, three guineas ; annual dues, 
 twenty pounds for four years. If he were 
 a bursar on any of the denominational Funds, 
 Presbyterian or Congregational, his board was 
 reduced to fourteen pounds, and the library and 
 laboratory charges were halved, bringing his en- 
 trance money to two guineas, and his annual 
 dues to eighteen pounds. We may then gather 
 this that Doddridge expected to make a profit of 
 six pounds a year on ordinary students, four poimds 
 on bursars. His actual gains were less, for he 
 kept a generous table, being a hospitable enter- 
 tainer of frequent visitors, often of high station. 
 The prudent Orton was of opinion that his 
 students lived too well. 
 
 A copy exists of the unpublished rules and 
 regulations of Doddridge's Academy, with the 
 signatures appended of students, who promised 
 faithfully to obey them. They are very minute ; 
 and again citing Orton's cahdid criticism, the 
 testimony is that they were largely a dead letter 
 in practice. Doddridge's numerous engagements 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 211 
 
 threw the work of tuition somewhat out of gear as 
 regards times. It now and then occurred (though 
 the Tutor rose at five) that what should have been 
 the Academy work of the morning did not come on 
 till late in the day. It is right to specify these 
 drawbacks; on the other hand, the atmosphere 
 of the house must have been thoroughly good and 
 wholesome. Its tone was high. Doddridge's 
 personal influence with his pupils was individually 
 felt. They all loved him. Few tutors had so 
 little occasion to lament the failure of moral pro- 
 mise in their students. He kept them closely 
 under his eye, and never allowed them to forget 
 their vocation. David Jennings was, though a 
 non-subscriber, a stickler for certain points of doc- 
 trine, and expelled from his London Academy 
 students of whose theological turn he did not 
 approve. It is not recorded that Doddridge ever 
 did this; but if, as happened once or twice, he 
 found reason to think the religious spirit was 
 wanting, then he did not hesitate to tell such 
 student that the Academy was no place for him. 
 In regard to methods of teaching, Doddridge, 
 as might be expected, took John Jennings as his 
 model. He avowedly made Jennings' lectures 
 in philosophy and theology the basis of his own. 
 For the choice of topics, the structural arrange- 
 ment, the geometrical plan (axioms, problems, 
 theorems, corollaries, and so forth), the style of 
 treatment, he was indebted in the first instance 
 
212 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 to Jennings. In using and adapting Jennings' 
 outlines he introduced several new features. 
 
 Up to the time of Doddridge, the lectures on 
 divinity, philosophy, science, in all Dissenting 
 Academies had been delivered in Latin. In 
 many cases Latin, except during certain privi- 
 leged hours, was the current language of all 
 academical business. Such customs, retained 
 from the older universities, had outlived their 
 usefulness. Doddridge began by abolishing what 
 remained of them. He was the first of theological 
 Tutors to lecture in English. It was a great 
 innovation. It meant much more than a wel- 
 come relief from a tiresome linguistic strain. 
 Perhaps we can hardly estimate how much it 
 signified, both in the way of renouncing ancient 
 prejudice and in opening new views of theological 
 study, under the guidance of fresh text-books. 
 Consequent on the dropping of Latin as the teach- 
 ing medium would follow the comparative neglect 
 of the older books of reference, venerable treatises 
 of foreign divinity, framed in the ancient tongue > 
 Lectures in English would naturally be illustrated, 
 from English sources, at once more easily and. 
 rapidly consulted, and more modern in then- 
 range of thought, in their reach of sentiment.. 
 Theology, released from the trammels of unvary- 
 ing technical terms, could take on new forms of 
 expression; a living language is the only right 
 vehicle for living thoughts. I think I love the 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 213 
 
 Latin language as much as any man can. For 
 many important purposes I prefer it to any other, 
 and deeply regret its disuse as the common 
 tongue of European learning. I fully recognize 
 that in certain departments it is, as it has been 
 called, the sacred speech of Christendom. These 
 are departments in which it has been sponta- 
 neously used by men to whom it was the fit dis- 
 covery of their thoughts, the natural utterance of 
 their hearts. In theological terminology it does 
 not shine at its best. To make it the vehicle of 
 a native English theology is a strangely artificial 
 process; it is to subject the thinking mind to an 
 unnatural restraint. Richard Baxter produced a 
 system of theology in a Latin quarto (1681); 
 "whatever else this tour de force may be, it is not 
 Baxter. 
 
 Therefore, I greatly honour Doddridge as the 
 author of that salutary revolution, which for the 
 first time invited the learners in theology to thinlc 
 out its problems during their student years, in 
 their own tongue. Looking at his theological 
 lectures, I am struck with the vast wealth of 
 illustration, poured upon all topics, from the 
 living literature of his own timei True that his 
 authorities are ancient now; cramped, crusted, 
 and mouldy, we may deem some of them to be. 
 They were fresh then; a new modern world of 
 varied and animated thinking, presented for the 
 scrutiny and the stimulus of young and eager 
 
214 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 souls. It was from a stray reference to Hartley, 
 in Doddridge's published lectures, that Priestley 
 gained his introduction to the writer who formed 
 his mind in principles of philosophic analysis. 
 
 This is not all. Doddridge was the founder of 
 what may be called, though not in quite the 
 modern sense, a science of comparative theology. 
 What was the old method of teaching any given 
 doctrine of divinity ? The lecturer began by 
 defining the yiew of his church, or his school, mak- 
 ing it his own. This, he would say, is the right 
 doctrine. Then came some account of other 
 opinions on the topic. These, he would say, are 
 the heresies and aberrations that prevail in out- 
 side circles. He would arrange them according 
 to. the degree of their approach to, or divergence 
 from, the doctrine already propounded .as the 
 truth. His arguments would all be directed to 
 prove this, to disprove those. Such is the manner 
 of the vast majority of text-books. Doddridge 
 took another plan. He began by laying before 
 his pupils, with all the fairness of which he was 
 master, the various views which had been enter- 
 tained upon the point, and the arguments ad- 
 duced in their favour. These he proceeded to 
 compare, measuring them one against another, 
 weighing their merits, trying them by Scripture, 
 by reason, by each other, with the object, if 
 possible, of eliciting the truth; which might at 
 last be thought to coincide exactly with no one 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 215 
 
 of the systems thus brought into competitive 
 examination. What the master attempted, the 
 pupils were urged in like manner to endeavour 
 for themselves; the Tutor's business being to 
 see that they were in possession, as far as might 
 be, of the materials for a judgment; among the 
 most important of those materials being an 
 intelligent knowledge and appreciation of the 
 thoughts of others. 
 
 Another new feature of Doddridge's lecture- 
 room was the insistence upon the employment 
 of shorthand. Every student had to learn 
 shorthand, and had to copy out every lecture 
 in shorthand. The point was not that he was to 
 try to take a lecture down while listening to it, an 
 impossible feat. He listened to it, and thus took 
 it in. He then transcribed it from the Tutor's 
 manuscript (itself in shorthand), and so had it by 
 him for reference and for preservation. Not only 
 did he carry away a complete set of manuals of 
 his studies, vastly superior in fullness of treat- 
 ment to Jennings' breviate, but he possessed, to 
 boot, a rich magazine of references to books, as a 
 guide for his future reading. Should any un- 
 lucky layman, intent upon penetrating to his 
 minister's sources, chance to pick up a volume of 
 the series of note-books, his inquisitiveness would 
 be stopped by the hieroglyphics. 
 
 Doddridge was one of the first to perceive the 
 full advantages of shorthand to the student in the 
 
2i6 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 saving of time and economy of writing material. 
 The old Puritans had made a plentiful use of it 
 for taking abstracts of sermons; they had few 
 other applications for it, and though, of course, it 
 found its way into earlier Academies, there was 
 no systematic employment of it. Doddridge, as 
 his basis, took Jeremy Rich's shorthand, invented 
 or rather adapted in 1659. It may have been 
 the best available to him in his schoolboy days, 
 but it was a cumbrous and arbitrary system, 
 much inferior to Byrom's (1720), which Wesley 
 and Hartley adopted. Priestley, by the way, 
 used Annet's. Doddridge made improvements 
 on Rich, not so much in the direction of speed as 
 in saving of space and increase of legibility. His 
 shorthand found its way into other Academies 
 as his pupils advanced to the dignity of Tutors. 
 It is not yet obsolete. The days are not forgotten 
 when it was recommended and taught by Dr. 
 Martineau, who used it for all his lectures and 
 sermons. 
 
 Doddridge made a practice of exercising his 
 students in village preaching. As a system this 
 was somewhat new. It was so pursued as to 
 constitute Northampton a centre of missionary 
 and evangelizing effort, quietly but effectively 
 pursued, under the Tutor's inspection and with 
 his active aid and co-operation. 
 
 A considerable proportion of his students 
 found their first settlements in the Midland dis- 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 217 
 
 trict ; thus the productive value of the Academy 
 was locally felt. By no means did he thus 
 render service to the Independent denomination 
 only. A letter (1750) from John Barker, of 
 Hackney, thus expresses the obligation under 
 which Doddridge laid the Dissenting cause 
 generally: "Had not you supplied our Presby- 
 terian churches for many years, what would have 
 become of us ? Nay, it is certain that what is 
 ■called the Presbyterian interest in England has 
 been supported by Independent Tutors." This 
 statement is fully confirmed by inspection of the 
 list of ministers in congregations of Presbyterian 
 name, especially in the Midlands and the North. 
 Many of the most trusted leaders of the old 
 Liberal Dissent were men whose minds were 
 moulded by Doddridge. Their character was 
 not that of controversial preachers; their tone 
 was evangelical, their influence suasive; their 
 Liberalism was undemonstrative, but steady and 
 sure. They did much to build a bridge of practical 
 ■Christianity over which the transit from an older 
 to a newer type of doctrinal ideas was effected 
 with a minimum of agitation. For their sym- 
 pathies were broad enough to keep them in touch 
 with the generation that was passing away, and 
 at the same time to give them the confidence of 
 the younger generation. 
 
 Of such men. Job Orton (1717-1783) was a pro- 
 minent example. Orton retired from pulpit 
 
2i8 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 work with the ailments of a valetudinarian, at an 
 age which (but for an early addiction to an opium 
 habit) should have been his prime. Yet in his 
 seclusion at Kidderminster he held an advisory- 
 correspondence with Dissenters of every class 
 except, perhaps, the irregulars of Methodism, for 
 whom he had no love. His favourite reading lay 
 in the works of the elder Puritans, his tastes were 
 tame, his ideas of ministerial deportment were, 
 perhaps, timid and strait-laced. In religion he 
 was for the old-fashioned Gospel, and all novelties 
 were unpleasing to him. Yet his own orthodoxy 
 was of a carefully attenuated sort. It is charac- 
 teristic of his generous welcome for the consci- 
 entious convictions of others, that (as we shall 
 see) he could write with unstinted admiration of 
 Lindsey's sacrifices on behalf of principle, ex- 
 pressing nothing but good wishes for the success 
 of a chapel opened to promote doctrines in many 
 respects alien to his most cherished positions in 
 philosophy and theology. 
 
 Among Doddridge's pupils some few were from 
 the first intended for the Anglican ministry, and 
 one, Thomas Gillespie, became the founder of a 
 secession from the Scottish kirk in the interests 
 of ecclesiastical freedom. An unusual number 
 of his students became Tutors themselves; one 
 was promoted to an Edinburgh chair. One of 
 his pupils, never a tutor (yet a maker of tutors, 
 being a Coward trustee), exercised a decisive 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 219 
 
 influence on theological progress. This was 
 Hugh Farmer (1714-1787), the Independent. 
 Farmer's preaching is curiously described by 
 Kippis as having a kind of " swell " in it, which 
 seemed the prelude to the enunciation of very 
 high doctrine, but it never reached that point. 
 Farmer's " Dissertation on Miracles " (1771), to 
 which those on the Temptation (1761) and the 
 Demoniacs (1775) are subsidiary, is an epoch- 
 making book. Its aim is to vindicate the un- 
 shared sovranty of God. He disallows the 
 agency in the physical universe of any invisible 
 power save One, dismissing as superstition the 
 alleged physical operations either of evil spirits 
 at war with God, or of angelic beings his dele- 
 gates. Those of his readers who were convinced 
 by his premises were not slow to advance beyond 
 his conclusions ; soon denying the very existence 
 of invisible beings who had no work to do in the 
 visible world. In the long run his jealous rever- 
 ence for the unbroken course of nature was more 
 effective than his arguments for the production of 
 " new phsenomena," designed to reduce the para- 
 lysing impression of the conception of fixed law. 
 Farmer's treatise at once became a text-book 
 with the Rational Dissenters; its leading prin- 
 ciples had an enduring effect in clearing up, to 
 those who accepted them, the full meaning of the 
 Unity of God, and the far-reaching significance of 
 the undivided nature of his sway. 
 
220 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 The successor to Doddridge's Academy was 
 that at Daventry, of which, in its early days, 
 Priestley has given us a most graphic and in- 
 structive account, drawn from the memories of 
 his own experience. At Northampton Doddridge 
 always kept an absolutely free hand. At Dav- 
 entry the appointments were made and the man- 
 agement was regulated under the supervision of 
 the Coward Trustees, a small body of Independent 
 ministers and la5maen. Still, the spirit of Dod- 
 dridge remained the real regulating influence. 
 The tutors were two, of whom Caleb Ashworth, 
 the head, took on all questions a conservative 
 position, while Samuel Clark, the junior, held the 
 opposite side. And these two worked quite 
 harmoniously together. Nay, they did what is, 
 perhaps, a difficult thing for Tutors to do. They 
 encouraged, in free intercourse with their pupils, 
 the canvassing of the very points on which the 
 Tutors differed; "a discipline," says Huxley, 
 " which, admirable as it may be from a purely 
 scientific point of view, would seem to be calcu- 
 lated to make acute rather than sound divines." 
 
 Now it is instructive to note that both these 
 men were pupils of Doddridge, by him selected 
 for tutorial office. Clark was his assistant. 
 Ashworth was nominated, in Doddridge's will, as 
 his own successor. These, then, were the chosen 
 trustees of Doddridge's academic methods. It is 
 clear that he made provision, for a future ot 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 22 r 
 
 libieral management and progressive teaching. Sa 
 indeed it proved. The history of Daventry 
 Academy culminated in the divinity tutorship of 
 Thomas Belsham, who, by following Doddridge's 
 comparative method of studying the problems of 
 theology, was brought to the point of identifying 
 himself (1789) with the rising movement of Unit- 
 arianism under Lindsey. Removing to Hackney 
 College he had a pupil there in Charles Well- 
 beloved, the first divinity Tutor at Manchester 
 College who advanced beyond Arian lines. It is- 
 worth remembering that as at Warrington 
 Academy, in the person of Aikin, so at Man- 
 chester College, York, in the person of Well- 
 beloved, the lineage of Frankland and the lineage 
 of Doddridge blend. 
 
 The principles on which Doddridge based his 
 academic work were those which guided his whole 
 interpretation of the function of English Dissent. 
 To him, the establishment and maintenance of 
 an Academy was not an end in itself ; it was part 
 of his larger purpose as a religious leader. Very; 
 early in his career as a tutor, Doddridge felt called 
 upon to vindicate the cause of Dissent, and to- 
 define his own position towards it. The occasion 
 was an " Enquiry into the Causes of the Decay of 
 the Dissenting Interest," issued anonymously 
 (1730) in the character of a candid friend among 
 the Dissenting laity by Strickland Gough the 
 younger. This son of a Presbyterian minister,. 
 
222 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 had himself been educated for the Presbyterian 
 ministry, but had not got beyond a licence to 
 preach. Gough's pamphlet was well written and 
 able. His quarrel is chiefly with the ministers of 
 Dissent. He brings against them the not very 
 consistent charges that they humour the pre- 
 judices of their people, and that they " worship 
 God for twenty minutes " and " dictate to men 
 for sixty." In ignorance of their own true 
 principles, they set their faces against free in- 
 quiry, which the Established clergy, in defiance 
 of the terms of their subscription, do much to 
 encourage. The pamphlet was the prelude to its 
 author's conformity, Hoadly admitting him to 
 holy orders. Doddridge published anonymously 
 (1730) his " Free Thoughts " in reply. He agreed 
 with many of Gough's observations, but called 
 attention to a much more important class of 
 causes, and was quite at issue with Gough as 
 regards the remedy. 
 
 Calamy read both pamphlets, in ignorance 
 apparently of their authorship. He deprecates 
 the whole controversy. " If there were any real 
 decays, this way of proceediag was rather likely 
 to increase than abate them." Nevertheless, he 
 does admit that " a real decay of serious religion, 
 both in the 'Church and out of it, was very 
 visible." Calamy's anxiety for the maintenance 
 of the Dissenting cause was predominantly that 
 of the politician. As a political force the Dis- 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 223 
 
 senters were a mainstay of the Hanoverian inter- 
 est, a bulwark against the encroachments of 
 popery and the pretensions of absolutism. To 
 detract from "the considerableness of their body," 
 by representing them as declining in numbers, 
 was, to say the least, " grossly imprudent." He 
 questioned whether there were any such decline 
 on the whole, for if decrease was noticeable in 
 some quarters, advance was manifest in others. 
 This was Doddridge's opinion too. In his neigh- 
 bourhood the number of Dissenters had been 
 greatly augmented within twenty years. The 
 interest of Doddridge in the Dissenting cause was 
 not political. He refers, indeed, to the political 
 influence of Dissent as that which gained con- 
 sideration for it from those who had " no regard 
 at all " for its true principles. His main point is 
 that " there is generally more practical religion 
 to be found " among Dissenters than in the 
 Establishment. He makes the remarkable sug- 
 gestion that " if the Established clergy and the 
 Dissenting ministers . . . were mutually to ex- 
 change their strain of preaching and their manner 
 of living but for one year, it would be the ruin of 
 our cause." With Calamy, he is for maintaining 
 a united phalanx of Nonconformity, not, how- 
 ever, as a political engine, but for the welfare of 
 " practical religion." 
 
 . Gough had noticed the lapse from Dissent of 
 men of social position, polite culture, and lati- 
 
224 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 tudinarian views; and had advised the attempt 
 to cater for this class, and neglect the vulgar. 
 Here Doddridge joins issue with him. He is 
 firm in the conviction that the ministry of Dis- 
 sent, while liberal in its temper, must be evan- 
 gelical in aim ; and must speak with an effective 
 voice to the common people, who form the solid 
 strength of Dissenting congregations. He main- 
 tains that a man of good taste may be a plain and 
 moving preacher, and will then satisfy all those 
 whose interest in his ministrations is a religious 
 one. On the difficult question of a contrariety of 
 sentiment, he holds that division into congre- 
 gations of opposite principles is suicidal. " Bi- 
 gotry," he observes, " may be attacked by sap 
 more successfully than by storm "; and, again, 
 there is such a thing as being "a bigot in de- 
 fence of Catholicism," or, as we say, catholicity. 
 Religion and prudence must go hand in hand. 
 
 Warburton complimented Doddridge's pam- 
 phlet as " a masterpiece, both for the matter and 
 composition." It may certainly be said to ex- 
 hibit high qualities of ecclesiastical statesmanship. 
 To the ideal it sets forth, Doddridge, throughout 
 an influential career, was consistently true. It 
 should be added that, while he was a Dissenter on 
 principle, it was not on a principle of objection 
 to an Establishment. He was a Dissenter simply 
 for the sake of freedom to serve the cause of 
 evangelical religion. Hence he claimed that Dis- 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 225 
 
 sent should not be viewed or treated as schismati- 
 cal; and he urged upon Archbishop Herring, that 
 Dissent ought to be relieved of this stigma, by an 
 authorised interchange of pulpits between the 
 Established and the Tolerated clergy. 
 
 In contending, as he does, for the exercise of 
 all possible forbearance and respect in relations 
 with men of dogmatic temper, Doddridge gives 
 the best proof of the essential catholicity of his 
 own mind; for he had no sympathy with their 
 attitude. He was the first, at any rate among 
 divines, to use the terms " orthodox " and 
 " orthodoxy " ("a certain equivocal word be- 
 ginning with an O ") as labels for a theological 
 spirit which he was far from sharing. On enter- 
 ing the ministry he had qualified under the 
 Toleration Act. To the phrases of the West- 
 minster standards he " was resolved never to 
 subscribe," either actually or virtually; and he 
 sacrificed many tempting opportunities of pro- 
 motion by adhering tenaciously to this resolve. 
 Yet of those whom he styles " the rigidly ortho- 
 dox," while he unfeignedly laments their "un- 
 happy attachment to human phrases, and nicety 
 in controversial points," he nevertheless admires 
 their good qualities, and pardons an " excess of 
 zeal," " artificially . . . infused," yet " innocently 
 . . . retained," and " from a real principle of con- 
 science to God." If he could " put a tolerably 
 good sense on any of their favourite phrases," it 
 
 Q 
 
226 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 would surely, he reasons, argue a " perverseness 
 of temper " to avoid such " merely because they 
 admire " them. It is at least possible to lay 
 aside phrases " offensive to them." " Our hu- 
 man forms are no more necessary than theirs." 
 
 Thus Doddridge made friends with Bradbury, 
 the redoubtable champion of Dissenting sub- 
 scription, and admitted Whitefield to his pulpit, 
 to the disgust (as we have seen) of London sup- 
 porters of his Academy. Thus, too, especially as 
 a young man, and while he was forming his 
 opinions, he used a playful caution in declining 
 to be drawn out prematurely, and committed to 
 a side. In an early letter (1724) to John Mason, 
 he remarks : " You very expressly tell me that 
 orthodoxy requires you to deny the salvability of 
 the heathen ; and then you desire me to send you 
 an abstract of the best arguments I can meet with 
 for the defence of the contrary opinion. What 
 if such a dissertation should fall into the hands of 
 some durus pater or durior frater ? Then am I 
 caught in the very act of Baxterianism ; and by 
 consequence am an Arminian, and therefore an 
 Arian, and therefore, perhaps, a Deist. . . . My 
 good sir, haereticus esse nolo." On the other hand, 
 he recognized the evangelical character of Peirce, 
 whose alleged heresies had given to Bradbury his 
 opportunity of standing forth as the leader of 
 Trinitarian orthodoxy. In the case of a member 
 of his own congregation, admittedly of Arian 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 227 
 
 proclivities, he acknowledged him as "a real 
 Christian" notwithstanding; and declared that 
 he would lose " his place and even his life " rather 
 than exclude such a man from communion. He 
 wrote of Deists without severity, except as their 
 principles or their conduct appeared to him 
 tending to laxness of morals. " Every bene- 
 volent and useful man in society," he says, " I 
 love and honour as such, whether he be or be not 
 a Christian." 
 
 His daughter said of him, " The orthodoxy my 
 father taught his children was charity." He says 
 ■of himself, " I have lately . . . the character of a 
 very orthodox divine ; but to my great mortifica- 
 tion, I hear from another quarter that my ser- 
 mons are all Do ! Do ! Do ! To speak my senti- 
 ments without reserve, I think the one too favour- 
 able and the other too severe." This was when he 
 had got the decalogue painted on the wall of his 
 chapel at Kib worth. His position was not very 
 intelligible to Rational Dissenters, as the Arians 
 then styled themselves. They thought he trim- 
 med. Samuel Bourn, of Birmingham, did not 
 hesitate to tell him so. They mistook his courage- 
 ous liberality for a crypto-heterodoxy. They 
 considered that his true place was with them. 
 To his breadth of view, his perception of a 
 •common evangelical aim underlying differences 
 ■of doctrinal expression and divergences of doc- 
 trinal vision, they were strangers. They very 
 
228 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 much overrated his accord with their distinctive 
 opinions. 
 
 In ecclesiastical polity Doddridge expresses 
 himself (1723) as " moderately inclined " to the 
 Congregational form. Four elders were appointed 
 (1740) in his Northampton church. They were 
 not elders in the Presbyterian sense, having no 
 conduct of affairs. They relieved him of some of 
 his pastoral work, and were, in short, a species of 
 curates, two of them being, indeed, young; 
 ministers. So far as Church government went, he 
 was a Congregational pure and simple, locating 
 all ecclesiastical authority in the assembly of the 
 individual Church. He felt, however, the diffi- 
 culty of the purely Congregational position, in 
 face of the obvious need of securing some good- 
 provision for filling the ranks of the ministry. 
 
 In the view of every evangelical Christian a 
 minister is made a minister by Jesus Christ whose 
 minister he is, and by him only. The differences 
 of Church order arise with the question of vouch- 
 ing for a man's ministerial character and fixing 
 his sphere. Theoretically, in Congregationalism a. 
 man is authenticated and declared to be a 
 minister by the sole act of a congregation, choosing: 
 him as such. Theoretically, he is in consequence 
 authorised as minister in and for that congre- 
 gation alone. Practically, a congregation expects 
 its minister to be regarded not merely as its own 
 particular officer, like its secretary or its treasurer,. 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 229 
 
 but as holding ministerial status in the general 
 ■denomination, and as far as its communion ex- 
 tends. Hence the authentication of ministers is 
 a matter for a wider consensus than that of a 
 particular congregation. 
 
 Peirce of Exeter, who was a Congregational, 
 nevertheless came over to what he termed Presby- 
 terian ordination ; a mistaken term, for he did not 
 propose that ordination should be committed to a 
 presb3rtery, a mixed body of clergy and lay de- 
 puties. He developed into a definite theory 
 the practice pursued by the Baxterian clerical 
 associations, and recognized in the terms of the 
 Happy Union of 1691. He reserved it as the 
 right and privilege of ministers to authenticate 
 the standing of ministers; a right and privilege 
 which any company of ministers might exercise 
 by mutual agreement. He left to congregations 
 the right and privilege of making their own 
 selection out of the number of ministers thus 
 approved. Such, in Peirce's view, was the only 
 regular course, though he admitted that any 
 ministry of proved usefulness was thereby shown- 
 to be valid, however irregular. 
 
 This theory was advanced by Peirce in 1715. 
 The way for its acceptance had been opened by 
 Calamy's treatise of 1704. It replaced the pro- 
 per Presbyterian view among many so-called 
 Presbyterians of the last century. In the judg- 
 ment alike of Presbyterians and of Congregationals 
 
230 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 proper, it placed in the hands of the ministerial 
 class an irresponsible and somewhat dangerous- 
 power. There came a time when it was at any 
 rate imagined that the exercise of this power 
 placed arbitrary restrictions on doctrinal expan- 
 sion; when it was thought that the line was 
 drawn at Arianism by the " Presbyterian hier- 
 archy " ; a contradiction in terms, yet a common 
 phrase, the meaning of " Presbyterian " being 
 lost. The consequence was that ordination, if 
 retained at all, was reduced to a purely congre- 
 gational arrangement. 
 
 Doddridge, without adopting Peirce's high view 
 of the rights of the ministry, nevertheless 
 approved the practice to which it pointed. Dis- 
 claiming any notion of making this practice 
 imperative, he outlined, in 1745, his idea of the 
 wisest course to be pursued. 
 
 Persons intended for the ministry, should, 
 before they begin to preach, be examined as to 
 character and qualification, by three or four 
 ministers. If fit, they are then licensed to act 
 as candidates. 
 
 On being chosen as preacher to a congregation, 
 a minister is not at once ordained; during the 
 interim he fulfils all ministerial duties, short of 
 administration of the sacraments. Arrangement 
 for these is made with neighbouring pastors. 
 
 A minister is not ordained till he has been 
 formally called to be pastor; of this call he 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 23r 
 
 notifies neighbouring pastors, asking their con- 
 currence in his ordination. 
 
 Prior to ordination, he exhibits, if required, his 
 licence and credentials; and gives the ordainers 
 " satisfaction as to his principles," the ordinary 
 way being a written confession of his faith, 
 drawn up by himself. This, ia the opinion of 
 Doddridge, avoids " the indolence of acquiescing, 
 in a general declaration of believing the Christian 
 religion," and " the severity of demanding a 
 subscription to any set of articles." 
 
 At the ordination, he recites this confession, as 
 approved by his ordainers ; and answers questions 
 relating to his sense of the obligations of the 
 pastoral of&ce. 
 
 The actual ordination is by prayer and im- 
 position of hands, and is followed by charge to 
 minister and congregation. 
 
 When his pastoral relation has been thus 
 ratified, it is understood that he has permanently 
 dedicated himself to the ministerial character. 
 In the practice of that age, he is now for the first 
 time distinguished by the appellation of " Rever- 
 end Mr." though of this Doddridge says nothing. 
 
 Such is his plan for the institution of a minister. 
 The removal of a minister rests with the congre- 
 gation alone, in terms of the Salters' Hall 
 agreement. 
 
 There is nothing new in the plan. It is avow- 
 edly a selection from existing usages, and Dod- 
 
232 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 dridge presents it as a sort of harmony of general 
 practice. So long as it prevailed, the old dis- 
 tinctions of a denominational style, Presbyterian 
 and Congregational, were little more than 
 nugatory. Where they had any real meaning 
 they referred, as already hinted, to differences of 
 internal management; the Independents main- 
 taining among themselves the cohesion of auto- 
 nomous church association, while the Presbyter- 
 ians were rather in the position of subscribers to a 
 lectureship, leaving matters of business in the 
 hands of a self-elected body of trustees, or a lay 
 committee of management. The denominational 
 names were revived at a later date, and without 
 much reference to the history of congregations, in 
 the interest of that redistribution into doctrinal 
 parties which Doddridge, we have seen, depre- 
 cated as a suicidal policy. Walter Wilson, the 
 historian of London Dissent, expresses himself in 
 1808 as if the division had already issued in 
 destruction. He writes like the shade of Dod- 
 dridge, seeking in vain to find the old Liberal Dis- 
 sent. " The Presbyterians have either deserted 
 to the world, or sunk under the influence of a luke- 
 warm ministry ; and the Independents have gone 
 over in a body to the Methodists." These, doubt- 
 less, were the very dangers against which the 
 mind of Doddridge was forewarned. Hence it 
 was that he dedicated the continuous aim of his 
 faithful zeal to the work of realizing, as far as 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 233 
 
 possible, the happy dream of the Union of 1691. 
 In some respects Doddridge's public position of 
 influence was unique. It has been said that he 
 ■occupied a mOre distinguished place in the eyes of 
 his countrymen than has been attained by any 
 ■other Nonconformist divine. He did not seek 
 any such prominence, and never came forward as 
 a representative man. All the same, he re- 
 sponded to every call upon his time. His corres- 
 pondence was enormous; he employed no 
 amanuensis ; and he made shorthand copies of all 
 ihe letters he wrote. He speaks of afiswering 
 letters incessantly for a fortnight, and still having 
 106 to deal with. He met on equal terms the 
 leaders of English religion and many of the leaders 
 ■of English society. On all hands his services to 
 religion were acknowledged with genuine admira- 
 tion and gratitude. His diploma in divinity 
 ■(1736) came from the two universities at Aber- 
 •deen. The English universities did not thus 
 honour themselves, but he was welcomed as a 
 visitor, and consulted as a correspondent, by the 
 highest representatives of learning, both at Oxford 
 and Cambridge. The extent to which he was in 
 •confidential communication with Anglican clergy- 
 men of various schools is very remarkable. 
 Wesley sought his advice in the formation of a 
 library for the use of young preachers. Probably 
 no man was more widely read in every depart- 
 ment of religious literature . He furnished Wesley 
 
234 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 with a very detailed list, a sort of catalogue 
 raisonne, drawn up in a very catholic spirit. 
 " You wiU not," he adds, " by any means imagine 
 that I intend to recommend the particular notions 
 of all the writers I here mention; which may, 
 indeed, sufficiently appear from their absolute 
 contrariety to each other in a multitude of 
 instances. But I think that, in order to defend 
 the truth, it is very proper that a young minister 
 should know the chief strength of error." He 
 specially includes works beariag on the critical 
 study of the Scriptures. Evidently he thought 
 that such would be useful reading for Methodists. 
 " For, perhaps," says he, " when young people 
 are accustomed to that attention of thought which 
 sacred criticism requires ... it may prevent those 
 extravagant reveries which have filled the minds 
 of so many, and brought so great dishonour on the 
 work of God." 
 
 His instinct of philanthropy was as strongly 
 marked as his spirit of evangelization. It will 
 not be said of him as has been said, not very 
 justly, of the Quakers that in the eighteenth 
 century they turned from religious to phil- 
 anthropic labours. He developed, as they also 
 did, the philanthropic side of religion, and ex- 
 hibited Christianity as a beneficent spring of 
 endeavours for social amelioration, and for the 
 relief of suffering. He showed this temper in 
 individual cases; at the risk of being called a 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 235 
 
 Jesuit, when he took up the cause of an Irish 
 Catholic. He clothed it in projects, successful in 
 themselves, and influential as leading the way to 
 kindred efforts. From his foster-father, Clark, of 
 St. Albans, he took the idea of a charity school, 
 for teaching and clothing poor boys and girls ; his 
 foundation of this kind at Northampton was the 
 model for others elsewhere. At Northampton, 
 too, he had a main hand in the establishment of a 
 county infirmary. Bishop Maddox at Worcester 
 followed suit, writing to Doddridge for plans and 
 advice. Bishop Seeker wrote from Cuddesdon 
 to Doddridge, congratulating him on the success 
 of the infirmary, expressing his sense of the 
 advantage it would be to have one at Oxford, and 
 the hope he entertained that the Radcliffe trustees 
 when they had finished their library, might em- 
 ploy some part of the residuary funds in this 
 excellent work. Long after Doddridge's death 
 this was done. 
 
 Doddridge's philanthropy engaged itself also 
 in the formation of the first project of foreign 
 missions originated by Dissenters. It ranks as 
 the first, for though it would be wrong to forget 
 that the high theme of missions to the heathen 
 had enlisted the thoughts and stirred the hearts 
 of individual Nonconformists from the time of 
 Baxter, yet there had been no suggestion of con- 
 certed action on the part of Dissenters until Dod- 
 dridge's preface (February ist, 1742) to a sermon 
 
236 PHILIP DODDRIDGE 
 
 on the general revival of religious effort. In this 
 he informed his brethren that at Northampton a 
 regular society had been formed, both for holding 
 religious exercises with a view to excite the 
 missionary spirit, and for collecting contributions 
 in aid of the work. 
 
 It must be owned that this whole project was 
 in advance of the ideas of Doddridge's day. Mis- 
 sions to the heathen were regairded as quixotic, 
 chimerical, almost out of place. The missionary 
 spirit was as yet practically unfelt in dissenting 
 •circles. Doddridge, whose enthusiasm had been 
 kindled by Zinzendorf, was here a pioneer, de- 
 serving all praise for his true perception of the 
 need, and his prompt and wise endeavour. The 
 distinctive thing about his presentation of the 
 missionary idea was that he connected it with the 
 healthy activity of church life. He did not leave 
 it to take its chance as an extraneous luxury of 
 superfluous enthusiasm, but put it in its place as 
 an integral part of that enterprise which is at 
 once the outcome and the stay of Christian zeal. 
 His measure of immediate success amounted, on 
 his own confession, to "a feeble essay." The 
 interest slumbered after his time, to be awakened 
 by louder appeals at a later date. Then his pro- 
 ject was recollected, then his example fired the 
 hearts and strengthened the hands of subsequent 
 workers. 
 
 We must not forget that the comparative 
 
PHILIP DODDRIDGE 237 
 
 shortness of his life (he died at forty-nine) con- 
 spired with the multiplicity of his engagements to- 
 fracture his efforts. True, that in part his was a 
 career of achievements reached and registered. 
 Still more, however, was it a record of great ideas 
 arrested in their course. His family motto suited 
 him well, Dum vivimus, vivamus. He illustrated 
 it in an epigram, pronounced by Dr. Johnson to be- 
 one of the finest in the language: — 
 
 Live, while you live, the epicure would say. 
 And seize the pleasures of the passing day : 
 Live, while you live, the sacred preacher cries, 
 And give to God each moment as it flies. 
 Lord, in my views let both united be, 
 I live in pleasure while I live to Thee. 
 
 7 and 8 August, 1895. 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 AND HIS CHAPEL 
 
Theophilus Lindsey. — Born, 1723 ; Curate at 
 Spital Square Chapel, 1746-51; Rector of Kirby 
 Wiske, 1753-56; Vicar of Piddletown, 1756-63; 
 Vicar of Catterick, 1763-73; Minister of Essex 
 Street Chapel, 1774-93 ; Died, 1808. 
 
VIII 
 
 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 AND HIS CHAPEL 
 
 IN the latter part of the last century there was 
 living, in retirement at Kidderminster, a sage 
 divine of the Doddridge school, in sentiment 
 evangelical, in cast of thought puritanically dis- 
 creet rather than severely orthodox, with none 
 of Doddridge's buoyancy of heart or breadth of 
 endeavour, but gifted by nature with a cautious 
 sagacity, rendering hitn the oracle of the more 
 steady-going section of Liberal Dissent. To 
 prudent Job Orton, the opinions put forward by 
 Priestley and his friends were daring novelties, 
 alike distasteful and distressful for one whose 
 spirit clung to the demure Nonconformity of a 
 staid generation, moderate in all things. Yet 
 when Lindsey, with whom he had corresponded, 
 quitted the Establishment, to give effect to con- 
 victions with which Orton had no sympathy, the 
 pious recluse hailed the new confessor as a " glori- 
 ous character," was delighted to hear that his 
 " chapel was so well filled," and declared to the 
 editor of Calamy that, were he to publish an 
 account of Ejected Ministers, he should be 
 
242 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 *' strongly tempted to insert Mr. Lindsey in the 
 list," though he "brought him in by head and 
 shoulders." Such was the impression, made by a 
 supreme act of conscience, upon a man not easily 
 moved to an enthusiasm. Our task is to trace the 
 steps by which Lindsey was led to the surrender 
 of his preferment, and to define the aims which 
 actuated him in his subsequent career. 
 
 Let it not be imagined that the story of this 
 " most excellent Theophilus " of the modern age 
 will present anything in the nature of what is 
 called " an intellectual treat." When Lord Cran- 
 worth went to receive the Great Seal, in succession 
 to Lord Westbury, her Majesty is said to have 
 welcomed him with the words, " You see, my 
 Lord, how much better it is to be very good than 
 to be very clever." A glance at the portrait of 
 Lindsey, whether we take the front face with the 
 clustering wig, or the profile silhouette, with the 
 protruding underlip and the silk night-cap, is 
 sufficient to moderate our expectations either of 
 genius or of vivacity in the original. It is the 
 visage of a mild man, of rather wooden exterior, 
 who looks as if he had never been in a hurry. 
 " Not stout but calm," so his plain-speaking wife 
 described him, " contented with all things, and 
 fit either to live or die." As a surface estimate 
 of him this is admirable, and there lay beneath the 
 surface a vein of true gold. 
 
 Lindsey was a Cheshire man, of Scottish 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 243 
 
 extract. His mother, a gentlewoman of no 
 iortune, had been brought up in the household of 
 a dowager Countess of Huntingdon; the Earl, 
 her son, whose name was TheophUus, stood god- 
 father to Robert Lindsey's youngest child. This 
 peer is best known in history as the husband of 
 Lady Huntingdon, foundress of the religious con- 
 nexion which perpetuates heir name. It is inter- 
 esting to note, in passing, that not only was 
 Lindsey on intimate terms with that remarkable 
 woman while he remained in the Establishment, 
 but much later, in her old age and his, she wel- 
 comed him at Trevecca, gave him her blessing, 
 and expressed her hope of a meeting with this 
 heretic in a better world. Her son Francis, 
 successor to the earldom, was a libertine and an 
 unbeliever ; yet he too (as we shall see) showed his 
 regard for Lindsey. 
 
 By other members of this family he was pro- 
 vided with an education, and with preferment in 
 the church. His first school was at Rostheme, a 
 name dear to Nonconformists as being the parish 
 of Adam Martindale ; his next at Leeds ; his 
 ooUege was St. John's, Cambridge, where he 
 came out wrangler, and ultimately obtained a 
 fellowship. 
 
 As his university was Cambridge, he was not 
 called upon to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles 
 until his ordination. He then did so, as a matter 
 of course, though some things in them he dis- 
 
244 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 approved, and the requirement of so compre- 
 hensive a subscription from young men, as the 
 condition of ordination, he deemed " a strange 
 unnecessary entanglement." His theological 
 position was orthodox, if a moderate Calvinism 
 deserve that name. In the theology of the 
 Articles he had been brought up, and he did not 
 question that it was substantially the true 
 Christian doctrine, " just as Christ left it at the 
 first, and Calvin found it about 1500 years after- 
 wards," according to the tart remark of Benjamin 
 Hoadly. 
 
 Unquestionably his heart was thoroughly set 
 on the work of the ministry. He took orders at 
 the earliest possible dates, becoming curate-in- 
 charge of the Wheler Chapel (now St. Mary's 
 parish church) in Spital Square. Then for a time 
 he mixed among great people. The Duke of 
 Somerset made him his chaplain, and died in his 
 arms. He gained the acquaintance of Butler, 
 then bishop of Bristol, and furnished him with 
 lives of Romish saints, probably from the 
 Somerset library. The Duke's grandson, the 
 little Lord Warkworth (afterwards Duke ot 
 Northumberland), was his pupil for two years in 
 France, and on his return to England' the North- 
 umberland family gave him a Yorkshire living. 
 He at once betook himself to parochial duty,, 
 though his patrons had intended him to go oa 
 with Warkworth's education as his private tutor 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 245 
 
 at Eton. Yet he certainly did not neglect his 
 own studies, for it was while rector at Kirby 
 Wiske that he became a subscriber to Taylor's 
 Hebrew Concordance. It is in the subscription 
 list to this monumental work that the names of 
 Priestley and Lindsey are first brought into con- 
 junction, the one a pinched Dissenting scholar, 
 struggling on his way to an incorrupt theology in 
 an obscure village of Suffolk, the other a comfort- 
 able Yorkshire clergyman, undisturbed by doubts, 
 and devoting all his powers to the service of a 
 Gospel ministry. 
 
 It was now that he became an intimate friend 
 of Francis Blackburne, rector of Richmond, 
 archdeacon of Cleveland, and prebendary of 
 Bilton. His connection with Blackburne is an 
 important fact in his life, but his first Yorkshire 
 incumbency had a duration of only three years ; 
 and while contact with Blackburne must have 
 been fruitful in stimulus to his mind, it is plain 
 that he did not become imbued with Blackburne's 
 characteristic ideas. It may be as well to say 
 here, as the matter has been misconceived, that 
 he had nothing whatever to do with Blackburne's 
 attack (1752) upon the supposed non-Protestant 
 tone of Butler's primary charge at Durham (1751). 
 This occurred while Lindsey was abroad, and be- 
 fore he knew Blackburne. A year after the 
 voiding of his fellowship, he resigned the rectory 
 of Kirby Wiske to take the vicarage of Piddletown, 
 
246. THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 Dorsetshire, a valuable living in the patronage of 
 the Earl of Huntingdon, who was anxious ta 
 provide for him. 
 
 Now it was in the first years of his Dorsetshire 
 settlement that his mind underwent a theological 
 revolution, the history of which is as obscure as 
 its development was speedy and decisive. He 
 has left us entirely in the dark as to any process 
 of growth in his opinions. Apparently he passed 
 very rapidly, and without intermediate stages, 
 from the belief in the Trinity, which he brought 
 with him out of Yorkshire in 1756, to the tenet 
 of the simple humanity of Jesus Christ, which he 
 had reached by 1758, and from which thereafter 
 he never swerved. He speaks, indeed, of " many 
 doubts " concerning the Trinity having sprung 
 up in his mind " at different times and from 
 various causes"; but he regarded these doubts 
 neither with friendliness nor with apprehension. 
 He felt sure the doctrine must be all right; and 
 till he found himself thrown upon his own 
 resources in the solitude of the Dorsetshire vicar- 
 age, he had not examined his ground. His 
 examination was directed primarily, and almost 
 exclusively, to the Scriptures. He enumerates 
 no books of divinity, orthodox or heterodox, as 
 .having biased his judgment, though he tells us 
 that he found confirmation of his results in state- 
 ments of some of the early Fathers. The writings 
 of Socinus, he distinctly tells us that he had not 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 247 
 
 seen. We may find a clue to a proximate agency 
 of his conversion. When accounting for his con- 
 tinuance in the Church, he quotes an argument of 
 John Wallis, the Oxford mathematician and 
 divine. With characteristic honesty he tells us 
 whence he got the quotation; not directly from 
 Wallis, but from an anonymous tract of which he 
 gives the title. The tract was written by 
 Stephen Nye, and is included in the second 
 volume of the collection of Unitarian Tracts, 
 belonging to the period 1687-97. We may fairly 
 draw the inference that this volume at any rate 
 was in Lindsey's possession at Piddletown, and 
 materially contributed to the process of his change . 
 His main conclusion was one which, as he 
 shaped it, ceased to be a mere point of speculative 
 theology, and bore directly upon the very life of 
 the devotional sentiment. He reached the un- 
 compromising position that religious worship 
 must be rendered to the Father alone. Here is 
 his originality. Almost without an effort he 
 took. a step that landed him in a position which 
 others had approached by slow degrees and had 
 hesitated to occupy. The liberal theology of his 
 day drew its suggestion from Samuel Clarke's 
 " Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity " (1712). Its 
 main character was a latent Arianism, only in 
 comparatively rare instances achieving the dis- 
 tinctness of positive teaching. Two successive 
 archbishops of York, Herring and Hutton, each of 
 
248 THEOPHILUS. LINDSEY 
 
 them raised in turn to the see of Canterbury, held 
 this type of opinion. The Countess of North- 
 umberland writes to Lindsey in 1758 that York- 
 shire is "in an uproar, as they say their former 
 archbishop, the late metropolitan, Hutton, died 
 an Arian. They own they do not know what that 
 is, but are sure it is something that is not the right 
 . religion." To Arianism Lindsey was never 
 drawn; hence he anticipated the movements of 
 contemporary thought in a way which for a man 
 of his uneager temperament is surprising. If we 
 may trust his autobiographical retrospect, and 
 it seems trustworthy, he was a confirmed believer 
 in the pure humanity of our Lord a year before 
 the publication of Lardner on the Logos; three 
 years before the delivery of the famous sermons 
 by John Seddon of Manchester ; nine years before 
 the publication of Paul Cardale's " True 
 Doctrine"; and ten years before Priestley 
 reached his " Socinian " stage. He was ten 
 years older than Priestley; thus they arrived at 
 the same point at the same age, thirty-five. It 
 is true that Lardner had preached the same 
 doctrine in 1747; and Caleb Fleming as early as 
 1740. Their utterances, addressed to tiny con- 
 gregations in obscure London meeting-houses, 
 could hardly have reached the ears of Lindsey, 
 who had hitherto come into no close relations 
 with any class of Nonconformists. There is every 
 reason to believe that he had not then met with 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 249 
 
 the posthumous tract (1750) of Hopton Haynes. 
 It is further to be observed that in his controver- 
 sial writing Lindsey originated among Unitarian 
 thinkers the denial that in Scripture the term 
 God is in any sense applied to Christ. This 
 exegesis, in which at first he stood alone, and in 
 which Belsham, for example, never saw his way 
 to follow him, marks a distinct cleavage of 
 opinion, removing the last bridge between his 
 position and that of the older theologies. 
 
 The primary effect of this complete recasting 
 of his religious attitude was to lead him to con- 
 template withdrawal from the active ministry. 
 He made some overtures for another situation, 
 and received some assurance in accord with his 
 wishes, probably from the Earl of Huntingdon. 
 He found he could not bring himself to the sur- 
 render of the vocation of his life. He excuses 
 himself in a touching picture of his lonely and 
 isolated condition " having no intimate friend to 
 consult or converse with." The " strangeness 
 and singularity " of his proposed course staggered 
 his imagination. He saw no precedent to guide 
 him, and felt what Blackburne had expressed in a 
 letter about this time, an obligation to his calling 
 " prior to all engagements to church modes, and 
 church nonsense in support of them." In an 
 after review of his procedure he reproaches him- 
 self with having yielded to these second thoughts. 
 " The first dictates of conscience, which are 
 
250 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 generally the tightest, are to be attended tO' 
 . . . the plain road of duty and uprightness will 
 always be found," he says, " to lead to the truest 
 good in the end." 
 
 How was he then to make an attempt to square 
 his convictions with his practice ? Two modes of 
 quieting conscience were in vogue with clergymea 
 who felt the increasing pressure of liberal ideas. 
 A considerable section found it impossible to- 
 repeat their subscriptions; thus they debarred 
 themselves from future preferment. Warbur- 
 ton's " Case of Arian Subscription " (1721) had 
 made a deep impression on Clarke and his dis- 
 ciples, who resolved never to subscribe again - 
 This was Blackburne's position; he had long 
 determined that he would not renew his sub- 
 scription " to gain the wealth of the Indies, or the 
 honour and power of a Popedom." A smaller 
 number boldly laid hands on the Prayer Book;. 
 omitting passages of which they disapproved, or 
 altering the phraseology. Clarke had led the 
 way by introducing a modified doxology at the 
 close of the metrical psalms ; but Clarke, though 
 he would have liked to have gone much further,, 
 and actually did revise the Prayer Book in 
 manuscript, yet never ventured to tamper in 
 practice with the text of the services, save by 
 neglecting the Athanasian Creed. Such mani- 
 pulation was only possible in some country 
 churches, where the parishioners left their clergy- 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 251 
 
 man to do as he pleased, and the bishop was 
 willing to shut his eyes to innovations. 
 
 Neither course commended itself to Lindsey, 
 His maia difficulty was not about subscription. 
 Nor did he see how a mere refusal to subscribe 
 again could satisfy the conscience, since each act 
 of officiating was to him a virtual reaffirming of 
 the subscription which gave the right- to officiate. 
 Hence he was ready to renew the subscription in 
 form, when circumstances called for it. His 
 great difficulty was with the Prayer Book. In 
 this respect nothing could have put him completely 
 at his ease, short of an entire recasting. Yet at 
 institution to each of his livings he had taken the 
 solemn engagement: "I do, declare that I will 
 conform to the liturgy of the Church of England 
 as it is now by law established." This personal 
 pledge he felt himself bound to keep. 
 
 A third course was possible to him, and to this 
 he was guided by Nye's tract. The Unitarian 
 Tracts, as already mentioned, were promoted but 
 not written by Thomas Firmin. In part they are 
 reprints of the pamphlets of Bidle, who taught 
 Firmin his philanthropy as well as his faith. 
 Now Bidle was a Socinian and an Independent, 
 desirous of gathering his fellow believers into 
 Separatist congregations under the title of " meer 
 Christians." Some time after Bidle's death, 
 Firmin came under the influence of Stephen Nye, 
 a beneficed clergyman of Sabellian views, who 
 
2S2 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 wrote the most important of the later tracts. 
 Nye (as we have seen) weaned Firmin from the 
 crude anthropomorphism which marred the 
 theology of Bidle ; suggested to him the use of the 
 Unitarian name ; and taught him not only to 
 interpret the forms of the Prayer Book in a 
 Sabellian sense, but to believe that this is the 
 sense " intended by the Church." The invoca- 
 tions in the litany, for example, were to be taken 
 as a threefold address to the Father, viewed 
 under different aspects of His providence and 
 grace. Lindsey adopted this esoteric construc- 
 tion of the liturgy from Nye's criticism of Wallis, 
 and remained fairly satisfied with it for about ten 
 years of quiescence. The subsequent return of 
 his self-reproaches cost him five anxious years of 
 painful conflict, issuing at length, after vain efforts 
 for legislative relief, in the heroic initiative of a 
 new departure. 
 
 About the time of his settling down to read 
 Sabellianism into the formularies of the Estab- 
 lishment, he became engaged to Blackburne's 
 stepdaughter, young Hannah Elsworth, whom he 
 married after a betrothal of more than two 
 years. " How often," says her old friend Mrs. 
 Cappe, " have I heard it regretted that Mr. 
 Lindsey had not married a person whose dis- 
 position and temper would have assimilated more 
 completely with his own." She however goes on 
 to say that Mrs. Lindsey had the very qualities 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 253: 
 
 essential to her husband's work; qualities com- 
 plementary to his, qualities of toughness and 
 bluntness, which sometimes pushed and some- 
 times pulled him through. " She regarded very- 
 little what others might say or think." Hence, 
 while Lindsey was by all beloved, his wife's- 
 capacity and virtues made her a very appreciable 
 force, but failed to render her generally attractive. 
 It is certain that she became an enthusiast for her 
 husband's creed; and at every turn of their 
 married life her shrewd intelligence and prompt, 
 decisive energy were in readiness to second his 
 aims and to guard his interests. To her really 
 sterling character the best testimony is that of 
 Priestley; though I am bound to admit that, 
 when Priestley wrote of the assurance of his- 
 friend's eternal reunion with his wife in another 
 world, a malignant critic remarked : "A very in- 
 different prospect for poor Lindsey." Alas, good 
 lady, in whom the miracle of motherhood had not 
 been wrought, what wonder if life's wine of duty 
 carried for her some spice of gall. 
 
 They had been married a couple of years when- 
 the Duke of Northumberland, father of his 
 pupil, was appointed to the Irish viceroyalty, 
 and at once proposed to take Lindsey with him as^ 
 chaplain. This meant a bishopric; but Lindsey 
 declined the post. Given to the clergyman who 
 had taken his place as tutor at Eton, it secured his 
 promotion, first to Ossory, then to Elphin. 
 
254 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 Why did he put away from himself a prospect 
 .of this kind ? Clarke, we know, would have 
 accepted a mitre, for the orthodoxy of bishops is 
 not protected by subscription ; they are the only 
 non-subscribers among the clergy of the Establish- 
 ment. Belsham sets it down to humility and 
 lack of ambition. Yet surely bishops have been 
 humble, and very unworldly men hav& felt a 
 personal vocation for the episcopal office. The 
 secret is that to Lindsey the cure of souls in a 
 country parish was simply the ideal life, the life 
 most rich in openings of usefulness and goodness ; 
 and it was the life he loved best. Blackburne had 
 written to him five years before, contrasting their 
 situations, and saying how gladly he, too, would 
 exchange his public province (the archdeaconry) 
 for mere parochial work, " if I had talents such 
 as yours." 
 
 In the year following his rejection of the Irish 
 chaplaincy, Lindsey exchanged his Dorsetshire 
 vicarage for a Yorkshire one. It was said that 
 this was Mrs. Lindsey's doing. The object, in 
 any case, was to be nearer to Blackburne, her 
 stepfather. Catterick was a much larger parish 
 than Piddletown, though a living of smaller value. 
 As there were three subordinate chapels in the 
 parish, there was a good deal more work as well 
 as less pay. A field was open for parochial 
 organization, and of this Lindsey availed himself 
 with vigour and zeal. Jn particular he began 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 255 
 
 (1764) what may properly be called a Sunday- 
 school, as distinct from the conventional practice 
 of Sunday afternoon catechizing, which he pur- 
 sued on alternate Sundays. Every other Sunday 
 afternoon he had a class of a hundred boys from 
 the vUlage school for Bible lessons, and every 
 Sunday evening a class for young men and young 
 women alternately; while his wife had Sunday 
 evening classes for boys and girls. This was six- 
 teen years before Raikes, who began in November 
 1780; and it was more modern in its conception 
 than Raikes' plan, based as that was on the 
 impartation of elementary instruction by paid 
 teachers. What did his parishioners think of 
 him ? It is very curious, but he was so different 
 from the country clergyman of the mill-wheel 
 type, so much alive, so assiduous, and so human, 
 that they could find but one appellation that 
 seemed to fit him; accordingly they called him 
 a Methodist. 
 
 Now occurred two events which, taken to- 
 gether, produced a crisis in Lindsey's life. The 
 first was the resignation of William Robertson; 
 the second was Priestley's removal to Yorkshire, 
 and consequent introduction to Lindsey. With 
 Priestley we do not here deal, but of William 
 Robertson it seems proper to furnish a brief 
 sketch. Lindsey has constantly referred to him 
 as "the Father of Unitarian nonconformity"; 
 and if this is, perhaps, a somewhat misleading 
 
256 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 estimate of his position and claims, none the less 
 does the powerful character of this brave and able 
 man deserve a reverent study. 
 
 William Robertson, the Irish son of a Scottish 
 father and a Yorkshire mother, was educated at 
 Glasgow for the Presbyterian Church. Expelled 
 from Glasgow University in his twentieth year 
 as a ringleader of revolt against the Principal, 
 he hurried up to London, and there succeeded in 
 obtaining the appointment of a Royal Com- 
 mission, which visited the University, rescinded 
 the act of expulsion, established the right of the 
 students to choose their own Rector, and restored 
 the exhibitions admitting Glasgow men to Balliol 
 College, Oxford. 
 
 His London errand introduced him to the Lord 
 Chancellor, Sir Peter King (a renegade Dissenter), 
 and to sundry Whig bishops. One of these, 
 John Hoadly, brother of a famous man, took him 
 off to Ireland, ordained him deacon and priest 
 (not a sacrificing priest, according to Papal 
 decree, though a sacrificing priest in another 
 sense he proved himself to be), and provided him 
 with half a dozen livings, yielding a total annual 
 stipend of £300 a year. To double this income 
 it was only necessary to compel graziers to pay 
 tithe. The Irish House of Commons, sym- 
 pathizing with the owners of black cattle, passed 
 a strong resolution on the subject of clerical 
 extortion. Dean Swift satirized the action of 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 257 
 
 the Commons; the graziers applauded it and 
 stopped payment. Robertson, after vainly pro- 
 posing a plan of tithe commutation, put a curate 
 in charge of his country livings, and himself took 
 a Dublin curacy. While there, he founded in 
 conjunction with another curate a clerical widows' 
 and orphans' fund for the Dublin diocese. 
 
 He had returned to the country and was 
 fifty-four years of age, when chance threw in his 
 way a book called " Free and Candid Con- 
 siderations " (1749) compiled anonymously by 
 John Jones of Alconbury. Jones was a strong 
 advocate for Prayer Book revision, especially to 
 meet the case of Arians. Robertson read Jones' 
 book, and at once decided that it was impossible 
 for him to subscribe the Articles again. No 
 sooner had he come to this resolution, than fresh 
 and valuable preferment was offered to him. He 
 declined it in a very frank letter to his bishop 
 (15 Jan. 1760). From this time he omitted the 
 Athanasian Creed, and some other parts of the 
 church service; finding that his ecclesiastical 
 patrons were dissatisfied he resigned his livings. 
 He had twenty-one children; yet he threw up 
 all his preferments, save and except only an 
 honorary private chaplaincy of merely casual 
 value. This was in 1764. 
 
 In 1766 Robertson printed anonymously a 
 singularly able little book, bearing the modest 
 title of an " Attempt," which must have been 
 
258 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 written two or three years previously. He 
 describes himself as " a presbyter of the Church 
 of England," says nothing of his resignation, but 
 only of his refusal of further preferment, and 
 expressly denies that he belongs either to the 
 Arian or the Socinian party. 
 
 He propounds the plan of a comprehensive 
 Church. Subscription is to be strictly limited 
 to the Bible. The Prayer Book is to be so revised 
 as to reduce it to an impartial echo of Scripture. 
 This, he thinks, will be sufficient to reunite all 
 Protestant Christians, and heresy will cease ; for 
 heresy is an artificial crime, it simply means that 
 a man does not belong to the Establishment. 
 Let us listen to his own plea : " Methinks I hear a 
 voice come out of the crowd : Heyday, what an 
 Utopian scheme is here. Shall we set the gates 
 of the Church wide open to let in all sorts of 
 heretics, Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, Sabel- 
 lians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Socinians, and all 
 the motley crew which have been condemned 
 by so many Councils, Popes, Fathers, and Acts 
 of Convocation and Parliament ? . . . Shall we 
 open the gates to these people? I say, Yes. And 
 for this reason; that as soon as we let them in, 
 they lose their names, and become one with us by 
 joining in the public worship, to which they can 
 no longer have any objection; and, moreover, 
 employ all their power in defending the Establish- 
 ment which would so generously support them. 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 259 
 
 What their particular speculative opinions may 
 be, as long as they remain quiet in the State, 
 concerns not thee or me to know; no more than 
 it does at present to know the private sentiments 
 of every clergyman of the Established Church, 
 who have, I believe, as different notions of religion 
 as they have faces; and yet all is peace among 
 them, by agreeing in the great practical duties, 
 and by joining in the worship that is established 
 by law." This is a fair specimen of Robertson's 
 trenchant style. He quotes (from Voltaire) the 
 caustic epigram : " The difference between the 
 Church of Rome and the Church of England is 
 this: that the former cannot err, and the latter 
 is always in the right." A copy of the third issue 
 of his book was presented by its author to his 
 alma mater, the University of Glasgow. The 
 Senate immediately made him D.D. 
 
 When the news of Robertson's resignation 
 reached Lindsey (probably in 1768), it struck home 
 to his conscience, as a mandate for his own exodus. 
 Here was the precedent for which he had vainly 
 sought ten years before. On the other hand, he 
 n,ow had friends to consult ; and his main friend, 
 Blackburne, was strongly averse to secession from 
 the Church. Blackburne had lately brought out 
 his contra-subscription treatise, bearing the quaint 
 title of " The Confessional " (1766). His hope 
 was to create a body of public opinion favourable 
 to a parliamentary measure for clerical relief. 
 
26o THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 Blackburne unhesitatingly refused an invitatioa 
 to settle with a congregation of Dissenters in 
 London, though it would have doubled his 
 income. All this would influence Lindsey and 
 hold him back. 
 
 He was impelled forward by his associations 
 with Priestley. The advice of Priestley coincided 
 with Blackburne's : " Stay where you are ; rather 
 take liberties with your Prayer Book than give- 
 up your church, unless they drive you out." The 
 position of Priestley, with its happy immunity 
 from pledges, spoke to him in another sense, with 
 the voice of an irresistible appeal. Returning one 
 day from Wakefield, where he had met Priestley 
 and Turner, he thus expressed the contrast which 
 he felt between his situation and theirs: " They 
 are at ease." His resolve was taken during 
 recovery from a dangerous attack of rheumatic 
 fever, brought on (as I conjecture) by his exertions 
 in behalf of the clerical Petition for Relief (1772). 
 Should the petition fail, he would resign his livings 
 To this he definitely, though silently, made up 
 his mind. 
 
 The petition, known as the Feathers Petition,, 
 from the tavern in the Strand where its promoters- 
 met, was indeed a forlorn hope. It proved a 
 failure in every respect. As drafted by Black- 
 burne, it proposed to free the clergy of the Estab- 
 lishment from any requirement " to acknowledge 
 by subscription or declaration the truth of any 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 261 
 
 iormulary of religious faith or doctrine whatso- 
 ever, beside Holy Scripture itself." Well might 
 Burke satirise the idea of making legislative use 
 •of so intangible a commonplace of Protestant 
 piety, taking as its formulary "the multifarious 
 strange compound . . . called the Scriptures," and 
 ■defining neither the principle of its interpretation, 
 nor the scope of its authority. This language of 
 the great orator was resented by Lindsey as the 
 speech of a Jesuit, full of popish ideas; but it 
 rudely expressed the politician's appreciation of 
 an illusory settlement, which would settle nothing. 
 The petitioners, according to the printed list of 
 their names, numbered only 197, drawn from 
 twenty-six counties, by far the larger number 
 from the eastern counties, Essex alone contribut- 
 ing thirty-one naines. None came from Cheshire, 
 Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire ; 
 only two from Lancashire. There was one pre- 
 sident of a Cambridge college; but of church 
 dignitaries, Blackburne himself was the single 
 specimen. It is not too much to say, after a close 
 scrutiny of the list, that, in theology most, if not 
 all, were heterodox. Among them were a couple 
 of quondam Arian Dissenters, who had con- 
 formed, and found their new shoes pinch worse 
 than their old ones. 
 
 The House of Commons debated the petition 
 from three o'clock till eleven on 6th February, 
 X772, and rejected it by 217 votes to 71. The 
 
262 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 petitioners were satisfied with the debate, which 
 they thought gave them a moral victory. The 
 speech they especially admired was by Sir George 
 Savile, whose theme was that " the Church of 
 God can protect itself " ; an admirable truth, but 
 one which seems even more at variance with the 
 principle of an Establishment than with that of a 
 subscription. One important issue of the debate 
 demands remembrance. In the course of it, Lord 
 North " with his usual good humour observed 
 that he saw no ground to complain of intolerance, 
 in times when every one was permitted to go to 
 heaven in his own way "; and added that if the 
 Dissenters had made a similar application, for 
 relief from their subscription to the Articles, he 
 could see no reasonable objection to it. The 
 hint was taken by two Dissenting divines, who 
 listened to the debate from the gallery. A Bill 
 for a modification of the Toleration Act was intro- 
 duced that same year, and at once passed the 
 Commons. After having been twice rejected by 
 the Lords, it finally became law in 1779. 
 
 Baffled in his hopes of relief, with now no 
 course left for him but to resign his living, Lindsey 
 took his place in the Yorkshire coach, feeling that 
 he was returning to Catterick only to sing his 
 Nunc dimittis as a minister in the Church of Eng- 
 land. There was a most winsome incident of 
 this return. In the morning, before he started 
 on his homeward journey, he bethought him of 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 263 
 
 his Sunday scholars. He had persuaded some of 
 them to endure inoculation for the smallpox, and 
 he wanted to persuade the rest. So he trotted 
 down to the Tower, and there he got at the 
 Mint a bag of new halfpence, prizes for the 
 little folk, that none might flinch from the pre- 
 ventive measure. This childless man had a 
 heart, whereby he understood something of the 
 great God. 
 
 For yet another year he postponed his resigna- 
 tion, since the Feathers petitioners had agreed to 
 apply again to Parliament ; a purpose which was 
 at length abandoned as hopeless. Meantime 
 Lindsey devoted himself to a study of Calamy's 
 lives of the Ejected Divines of 1662, and prepared 
 his own apologia. In reading Calamy, he was 
 particularly touched by a striking passage from 
 the soliloquy of John Oldfield, of Carsington, a 
 passage which has since been quoted with great 
 effect by Mrs. Gaskell, in her novel of '"North 
 and South." 
 
 The first person to whom he definitely an- 
 nounced his intention of resigning was Mason, the 
 poet; who thought it "visionary and absurd" 
 to make a fuss about " the usage of forms, by 
 which no one was injured." Blackburne, when 
 he heard what was coming, grew vehement in his 
 remonstrances. In losing Lindsey he felt, and 
 said, that he was losing his right hand. His 
 own theological liberalism did not run in the 
 
264 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 Socinian direction; and though he dissevered 
 himself, as far as he could, from the taint of 
 Socinianism, by immediately publishing against 
 it, yet he foresaw that the defection of Lindsey, 
 avowedly on these lines, must be fatal to all 
 chance of reviving the petition for relief. Not a 
 single one of Lindsey's friends backed him up in 
 his resolve, or seemed to credit its reality. Even 
 HoUis was silent. 
 
 When he had actually taken the step, almost 
 the first word of genuine appreciation came from 
 Grey Cooper, the Whig politician, who thus wrote : 
 " I have read your letter, which filled my heart 
 with grief, and made my eyes glisten with tears. 
 I have not a word to say, or an argument to offer, 
 against your resolution to quit your prefer- 
 ment." His farewell sermon (Nov. 28, 1773) was 
 delivered to a crowded congregation, and was 
 broken by their sobs. 
 
 What' now was to be his course ? Mention has 
 been made of the character of Francis, the Earl of 
 Huntingdon. He was fond of posing his clerical 
 guests with the awkward problem: "What be- 
 came of the universe, when its great Creator hung 
 lifeless upon a tree in Judea ? " Lindsey had 
 replied that the question did not concern him, 
 as the doctrine ridiculed formed no part of his 
 creed. " But," said Huntingdon, " it is part of 
 the creed of the Church in which you officiate 
 jsvery week as a minister." Hearing of Lindsey's 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 265 
 
 resignation, he at once wrote to him, saying that 
 while he cared nothing for theology, he neverthe- 
 less honoured integrity, and wished Lindsey to 
 accept an appointment as his librarian ; the salary 
 would be handsome, and his time would be his own . 
 Again, there was just now a vacancy at the Liver- 
 pool Octagon (by the resignation of Hezekiah 
 Kirkpatrick), and Turner hoped that Lindsey 
 might be induced to fill it. There was a vacancy, 
 loo, at the Norwich Octagon; Lindsey was 
 pressed to settle there. By this time he had 
 made up his mind to strike out a path for him- 
 self, to set the example of a new churchmanship. 
 His only doubt was in regard to the proper 
 locality for the experiment. He thought of Lon- 
 don and he thought of Bristol, but decided for 
 London. As he wrote to Turner: "My design 
 ... is to try to gather a church of Unitarian 
 •Christians out of the Established Church." 
 
 Stress is due to this definite and important 
 •statement, because the graphic pen of Mrs. Cappe, 
 writing after Lindsey's death, chooses other terms 
 ±0 describe his project. She represents him as 
 iounding a chapel " on such a basis as should 
 admit of the communion of Christians of what- 
 ever denomination:" This language is rather apt 
 to mislead. Lindsey held, it is true, that the 
 forms of public worship he approved, being 
 Scriptural, must be satisfactory to all true Chris- 
 tians. He believed that a purely Scriptural 
 
266 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 liturgy might form a common bond between 
 different churches; and hoped that in time men 
 would see this, and come so far into agreement. 
 He went no further than this in his ideas of 
 Christian communion. In his first sermon at 
 Essex Street he maintains that God never meant 
 all Christians to be of one sentiment, but that 
 there should be different sects of Christians and 
 different churches. He wished to increase largely 
 the number of Unitarians; but he certainly did 
 not expect to convert everybody. Nor did he 
 reckon his mission to be to the outside sects, from 
 the Catholic to the Quaker. He left, Priestley to 
 deal with Dissenters. Of any mission to the un- 
 churched, not a syllable does he let fall. His 
 mission was to members of the Church of Eng- 
 land, to whom he hoped to show a better way. 
 " The peculiar reason," he says, " for forming a 
 separate congregation, distinct from the National 
 Church, is that we may be at liberty to worship 
 God alone, after the command and example of our 
 Saviour Christ." In Scottish phraseology his 
 was essentially a Relief Church. 
 
 With this understanding, we may accept Mrs. 
 Cappe's further description of his plan, as "a 
 specimen of a reformed Church of England." 
 He had renounced the phantom-project of an 
 Establishment with an open door, which had 
 been the ideal of Robertson, and the object of the 
 Feathers Petition. A Unitarian secession had 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 267 
 
 become, in his opinion, the only practical course. 
 Thus, while Firmin's idea had been to keep 
 Unitarians in the Church, where they were to 
 act as a leaven, Lindsey's idea was to draw them 
 out of the Church, and his chapel was to be a 
 magnet for that purpose. He wanted, as he says, 
 to " awaken others to come out of Babylon," out 
 of " her witchcraft and idolatries." 
 
 When he got to London, Lindsey was fifty years 
 of age, and very poor. His father's property had 
 been equally divided between himself and a 
 spendthrift brother, but Lindsey had given the 
 whole of his own share to his married sister. He 
 had laid out his income on his parish. His wife's 
 fortune yielded little more than £20 a year. To 
 provide for immediate necessities he had sold 
 most of his books; he now sold his plate. He 
 took a lodging in Holborn, having a little closet 
 off the bedroom, which did as coal-cellar, store- 
 room, and study. Sitting on one pile of books, 
 he made another pile serve him as writing table. 
 The man was happy; he had put himself in the 
 right. When Joseph Johnson, his bookseller (son 
 of an Evert on Baptist) had found him an auction 
 room in Essex Street, he was ready for the start 
 of his Unitarian Chapel, opened 17th April, 1774- 
 
 Priestley ran up for the opening, Benjamin 
 Franklin was there, with a lord, and a posse of 
 beneficed clergy. Lindsey wore no surplice, but 
 in other respects the model of the Established 
 
268 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 worship was adhered to. On his way to London 
 he had fallen in with a transcript of Clarke's pro- 
 posed revision of the Prayer Book, in the posses- 
 sion of Disney, Blackburne's son-in-law. His 
 friends suggested that he should adopt this as his 
 own service-book, thus sheltering himself under 
 the sanction of an historic name. While he took 
 Clarke's revision as his basis, he made many 
 further changes; retaining, however, the use of 
 the Apostles' Creed, and beginning the litany with 
 a threefold invocation. Priestley defended the 
 creed usage in his plan (1783) for " formation of 
 Unitarian churches," saying, " I used to have 
 much objection to the recitation of the Apostles' 
 Creed, or any creed, in public worship. But when 
 I consider that the object of Christian assemblies 
 is not merely devotion, but likewise general 
 instruction, and that the great principles of 
 Christianity, and especially the outlines of the 
 Gospel history, cannot be too firmly impressed 
 on the minds of all, I now think that the short 
 time that is taken up in the recital of that 
 creed, as corrected by Mr. Lindsey, is very well 
 employed." A few years later, the creed was 
 deemed in need of further corrections, not merely 
 verbal. Lindsey dropped its use some little time 
 before his resignation in 1793. Not many persons 
 can recollect the recital of the Apostles' Creed as an 
 integral part of the service in a Unitarian Chapel. 
 It was maintained at Alcester during the whole 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 269 
 
 of the thirty years' ministry of Thomas Warren,, 
 ending in 1864, and memory retains the im- 
 pression of the hearty way in which it was recited 
 by the congregation. 
 
 Three years in the auction room secured the 
 prospects of Lindsey's experiment. The pre- 
 mises were bought, and the present building with 
 its modest dome was erected (opened 29 March, 
 1778). Having taken me to London for the 
 Great Exhibition of 1851, my father asked me 
 what next I would like to see; I told him I 
 wanted to see Essex Street Chapel. So thither he 
 took me, and afterwards took me to Westminster 
 Abbey. "Well," said he, "what do you think, 
 of this ? " " It's a fine building," answered I,, 
 "but it hasn't got a dome like Essex Street 
 Chapel." When my father's friend. Dr. Russell,, 
 of Birmingham, heard of this, he remarked: 
 " That boy'U come to a bad end; he's taken early 
 piety in a morbid form." 
 
 It cannot be affirmed that the success of 
 Lindsey's experiment was the success he had been, 
 sanguine enough to contemplate. A few persons 
 of distinction joined him from the Establishment ;. 
 but adhesions to his movement from this quarter 
 were neither very numerous nor very permanent.. 
 The bulk of his support came from Dissenters.. 
 A remarkable and important secession of Cam- 
 bridge divines threw into the Unitarian ranks such 
 men as Jebb, Evanson, Tyrwhitt, Wakefield and 
 
270 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 others. Unless we count household worship, 
 none of these seceders except Disney became 
 ministers of Unitarian congregations; nor did 
 any of them attempt to form new causes, ex- 
 cepting the heroic and ill-fated Fyshe Palmer. 
 Disney became Lindsey's colleague in 1783, after 
 applications had been made in vain to Robertson, 
 J ebb and Lambert. When Disney resigned in 
 1805 it was not by an Anglican convert that he 
 was succeeded, but by Belsham, who came from 
 the Independents. This appointment of Belsham 
 was with Lindsey's full approval, and was fully 
 justified by the event. At the same time it was 
 yielding to the inevitable; it marked in a signal 
 manner the reversal of Lindsey's hopes of an 
 increasing stream of Anglican coadjutors; and 
 by a section of his friends it was ill received, and 
 treated as a new departure, at variance with the 
 original purpose of his chapel. 
 
 Nor were the efforts to plant other Unitarian 
 chapels, on the Essex Street model, attended with 
 much continuous success. Under Lindsey's own 
 auspices, chapels were opened at Highbury and 
 at Plymouth Dock, but they were manned by 
 Dissenters, and were soon closed. In 1791 the 
 Essex Street Prayer Book was reprinted at Dun- 
 kirk, and used for a time in the English chapel 
 supported by the merchants there. Of all the 
 numerous ventures of this sort, that in Mosley 
 Street, Manchester, transferred in 1839 to the 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 271 
 
 building in Upper Brook Street of Barry's design, 
 (the first Dissenting chapel erected in Gothic 
 architecture) is the sole, though long a distin- 
 guished, survival to our own times. 
 
 The abiding effect of the Lindsey movement 
 was realized in the gradual transformation of the 
 older type of Liberal Dissent; issuing in the 
 practical separation of a distinct religious com- 
 munity, diminished in numbers, but imbued with 
 a fresh force of vigorous conviction. 
 
 The process was not rapid. Belsham reports 
 that in 1789, when he resigned his post at Dav- 
 entry, he " knew but of two congregations (Essex 
 Street, and New Meeting, Birmingham) the 
 ministers of which were avowed Unitarians." By 
 1810 he was able to add some twenty to the list. 
 From that date the pace was quickened, and by 
 various causes;, the passing away of the older 
 generation of divines ; the coming over of men in 
 middle age, as the influence of their former leaders 
 was withdrawn; the literary and controversial 
 strength of the Unitarian cohort; the supply of 
 the ministry from the college at York, where 
 Wellbeloved, though a pupil of Belsham, did his 
 best to teach a theology without bias, with the 
 result, however, of sending out a succession of 
 ardent Unitarians ; the passing of the Trinity Act 
 of 1813, which redeemed Unitarian opinion from 
 outlawry, and fortified its advocates with a wel- 
 come sense of equal rights with other Dissenters, 
 
272 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 Reverting to Belsham's remark about " avowed 
 Unitarians " it is to be noted that he means Uni- 
 tarians in the Lindsey definition of the term. 
 Lindsey was the first to impress upon the Unit- 
 arian name a special stamp of meaning, to him of 
 prime importance. It was Lindsey who taught 
 Priestley to use the name Unitarian in place of 
 Socinian. Do not suppose that Lindsey was one 
 of those sensitive spirits to whom the name 
 Socinian is a species of torture. On the contrary, 
 he af&rms for himself and his friends, that "though 
 they would not wHUngly be called by the name of 
 Socinus, or of anyone but of Christ himself, yet 
 they refuse not the. appellation, but think it 
 honourable." Still, it would not have lent itself 
 to the special purpose for which he wanted a 
 denominational name. 
 
 He got the term Unitarian, no doubt, from the 
 writers at the end of the seventeenth century, who 
 introduced it into the English language. It was 
 introduced at that time, as a term of catholic 
 spirit and wide comprehensiveness, covering all 
 those who, with whatever other differences, main- 
 tain the Unipersonality of the Divine Being. 
 Sabellians, Arians, Socinians, all were equally 
 entitled to a name which linked them in allegiance 
 to a common tenet. Its hospitality was not 
 limited to its Christian adherents; Israel and 
 Islam (Wesley's " Unitarian fiend ") were ex- 
 pressly recognized as belonging to the brotherhood 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 273 
 
 of the Unitarian name. Thus the function of the 
 name was to define a common point of theological 
 speculation . Those to whom it was applied were 
 viewed .as in accord on a matter of divine know- 
 ledge. God is a Being who may be known. It is 
 a conclusion of reason, based on the data of His 
 self -revelation, that in person, as well as in essence, 
 God is strictly and simply One. Of the existence, 
 or non-existence, of subordinate powers; of our 
 respective duties to Him and to them: the 
 doctrine primarily expressed by the Unitarian 
 name is silent. This is the sense in which Unit- 
 arian is defined by the consensus of a catena of our 
 accredited theologians; e.g., by Lant Carpenter, 
 by Aspland, by Yates, by Tayler, and by Mar- 
 tineau. Again, it is the sense in which the term 
 is used by those who speak broadly of the 
 Unitarian Church, an expression employed by 
 William Taylor as early as 1810. It was a 
 favourite expression with Henry Arthur Bright 
 (" Lay of the Unitarian Church "). It was taken 
 up in America by Sylvester Judd (1813-1853), 
 and familiarized among us, by Dr. J. R. Beard 
 (about 1857) and employed as a collective 
 designation, to cover retrospectively the whole 
 succession of antitrinitarian movements in the 
 history of Christendom. 
 
 Lindsey, who adopted the term with little 
 reference to its historical origin, gave it a new 
 turn in accordance with his idea of worship. 
 
274 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 already adverted to. "The Unitarian doctrine," 
 says Lindsey, " is this: that religious worship is 
 to be addressed only to the One True God, the 
 Father." His common point is not one of 
 theological speculation, but of religious practice. 
 God is a Being who is to be worshipped ; and there 
 is but One Being who is to be worshipped. The 
 unqualified condemnation of all worship of Christ, 
 no better in Lindsey's view than a species of real 
 even if unconscious idolatry, was a novel feature 
 of the antitrinitarian protest in this country. 
 Neither our Arians nor our Socinians had hitherto 
 taken this ground. Bartholomew Legate fur- 
 nishes an exception, and one may be found in 
 Hopton Haynes; these, however, were not in- 
 fluential cases. Doubtless the earlier English 
 Unitarians had set themselves to reduce the wor- 
 ship of Christ to what they deemed its proper 
 proportions. Some of them had thought it best 
 reserved for special phases of devotion ; none had 
 reckoned it wrong, when kept in its due place. 
 Most had defended it as subordinate worship, 
 rendered to the Son of God, to the glory of God 
 the Father ; some had rested it on express divine 
 command. Emlyn's treatise in " Vindication of 
 the Worship of Jesus Christ on Unitarian Prin- 
 ciples " (1706), is a specimen of endeavours to 
 rectify rather than to abolish a universal practice 
 of Christendom. It was their adversaries who 
 had deduced from antitrinitarian premises the 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 275 
 
 inference that Christ-worship was an impiety. 
 Lindsey not only admitted the inference, but laid 
 the greatest possible stress upon it. 
 
 Hence Lindsey but seldom speaks of the Divine 
 Unipersonality. His constant phrase is the 
 Divine Unity; and by this he always means, 
 somewhat in disregard of the usual force of the 
 term, that the Father is the solitary object of 
 ■Christian worship. Thus he refuses to admit 
 that Trinitarians hold the Divine Unity, that is, 
 in his sense ; for he does not mean either to deny 
 them to be Christians, or to strike Christianity 
 irom the list of monotheistic religions. Similarly 
 he refuses to Arians the use of the Unitarian 
 name, in spite of their historic title to it, unless 
 they join him in his restriction of worship to the 
 Father only. How he contrived to include the 
 Muhammadans, who deny that to God belongs the 
 -attribute of Fatherhood, I cannot say; Lindsey 
 certainly classes them as Unitarians; but other 
 writers of this type were very touchy on this 
 topic, and disputed the evidence of the earlier 
 recognition of the Unitarianism of the Moslem. 
 
 This restriction led to another, imposed upon 
 the Unitarian book societies (with one exception). 
 Their rules were prefaced by a preamble, intended 
 formally to warn off Arians, and inviting the co- 
 operation of those only who believed in the mere 
 .humanity of our Lord. 
 
 The justification, or the excuse, for this policy 
 
276 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 was the purpose of consolidating the movement. 
 Against this advantage must be set the alienation 
 of friends of an inclusive spirit, and the grievance 
 experienced by Unitarians of an older type ; who 
 felt very much as some later Unitarians felt, when 
 the founders of the Milton Club excluded anti- 
 trinitarians from membership. 
 
 Lindsey's construction of the name marks the 
 beginning of the modern Unitarian religious body 
 (" the Unitarian connexion," as some style it) in 
 contradistinction to the older efforts of Unitarian 
 speculation. In that body it is still the popular 
 sense; and popular on account of its practical! 
 bearing. It is capable of being made mandatory, 
 at least on its negative side; the jussives of 
 religion, as distinct from its advices, being, indeed,, 
 chiefly negative . None but an unreflecting person 
 would dream, for example, of attempting tO' 
 utilise the formulary, " Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God." That this is in the Law, and is, in 
 fact, the highest thought the Law contains, simply 
 shows that the Law bears witness to things beyond! 
 its sphere; since religious emotion is not elicited 
 at the call of an imperative injunction. Whereas, 
 " Thou shalt not say in my hearing any prayer to 
 the Virgin Mary " is quite within the scope and 
 competence of practical religious regulation. 
 
 Reduction of worship to a strict Patrolatry was 
 then with Lindsey made central and distinguish- 
 ing. Few of any creed will dispute that a divided 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 277 
 
 homage is incompatible with a right attitude of 
 the heart towards God. So far Lindsey's position 
 was impi:egnable ; his principle was sound and 
 salutary. In applying this principle he allowed 
 nothing for the different experiences of men in 
 regard to what impedes, and what assists, a whole- 
 hearted devotion to God. Belsham seems to have 
 discovered that a good Unitarian of the Lindsey 
 type, and of Lindsey's own making, might yet 
 turn to Christ quite naturally, as a man turns to 
 his friend. The Duke of Grafton, agreeing with 
 Belsham that Jesus would himself resent the 
 tribute of " that divine worship " which is " due 
 only to the Almighty Father," nevei:theless held 
 that " Jesus Christ, in his present state, can hear 
 and help us." This Lindsey had categorically 
 ■denied. Belsham, however, makes the remark- 
 able admission that he " would be far from pre- 
 suming to limit the extent of " Christ's " know- 
 ledge or his power, in his present exalted state." 
 He thus allows that there may be supplication, 
 without worship, in the theological sense. What 
 would he have made of an address of this kind ? 
 " Come, Friend and Saviour of the race, who 
 didst shed thy blood on the cross, to reconcile 
 man to man, and earth to Heaven. . . . X^om- 
 passionate Saviour ! We welcome thee to our 
 world. We welcome thee to our hearts. We 
 bless thee for the Divine Goodness thou hast 
 brought from Heaven; for the Souls thou hast 
 
278 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to 
 God ; for the efforts of Divine Philanthropy which 
 thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure 
 Celestial Life, through which thy disciples triumph 
 over death. Benevolent Saviour ! Inspirer of 
 goodness ! We offer thee this tribute of affection- 
 ate and reverential gratitude on earth; and we 
 hope to know, to love, to resemble, and to 
 approach thee, more nearly and more worthily in 
 Heaven." 
 
 Now, I do not know whether these sentences of 
 Channing, the first drawn from the last of his 
 pamphlets, the rest from one of his posthumous 
 sermons, would gain from Belsham the indul- 
 gence extended without difficulty to a coroneted 
 convert. There is little doubt that Lindsey would 
 deem them wholly inadmissible, being unintel- 
 ligible save as apostrophe, and a dangerous abuse 
 of that figure. In this estimate he would be 
 followed by all who take Unitarian to mean what 
 he made it to mean ; and who, consequently, by a 
 Unitarian Chapel understand a chapel in whose 
 services there is no legitimate room for personal 
 address to Christ, or for sympathy with the 
 attitude of mind which prompts it. 
 
 In full accord with the special emphasis which 
 he ' laid upon his chapel for Unitarian worship, 
 Lindsey did not propose to make it a chapel 
 for Unitarian preaching. On the contrary, he 
 pledged himself never to treat on controverted 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 279 
 
 points of theology in his sermons from the Essex 
 Street pulpit . It is true that he broke this pledge , 
 at least on one occasion, in order to expound his 
 foundation principle. As a rule he observed it 
 very closely, and, I think, without an effort. He 
 claims in his farewell sermon (1793) to have 
 "never knowingly deviated " from the principle 
 " never to arraign or condemn other churches or 
 Christian societies for their different worship or 
 opinions, who have a right to judge for themselves 
 as much as you have." Didactic exposition 
 was always more to his taste than polemical 
 debate. People who went to hear him out of 
 curiosity were sometimes astonished to find 
 nothing in the sermon except pure religious 
 teaching and high morale. This was his idea of 
 the function of the pulpit; for polemics the fit 
 agency was the press. Even in his publications 
 for the good of his cause, he took, where possible, 
 the line of history; and when, because no one else 
 would, he set himself to reply to Robert Robin- 
 son's polemic, he wrote anonymously, in order to 
 reduce the personal element in the controversy to 
 its lowest terms. His reply had the rare merit of 
 converting his adversary. 
 
 His " Historical View " (1783) of Unitarian- 
 ism since the Reformation, though swelled by 
 tedious argumentative digressions, is not only a 
 book of good research for its time, but has the 
 honour of being the first in its kind. Later writers 
 
28o THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 would have done well had they taken the trouble 
 to follow up its method of investigation, in place 
 of satisfying themselves with merely quoting 
 from its pages. 
 
 His apologetic and other writings have that 
 command which earnestness, pains, singleness of 
 purpose, and genuine conviction will always give ; 
 but they are not striking. His style lacks vital 
 force, for his mind lacks imagination and humour. 
 His matter, often excellent, is never rich. His 
 doctrines are diligently culled from Scripture, 
 interpreted as though Scripture were a product of 
 the eighteenth century. He speaks of Isaiah as 
 an " illustrious prophet," and thinks of him as 
 the Rev. Dr. Isaiah, in a bob-wig, with a bland 
 manner, and a curious habit of being merely 
 " figurative," whenever he might otherwise seem 
 to dissent from Mr. Lindsey. Substitute apostle 
 for prophet, and the same account will equally 
 serve to delineate his vision of the author of the 
 Pauline epistles. Lindsey's conspicuous piety is 
 serene, but unimpassioned. With good reason he 
 insists on telling you that his Christ is indeed a 
 human being; and that he still lives. Never did 
 a heresiarch show less fertility in religious con- 
 ception, or keep himself at a safer distance from 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 On the other hand, his mind was open, to the 
 last, for the reception of further suggestions in 
 his own line of thought. Priestley's rejection 
 
THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 281 
 
 (1787) of the narratives of the birth of our Lord 
 as unhistoric, staggered, and even shocked him at 
 first ; yet before long he found himself in harmony 
 with Priestley. In his last publication (1802) he 
 treats the question of the supernatural in a way 
 which, in Belsham's opinion, " destroys the very 
 existence of miracles, and subverts the argument 
 founded upon them." He had adopted the view 
 of his favourite author, Abraham Tucker, and was 
 prepared to admit that " those operations called 
 miraculous are as much the result of general laws 
 as the most ordinary events." Lindsey, in short, 
 was concerned with the historical facts, and valued 
 them as such. Belsham was intent on making 
 good use of them as theological credentials. 
 
 I mention these indications, not that I think 
 Lindsey's intellectuar calibre was such as to give 
 special weight to his conclusions on particular 
 points, but because, among those unversed in the 
 writings of our Unitarian fathers, there is an 
 impression that their minds were somewhat rigidly 
 fixed in a uniform system of ideas ; and that they 
 had paid no attention to problems which have 
 since been much under debate. On the contrary, 
 the more I study them, the fuller do I find the 
 evidence of the extent to which they carried their 
 independent researches, and of the fearlessness 
 which informed their judgments. Whether we 
 take the trouble to know them or not, the men 
 who made the Unitarian movement are worth 
 
282 THEOPHILUS LINDSEY 
 
 knowing. Whether we endorse their creed or not, 
 their opinions will reward scrutiny. Whether we 
 wish well to their cause or not, there is much to be 
 learned from the story of their aims, their 
 achievements, their failures. 
 
 Among all those who assisted in the Unitarian 
 rebirth of the last century, we may set Lindsey 
 first, as in time, so likewise in prestige. This is 
 not to claim for him the penetrating genius of 
 Priestley, or to match him with the robust power 
 of Belsham. There is none whose life, from first 
 to last, conveys a finer lesson. Lindsey, as a 
 writer, was a model of sober diligence in and for 
 his generation. He will be neglected to-day by 
 all but the few who have leisure and curiosity, and 
 are led into sympathy with the past by a desire to 
 understand the present. Lindsey, as an example, 
 is for all time; a fresh, nervous protest against 
 the supineness of conformity, the peril of tamper- 
 ing with conscience, the unworthiness of half 
 measures in religious conviction ; a protest all the 
 more signal and decisive from its deliberation, its 
 unobtrusiveness, its self-denial, its characteristic 
 union of high resolve with modest service, and 
 with patient strength. 
 
 7 March, 1895. 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 HIS PLACE IN THE 
 
 UNITARIAN MOVEMENT 
 
Thoma Belsham. — Born, 1750 ; Assistants 
 Tutor at Daventry, 1771-78; Minister at Wor- 
 cester, 1778-81; Minister and Divinity Tutor at 
 Daventry, 1781-89; Divinity Tutor at Hackney, 
 1789-96; Minister at Hackney, 1794-1805; Minis- 
 ter at Essex Street Chapel, 1805-29 ; Retired from 
 active duty, 1825 ; Died 1829. 
 
IX 
 
 THOMAS BELSHAM, HIS PLACE IN THE 
 UNITARIAN MOVEMENT 
 
 JUST as the year 1779 was begun, a country- 
 minister, but lately ordained, paid a brief 
 visit to London. Ministers on their travels have 
 nearly as much curiosity as other people. The 
 visitor, accepting the invitation of a friend, went 
 to evening service at a chapel erected in the 
 previous year, and rather in the fashion, having 
 the combined attractions of heresy and novelty. 
 One of its strongest supporters had been drawn to- 
 the place by the eager report of a lady's maid, 
 that " a gentleman was going to open a room to 
 preach a new religion." " A gentleman told his- 
 friend at Tunbridge Wells it was the only ' genteel' 
 place in town." Now the Worcester divine, in 
 the course of his studies, had read something of 
 Dr. Priestley, and had gone so far as to entertain. 
 ' the idea of the bare possibility of a Socinian being, 
 a good man. In this opinion he felt himself con- 
 firmed, as he listened to the quiet strain of the 
 evening preacher's grave and earnest discourse- 
 There was no theology to vex him, for the topic ,- 
 " a good conscience," is common to most theo- 
 
286 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 logies. So the listener reasoned, it is just because 
 these men neglect theology that they remain con- 
 tent with views " so grossly erroneous " as theirs. 
 He left the building, with heightened respect it is 
 true, yet touched all the more deeply with " a very 
 sincere concern " for the pioneers of the new 
 movement. Recording these impressions, after 
 the lapse of a generation, he adds this striking 
 •confession, " Little did he then suspect, that 
 further and more diligent and impartial inquiry 
 would induce him to embrace a system from 
 which his mind, at that time, shrank with 
 horror. And, had it been foretold to him that, 
 in the course of years and the revolution of events, 
 lie should himself become the disciple, the friend, 
 the successor, and the biographer of the person 
 who was then speaking . . ^ he would have 
 regarded it as an event almost without the wide 
 circle of possibilities, and as incredible as the 
 incidents of an Arabian tale." 
 
 It can hardly be needful to explain that, on that 
 memorable January night, the preacher was 
 Theophilus Lindsey and the hearer was Thomas 
 Belsham. I wish we could see them, as they then 
 faced each other. Lindsey we can indeed see, per- ' 
 f ectly well. His picture exhibits him to us to-day, 
 exactly as he looked to Belsham. The only 
 portrait of Belsham we have, thirty years later 
 in date, by no means suggests a man whose chief 
 recreation was horsemanship ; nor does it in any 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 287 
 
 way enable us to conjecture back the fresh image 
 of his vigorous prime. An irreverent jester once 
 proposed to relabel it " Cardinal Hippopotamus." 
 A mischievous sceptic put the question, " Is it 
 possible that man really believed in the resur- 
 rection of that body ? " There are men who are 
 not much to look at ; and there are men who are 
 too much to look at. Oliver Heywood is one of 
 these (his latest biographer calls him " the Great 
 Oliver"); so is Matthew Henry. The picture of 
 Belsham afflicts one with the spectacle of an 
 exaggerated bulk. Let us pass from the effigy, 
 and try to discover the man. 
 
 The father of Thomas Belsham, an Independent 
 minister and the author of some Latin poems, 
 was, it is believed, the original hero of a story 
 which has been retailed of later and less poetical 
 divines. Preaching as a candidate for a Scottish 
 charge, where the leading elders were a laird and 
 a physician, James Belsham, who professed him- 
 self a moderate Calvinist, dined with the physi- 
 cian and supped with the laird. " Sir," said the 
 physician at dinner, "I like your moderation, but 
 God forgie your Calvinism." " Man," exclaimed 
 the laird, after a hearty supper, " your Cal- 
 vinism's vera weel, but de'il tak your moderation." 
 Belsham's mother was the daughter of a brewer, 
 the granddaughter of a knight, the great-grand- 
 daughter of an earl ; we will go no further. This 
 earl, we may observe, was not merely a statesman 
 
288 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 of distinction, but is said to have been the first 
 peer of the realm who collected a great library — 
 collected and paid for it ; there have been peers 
 who have collected libraries by a simpler process. 
 From his mother, Belsham received, at the outset 
 of life, a characteristic injunction, neither to take 
 his politics from Junius, nor his theology from 
 Priestley. One of Belsham's sisters was married 
 to an Irish dean; hence his visits to Ireland; 
 hence, too, perhaps, the easy tone he took in his 
 relations with ecclesiastical dignitaries. 
 
 Till he went to Daventry Academy in his seven- 
 teenth year, his theology was purely that of 
 the Assembly's catechism. He soon became a 
 Clarkean, and remained unshaken in this persua- 
 sion until he was seven-and-thirty. That is to 
 say, he ascribed to our Lord every divine attribute, 
 saving only self -existence. Whether this is 
 orthodox or not has been disputed. Clarke main- 
 tained that it was. Belsham never did. He 
 thought it Biblical, and therefore true. He was a 
 Trinitarian on these terms. Nevertheless, he had 
 the distinct conviction that he was beginning life, 
 strongly evangelical in religion, but in theology 
 a Nonconformist. 
 
 Not reckoning the episode of a three years' 
 ministry at Worcester, of the usual Independent 
 type, Belsham was connected with Daventry 
 Academy as student and tutor, for a period of 
 twenty years. He never liked the locality. 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 289 
 
 which he describes as a " mean and dirty place." 
 Could he have had his way, the Academy would 
 have been transferred to Worcester, to North- 
 ampton, or to Warwick. To the Daventry ideal 
 of theological education he remained constant 
 through life. The genius of Daventry, inherited 
 from Jennings and Doddridge, was inherently 
 eclectic. Truth was sought by a method of 
 comparative theology. The teacher placed com- 
 peting systems before his class ; the learners were 
 to be not mere pupils but students. The aids of 
 friendly debate between teachers and learners 
 were not disdained ; we have seen that, in 
 Priestley's time, the teachers themselves took 
 different sides on fundamental questions. 
 
 In the last year of his studentship, Belsham had 
 supplied the place of a classical tutor. On the 
 completion of his course, he was appointed Tutor, 
 not in classics as he desired, but in mathematics, 
 logic, and metaphysics; and in this post he re- 
 mained for seven years. Meanwhile he had 
 plenty of overtures from congregations. He had 
 made up his mind on two points : not to be a com- 
 peting candidate; nor to listen to any but a 
 unanimous call. Only the precarious nature of 
 an assistant tutorship drew him at length from 
 Daventry; he returned to it in his thirty-second 
 year, as to the work of his life. For eight years 
 he combined the headship of the Academy with 
 the pastorate of the congregation. On his settle- 
 
290 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 ment, his friend Radclifie Scholefield sent him a 
 recipe for polishing tables, accompan5dng it with 
 a lament over the fatal fact that there was no 
 formula by which he could, " with the same ease 
 and certainty," polish the minds of his pupils. 
 
 As Divinity Tutor, Belsham innovated, in an 
 important respect, upon established methods. 
 Doddridge's lectures had hitherto been the text- 
 book; lectures which built up a system by con- 
 fronting, comparing and Biblically testing rival 
 views. Belsham took Doddridge's order of 
 topics, but in regard to some of those most con- 
 troverted, he made his treatment directly Biblical. 
 A strong reason with him for adopting this treat- 
 ment was the failure of the text-book method to 
 counteract the current of Unitarianism. Under 
 each head he collected the passages of Scripture 
 bearing, or supposed to bear, upon it. On every 
 passage he furnished a catena of interpretations 
 and comments, so selected as fairly to exhibit the 
 various schools of thought, in direct contact with 
 that which all assumed as their foundation. His 
 own critique concluded the survey. Four years' 
 pursuit of this method had consequences which 
 disturbed him. Though still a Clarkean, he could 
 no longer, with Clarke, consider himself to be a 
 Trinitarian. He wrote frankly to the Academy 
 Trustees, and they were satisfied with his position. 
 Two years later he was alarmed by the progress of 
 Socinian views among his best pupils. To settle 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 291 
 
 their minds, he had nothing better to offer than a 
 reconsideration of the BibHcal data. With each 
 annual revision of his lectures, the anti-Socinian 
 proof passages kept diminishing in number; yet 
 he could appeal with justified confidence to the 
 residuary texts, which had stood the test of 
 scrutiny. Before the close of 1788 the residuum 
 had been reduced to zero in this purifying process. 
 Belsham's eyes were almost suddenly opened. 
 He had taken what he thought the only sound and 
 certain course for staying the Unitarian move- 
 ment ; he found himself cornered by the Unitarian 
 argument. Nay more, the very doctrine from 
 which, up to the last moment, he had recoiled, 
 now dropped into his mind like the keystone of an 
 arch, giving permanent .stability and consistence 
 alike to his theology and his religion. 
 
 He did not hesitate to resign his post (25th 
 January, 1789), and the resignation was accepted 
 by the four Trustees, three of whom, it may be 
 interesting to know, were also Trustees of Dr. 
 Williams' foundations. It has been said that 
 the terms of the Trust left no option. On the 
 contrary, it was admitted that a Unitarian might 
 fulfil every condition of the Trust with literal 
 fidelity, but then the Founder's purpose would 
 be ignored. There were some who blamed Bel- 
 sham for not doing this. One of the Trustees 
 writes thus for the rest, in words which Belsham 
 endorses: — " Rigid interpretations are the acts of 
 
292 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 weak minds, but a regard to general intention 
 marks the mind that wishes to act right." The 
 strangest part of the whole business was the action 
 of his Daventry flock, showing that congregations^ 
 are not always as unsympathetic as ministers- 
 sometimes think them. At the outset, while 
 avowing that he had " not the least fault to find 
 with " them personally, he had affirmed that their 
 " temper and spirit " were " enough to strike any 
 minister with terror." Later, he described them 
 as " chiefly of the lower classes of people," and for 
 the most part " steady Trinitarians," adding that 
 they were nevertheless "very affectionate.'" 
 They proved the truth of this last remark, when,, 
 knowing that their minister had resigned the 
 Academy as a Unitarian,, they still wished him to 
 remain their pastor. 
 
 Twice, while he was at Daventry, had an effort 
 been made (1785 and 1786) to transfer Belsham to 
 Warrington. The Academy there had been 
 closed (1783), but not dissolved, and its friends 
 were sanguine of Belsham's power to revive it. 
 He had fancied for a moment (1785) that this 
 might lead to an amalgamation of the two- 
 institutions; but, though he wavered a little, it 
 is clear that the Warrington overtures were not to- 
 his mind; nor did he estimate the Warrington 
 tradition at the rate to which its admirers are 
 accustomed. As late as 1814 he contrasts " the 
 theological discussions of Daventry " with " War- 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 293 
 
 rington cold morality, and thfeological ignorance 
 and indifference." This, doubtless, refers to 
 Warrington's declining days, for he speaks with 
 veneration of Aikin (who had been his first school- 
 master), and to Dr. John Taylor he pays (i8og) a 
 noble tribute: "He thought much himself, and 
 he taught others to think; and though he did not 
 advance so far as others have since done, yet the 
 most enlightened of modern divines would pro- 
 bably not have known so much, or understood the 
 Scriptures so well, if Dr. Taylor had not gone 
 before them to clear the road." 
 
 No sooner was his resignation made known than 
 he received an invitation, through Dr. Price, to 
 become resident Tutor in the New College at 
 Hackney. At first he declined; pressure from 
 Lindsey and Priestley produced his acceptance. 
 Here he had a hard task in hand. Hackney Col- 
 lege was a Liberty Hall. Its alumni met the dis- 
 ciplinary regulations of the committee with 
 " resolutions to resist their tjranny, couched in 
 terms as energetic as if all liberty, civil and 
 religious, were endangered." One Sunday a 
 leading spirit suggested that it would be a good 
 thing " to have a republican supper, and invite 
 Paine." This was before the " Age of Reason " 
 <i794), and was a tribute to the " Rights of Man " 
 (1791). Paine " was much pleased," and there 
 was " the most glorious republican party that the 
 walls of the College ever contained." Paine told 
 
294 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 them of " a club at Sheffield of 1,500 republicans, 
 chiefly manufacturers " ; they thought it " the 
 bud of a revolution." One of these promising 
 politicians, in the gaiety of his heart, inflicted a 
 cruel mischief on his country. The Birmingham 
 riots of 1791 found their excuse, and perhaps 
 their proximate cause, in an inflammatory hand- 
 bill, circulated a few days before the outbreak. 
 This spark upon powder was the work of a student 
 from Hackney College. 
 
 Belsham's appointment was welcomed by the 
 students, and his influence was not without a 
 sedative effect; but still he was no head of the 
 College, until he received fresh powers, four years 
 after his appointment; and then it was too late. 
 Further, the admirers of Paine's republicanism 
 followed Paine into Deism. Belsham found that 
 his " studious " and " virtuous " pupils had lost 
 faith in Christianity; and " this," he writes, " is 
 an evil to which no remedy can be applied ; actions 
 may be restrained, but thoughts must be left 
 free." Owing to the double difficulty, the in- 
 stitution was closed in 1796. Next year Belsham 
 was again invited to a divinity chair, • as the 
 successor of Barnes in Manchester College. He 
 declined, doubting the permanence of Manchester 
 College, and feeling sure that he could not give 
 satisfaction to the Lancashire Arians. Though 
 he entered into no direct connection with Man- 
 chester College, he had some share in forming the 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 295 
 
 mind of one who was long at its head; Charles 
 Wellbeloved was for two years his pupil at 
 Hackney. 
 
 Disappointed in the hope of a colleagueship 
 with Priestley at Hackney, in 1792, he was elected 
 Priestley's successor two years later. Of his 
 eleven years' ministry at the Gravel Pit, he says, 
 "It is not in imagination to conceive a con- 
 nection . . . more happy. What freedom of 
 speech, what encouragement . . . what kind 
 affection ! " Strong motives were needed to 
 draw him away to Essex Street. His settlement 
 there in 1805 marks the close of an era in the 
 Unitarian movement. His twenty years of 
 active service at Essex Street, closing syn- 
 chronously with the foundation of the British and 
 Foreign Unitarian Association, constitute a period 
 of transition. 
 
 It will be remembered that when Lindsey 
 resigned Catterick (1773), he put aside oppor- 
 tunities of Nonconformist service in favour of a 
 project of his own, namely, " to try to gather a 
 Church of Unitarian Christians out of the Estab- 
 lished Church." He hoped for a considerable 
 Unitarian secession from this quarter, and for a 
 sufficient number of seceding clergy to minister 
 to the movement. The motive for the secession 
 was to maintain a purified worship, with a 
 revised Prayer Book, containing a version of the 
 Apostles' Creed. He did not wish " ever to 
 
296 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 treat of controversial matters " from the pulpit. 
 The worship must be Unitarian ; the preaching 
 might well be limited to the common ground of 
 Christian religion. Lindsey from the first had 
 wanted a colleague at Essex Street, and was in 
 despair of a coadjutor, when at length, after nine 
 years' solitary labour, the timely secession of 
 Disney gave him a colleague, and ultimately a 
 successor. Even Disney can hardly be said to 
 have kept firmly on Lindsey's lines. During the 
 last three years of his ministry the Prayer Book in 
 use was of his own composition, and bore no 
 relation to the Anglican service. On his resigna- 
 tion " every- possible inquiry was made after 
 some seceding clergyman " as his successor, " but 
 to no purpose." 
 
 Some modification of Lindsey's scheme was 
 therefore imperative. That Lindsey worked hard 
 to secure the appointment of Belsham, as Disney's 
 successor, is proof that he himself saw this, more 
 clearly than some others did. The Prayer Book 
 of Anglican pattern, minus the creed, was brought 
 back (Belsham says, " at the express desire of the 
 Duke of Grafton "), but there was no endeavour 
 to avoid doctrinal preaching, always a feature, 
 though not a predominant feature, of Belsham's 
 ministrations. Far more significant was the 
 tacit .surrender of the aim to lead an Anglican 
 exodus, and the frank acceptance of the call to a 
 progressive work within the confines of Dissent. 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 297 
 
 We are so accustomed to think of Belsham as 
 above all things a Unitarian, that we ignore the 
 limits within which ^lone he thought it right to 
 ■describe himself as such. In 1791 he had drawn 
 the preamble of the Unitarian Society, in terms 
 meant, as he explained, to have the effect of 
 :shutting out Arians. Ignoring this intention, 
 Richard Price, not being formally excluded, 
 joined the society. To Price, as to Lindsey 
 ■originally, Unitarianism was a term of religion; 
 it meant the worship of the Father only. Belsham 
 argued that there was no security for this worship, 
 •apart from the acknowledgment of the simple 
 humanity of Christ. A consistent Arian, he 
 maintained, ought to worship Christ. Hence, if 
 he could have done so, he would have restricted 
 the application of the term Unitarian to the 
 holders of a purely humanitarian Christology. 
 Accordingly he proposed to attach it simply to 
 individuals, and to propagandist societies, not to 
 •ecclesiastical bodies. This policy he pursued 
 with great tenacity in both directions ; drawing a 
 :sharp line of distinction between temporary 
 associations to advocate a defined theology, and 
 permanent religious institutions to be kept open 
 for progress. 
 
 " Some months ago," writes a correspondent 
 (February, 1814) of the Monthly Repository 
 '" happening to be in London, and passing along 
 JEssex Street, it delighted me to see ' Unitarian 
 
298 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 Chapel ' inscribed on the new portico of that 
 house, dear to the mind of every friend of truth 
 from having been consecrated to the worship of 
 One God by Theophilus Lindsey. But, Sir, 
 proportioned to my gratification on this occasion,, 
 was my concern and surprise the other day, in 
 passing the same spot, to perceive that the 
 original, honourable, and characteristic inscription 
 had been erased, and the words ' Essex Street 
 Chapel ' substituted in its stead." 
 
 Though no answer is recorded, we can easily 
 supply the true one. In the interim had occurred 
 the passing of the Trinity Act (July 22nd, 1813);, 
 of which the point was this, that while in title it 
 seemed a mere Relief Act for Unitarians, both in 
 form and in effect it was a Relief Act for Dis- 
 senters generally. Every Anglican was still 
 bound by law to be a Trinitarian, but the whole 
 of Dissent was now freed from this statutory 
 obligation. It was now possible and proper, so 
 thought Belsham, for Unitarians to act as an 
 integral part of Protestant Dissent. It was their 
 business and duty to prove themselves an in- 
 fluential ingredient in that larger whole. 
 
 Four months after the passing of the Act, he 
 had written thus (28th November, 1813) to 
 Robert Aspland: — "I think you have borne a 
 little hard upon Dr. Enfield, Dr. Priestley, and 
 others of that standing, who, labouring under all 
 manner of abuse from their orthodox opponents,. 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 299 
 
 took to themselves the name of ' Rational 
 Christians ' or ' Rational Dissenters,' as a counter- 
 balance to that of ' orthodox,' ' evangelical,' &c., 
 assumed by their opponents. Indeed, I never 
 quarrel with any party for giving themselves a 
 good name, as they are sure to be sufficiently 
 plied by their adversaries with epithets of evil 
 repute." 
 
 Long before the passing of the Trinity Act, he 
 had objected to the establishing (1806) of the 
 Unitarian Fund, a society for missionary pur- 
 poses. This has been ascribed to his " almost 
 constitutional distaste to popular movements." 
 To the last " his feelings were against them," 
 though his judgment came to be " for them." 
 The truth is, he was afraid that a great cause 
 would get into the hands of shallow men, and so 
 lose its influence. On this point he was converted . 
 By 1812 he admits that the Unitarian Fund 
 society " holds the foremost rank," that it has 
 " demonstrated the fallacy of the commonly 
 received opinion, that Unitarianism is not a 
 religion for the common people," and that " after 
 the success which has attended the efforts of this 
 Society, no person who is a real friend to the 
 cause can consistently be hostile to its principle." 
 Through this " hearty sanction of popular plans," 
 whUe himself identified with " the aristocracy of 
 Unitarianism," he exercised, as has been well said, 
 a "harmonizing influence," which brought the 
 
300 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 advocates of opposite methods to a mutual under- 
 standing and respect. 
 
 He was not converted to Aspland's plan of a 
 Unitarian Academy (1812) with a two years' 
 course of instruction to cover all branches, yet he 
 did not withhold a generous pecuniary aid. 
 
 Needless to say that Belsham was blind to the 
 advantages of denominational organization. " I 
 was brought up an Independent," he says, " and 
 I am unwilling to bow to any authority beyond 
 the limit of my own congregation." Writing to 
 Aspland (14th November, 1818) he thus expresses 
 himself, " If I wished the Unitarians to become a 
 powerful political sect, I should be a warm friend 
 to that grand scheme of federal union, of which I 
 heard so much in Lancashire. But as a friend to 
 truth and liberty, which I think much impeded 
 by such associations, I must dissent from them. 
 Nor can I approve of any plans for separating 
 Unitarians from their fellow Christians, more than 
 is absolutely necessary. We are the salt of the 
 earth. But a lump of salt, lying by itself, wiU 
 never fertilize the ground. It must be mixed and 
 blended with the earth, in order to manure the 
 soil and produce a copious harvest." The simile 
 is shrewd. Unhappily, there were already signs, 
 unmarked by Belsham, that the soil, mistaking 
 its place, was on the eve of invading the salt- 
 boxes. The protracted struggle, which began in 
 1817, and never took breath till the achievement 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 301 
 
 of the Dissenters' Chapels Act in 1844, drew 
 Unitarians closer together ; on the other hand, it 
 broke them off from the main body of Dissent. 
 Hence it seems to me that Belsham's policy, 
 equally with that of Lindsey, was frustrated by 
 events. Both schemes were Utopian. The first 
 failed, because Anglicans declined to follow suit. 
 The second was wrecked by active hostility of 
 Dissenters, roused against the internal disorder, 
 by whatever name designated, which threatened 
 to benefit them. 
 
 It was in accord with this policy that Bel- 
 sham consistently refused to countenance the 
 formation (1819) of the Unitarian Association, for 
 protecting the civil rights of Unitarians. He 
 wrote strongly against it, on the ground that the 
 civil rights of Unitarians were simply those of all 
 Dissenters, and anything which should seem to 
 detach them from the main body was suicidal. 
 " I demur," he writes (29th January, 1819) to 
 Lant Carpenter, " to the prudence and propriety 
 of the Unitarians separating themselves from the 
 rest of the Nonconf 01 mists, and establishing 
 themselves as a distinct sect. This sectarian 
 spirit, however it may tend to strengthen a party,, 
 appears to me to be unfriendly to the spirit of 
 religion and the investigation of truth. Every 
 sect must have its shibboleth. You must be 
 tender to the errors of those who belong to your 
 party, however gross or important, lest you. 
 
302 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 weaken your interest. Whereas, religion is wholly 
 a personal thing; and the investigation of truth 
 requires unlimited freedom from restraint. . . . 
 I sometimes suspect that the cause was advancing 
 more steadily when it advanced more silently, and 
 that many are bawlers for a speculative system, 
 who are strangers to the religion of the heart." 
 
 Yet it is perhaps not surprising that Belsham's 
 posthumous fame should be mainly that of a 
 controversialist. His powers and his prowess 
 were great, and the motive for their exercise was 
 no personal impulse, but the feeling that he stood 
 for the vigilant defence of a sacred charge. He 
 took up the cause of Priestley in exile, with none 
 of Priestley's genius, but with far more caution, 
 far more deliberateness, far more pungency, far 
 more present effect. More successful than Priest- 
 ley in drawing Arians into the arena, he perhaps 
 bore himself towards them as too keen an 
 antagonist, at least they thought so. His 
 grandiose style possessed the kind of dignity 
 which suited the taste of the age, and admirably 
 fitted his purpose. He controverted bishops with 
 a weight and point which could not be ignored, 
 addressing them as from a secure elevation, and 
 with exasperating blandness. In a biography 
 otherwise excellent, he has clothed Lindsey in 
 purple, when perhaps fine linen would have been 
 more appropriate to the mah; but the sentiment 
 of veneration was rightly directed. The epigram 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 303 
 
 which closed his accotint with Horsley, long 
 rankled in episcopal breasts; Referring to the 
 controversy with Priestley, he remarked that 
 " both the contending parties retired from the 
 field equally w^U satisfied with the result of the 
 conflict; Dr. Priestley with his victory, and Dr. 
 Horsley with his mitre." 
 
 In theological system, Belsham made no ad- 
 vance on the position he reached at Daventry. 
 His " Calm Inquiry " (1811) is substantially a 
 digest and recast of his lectures of 1789. His 
 items of doctrine were few, and strongly held; 
 they formed the basis of his practical religion. 
 Yet while he felt this ground to be always firm 
 beneath his feet, he was nevertheless an inquirer 
 and a critic to the last. It has been said of him 
 that " he had no conception of dangerous truths 
 and useful errors." In Biblical criticism his 
 strides were alarming to conservative Unitarians. 
 In 1807 he called attention to the composite 
 character of the Pentateuch. Four years pre- 
 viously, Priestley had opened his " Notes on the 
 Bible" with the words: "I see no reason to 
 entertain a doubt of Moses being the writer of the 
 first five books of the Old Testament." Priestley 
 proceeds to treat the account of creation as of 
 divine authority, though he thinks there were 
 other creations subsequent to the deluge, which 
 will account, among other things, for the special 
 fauna and flora of America. In fact, the Unit- 
 
304 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 arians stuck fast in Genesis till 1821; it was- 
 Belsham who pulled them out. In a famous 
 sermon at Warrington that year (19th August) he 
 declared and proved that the Hebrew cosmogony 
 is irreconcilable with the teachings of modern 
 science. The Monthly Repository teemed with the 
 indignant reproaches of writers, who deemed it an 
 impiety to imagine that, after the lucid narrations 
 of Moses, there was anything to be learned 
 respecting the original constitution of the globe. 
 
 To Belsham, as responsible editor, we owe a 
 revised, or, as he entitled it, an improved version 
 (1808) of the New Testament. The admirable 
 introduction, and most of the notes, are his. The 
 text is not his, being mainly the translation by 
 Archbishop Newcome. Belsham would have left 
 Newcome's version to speak for itself, but was 
 overruled by a committee, which insisted on 
 revising Newcome. With this version it used to 
 be common to reproach Unitarians; it has its 
 weak points, and is avowedly tentative; but 
 even after the work of the revisers of 1881 it has 
 its value. Its endeavour to exhibit typographic- 
 ally distinct strata in the Gospels, if a crude 
 initial effort, was nevertheless a suggestive 
 beginning. 
 
 In a letter of 1819, addressed to John Kenrick, 
 he shows that he did not let his mind sleep in 
 regard to New Testament problems. "I love 
 German criticism," he says, "as much as I dis- 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 305 
 
 like German theology. ... I think the origin of 
 the four evangelists is a very great difficulty. If 
 the four histories existed in their present form, in 
 the time of Justin Martyr, it is most unaccount- 
 able that he should never quote them by name. 
 ... I suspect that the number was never fixed to 
 four till Irenaeus made the notable discovery that 
 there must be four Gospels, and no more, because 
 there are four winds. . . . Still, however, the main 
 part of the respective Gospels must have been 
 written by the authors to whom they are attri- 
 buted, otherwise, how could the whole Christian 
 world be so unanimous in ascribing them to those 
 authors ? But before they were universally known 
 and acknowledged, I am inclined to believe that 
 those who were in possession of early copies made 
 additions of narratives, which they believed to be 
 authentic." 
 
 Belsham himself appeared as a translator and 
 expositor in his edition (1822), of the Pauline 
 Epistles. In the main he follows Dr. John 
 Taylor, but with an important development of 
 principle. " An expositor," he says, " will not 
 feel himself bound to warp and strain a text from 
 its plain and obvious meaning because that mean- 
 ing is erroneous, and to adopt some unusual and 
 far-fetched interpretation in order to reconcile it 
 to the truth, because, at all events, the proposition 
 must be justified; but he will endeavour to find 
 out the true meaning of the author, according to 
 
3o6 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 the established and approved rules of interpreta- 
 tion, leaving the whole responsibility, whether 
 for the sense, the truth, or the reasoning of the 
 passage, upon the author himself, without any 
 pain for the result." That is to say, in his view, 
 inspiration related only to the essentials of 
 Christianity; the Apostle's mode of advocating 
 them was his own. 
 
 Thinking thus freely himself, Belsham was not 
 the man to advocate restraints on thinking, even 
 when the conclusions reached were most abhor- 
 rent to his own mind. He lived in an age when 
 Richard CarlUe was fined ;fi,5oo, and imprisoned 
 for three years, for publishing the works of Paine. 
 Even Unitarians wrote in their magaziae approv- 
 ing the sentence. In the course of a noble reply, 
 Belsham observes that in dealing with those who 
 bring charges against Christianity, " the proper, 
 though not altogether the easiest method would 
 be, to inquire how far the charges are just; to 
 separate the gold from the dross, Christianity from 
 its corruptions, what is defensible from what is 
 indefensible, and thus to show that true Christian- 
 ity is a gem of unspeakable value; that it con- 
 tains nothing unreasonable, nothing mean, no- 
 thing contemptible; but that it is a doctrine of 
 great moral importance, which every good man 
 must at least wish to be true. Had Paine's ' Age 
 of Reason ' been treated in this manner, I am 
 fully convinced that it would not have done a 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 307 
 
 tenth part of the mischief, of which it is now said 
 to have been productive." 
 
 I have not dealt with Belsham's philosophy; 
 and perhaps he was not a philosopher. For he 
 never could_ see the validity of the distinction 
 between the views of Priestley and those of Price. 
 " The simple question between Dr. Priestley and 
 Dr. Price, was," says Belsham, " whether the 
 principle of perception was separable or insepar- 
 able from certain modifications of attraction and 
 repulsion. Dr. Priestley maintained that they 
 were inseparable, and Dr. Price that they were 
 never separated. Just as in the case of the two 
 Churches of Rome and England, one claims to be 
 infallible, and the other maintains that it never 
 •errs. But, for this difference, Dr. Price is 
 applauded as an immaterialist, and Dr. Priestley 
 is vilified as a materialist. I certainly go as far 
 as Dr. Price, and I do not go quite so far as Dr. 
 Priestley. Because my philosophic friend re- 
 garded attraction and repulsion as divine energies, 
 which appeared to me to verge upon pantheism. 
 ... So that in truth I cannot say to which of the 
 two appellations I am entitled ; whether I am a 
 poor, despised, degraded materialist, who believe 
 that perception, attraction, and repulsion are 
 inseparable, or a sublime and exalted immaterial- 
 ist, who believe that, though not inseparable, 
 they are, in fact, never separated." On the 
 question of the determination of the will, Belsham 
 
3o8 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 had no doubt whatever that he was with Priestley 
 and against Price. There are few expositions of 
 determinism more forcible and lucid than will be 
 found in his "Elements" (1801) of philosophy, 
 mental and moral. 
 
 Strong elements of pathos are to be found in his 
 story; on these I will not dwell. A year after his 
 settlement at Essex Street, he was already in his 
 feelings an old man, though not yet fifty-seven. 
 The abiding impression that his days were few, 
 simply made him more intent on tasks which he 
 hoped to finish, and did, in fact, accomplish. As 
 the ablest of his critics has said : " He had little 
 originality ; he had less imagination ; but he had 
 unfailing diligence." In his last years, spent as 
 " an invalid and a cripple," he was still at work. 
 The key to his life may be found in these words 
 which he wrote on New Year's Day, 1799, "While 
 I live, I am desirous of being useful. ... If I 
 can do little myself, I will endeavour to rejoice if 
 others are more active, more able, and more 
 successful. I am not serving a party; I am not 
 seeking mine own honour and emolument; my 
 object, my sole ambition, is to promote the know- 
 ledge of Christ, and his genuine Gospel." 
 
 One word about Belsham in the most important 
 light of all. Williams' life of him has never had a 
 voice raised in its favour. It is a volume, or 
 rather a morass, of seven hundred and ninety-one 
 pages, without chapters, or index, or table ol 
 
THOMAS BELSHAM 309 
 
 contents; with nothing to guide you but the 
 year-dates heading the pages, and the years are 
 not always consecutive. It is ill-arranged, de- 
 fective, inaccurate, diffuse. Yet it has its place 
 among my favourite books. Its value lies in this, 
 that it permits a very close approach to the inner 
 life of a man of deep religious experience. The 
 redeeming element of the book is to be found in 
 the passages from Belsham's private diary, at all 
 stages of his career; and this diary is his con- 
 fessional. Here are his prayers, his sighs, his 
 doubts, his hopes, his despondences, his frank 
 addresses to God in sunshine and in gloom. The 
 phases of his theology have their connecting-link 
 in the unbroken constancy of his faith in God. 
 Superficially he was not an emotional man, but 
 his preaching and his work were the outcome of a 
 sensitive soul, living continually in the divine 
 presence. When the end came (he died unmarried 
 on II November, 1829) they laid him beside 
 Lindsey, with this inscription, expressing at once 
 his most cherished feeling and his paramount aim : 
 " The friend, associate, and successor of Priestley 
 and Lindsey; with them he devoted his life and 
 talents to revive and diffuse the knowledge of the 
 true religion of Jesus." 
 
 We look back, that we may look forward. We 
 scan the past that we may gain lessons for use in 
 the present, as we strive to build up the future. 
 Belsham thought that in the eighteenth century 
 
310 THOMAS BELSHAM 
 
 the prospects of liberal religion looked brighter 
 than in the early part of the nineteenth. We 
 have to try to understand how it was that great 
 ideals were disappointed ; for then we may conse- 
 crate ourselves to the cause of truth with more 
 intelligent aim. Betterness is not in times, but 
 in men. Other times will come; but merely to 
 place hopes in better times is to be blind to the 
 patent and pressing opportunities of our own 
 living age. The world of to-day needs our work 
 and needs our presentation of the Gospel. Our 
 prayer must be that God may so clear our eyes 
 that we may see our way ; and so strengthen our 
 hearts that we pursue it with the simplicity of 
 devotion, the force of purpose, the breadth of 
 spirit, which we venerate in the best of our 
 forerunners. 
 
 5 October, i8g8. 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 
 AND 
 MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 
 
Richard Wright. — Born, 1764; Minister at 
 Wisbech, 1794-1810; Travelling Missionary, 1806- 
 22; Minister at Trowbridge, 1822-27; Minister at 
 Kirkstead, 1827-36; Died 1836. 
 
X 
 
 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 AND MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 
 
 WHEN the apprentice was discovered picking 
 dead flies out of the currants, his master 
 assured him that he was not born to be a shop- 
 keeper, and that he had better study for the 
 ministry. Richard Wright, whose memory seems 
 worthy to be revived, though early initiated in 
 the mysteries of shopkeeping, was evidently not 
 to the manner born; and if we take "study " in a 
 broad, general, and very practical sense, and not 
 with any technical limitation of the term, we may 
 truly say that he studied, and studied hard, for 
 the ministry which he fulfilled and refreshed. 
 
 Richard, son of Richard, first saw the light in a 
 labourer's cottage at Blakeney, a seafaring place, 
 once, indeed, a seaport of some moment for 
 •commerce with Germany, lying on the north 
 •coast of Norfolk, between Wells and Cromer, but 
 nearer to the former. His natal day was 7th 
 February, 1764; and though it has little or no 
 bearing on his story, it may be said in passing 
 that 1764 was a year of mark in the literary 
 annals both of this country and of France and 
 
314 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 Italy. In 1764 Voltaire produced his Dictionnaire 
 PMlosophique, an epitome of his glittering genius ; 
 Rousseau his Emile — with all its eccentricities, 
 the foundation of modern ideas of education;. 
 Reid his " Inquiry into the Human Mind on the 
 Principles of Common Sense," thereby founding 
 that system of natural realism long known as the 
 Scottish philosophy, though directed against 
 Hume; Goldsmith his "History of England," 
 the book in which the story of our country was 
 first made interesting to the young; Walpole his 
 " Castle of Otranto," pioneer of the romantic 
 school; while Beccaria, author of the pregnant 
 phrase, " the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number," put forth his epoch-making treatise on 
 " Crimes and Punishments." In ecclesiastical 
 annals, 1764 was the year in which WUliam 
 Robertson, the " Father of Unitarian noncon- 
 formity," as Lindsey called him, resigned his Irish 
 preferments, and Lindsey himself set on foot his 
 Sunday-school at Catterick. 
 
 When Richard was five years old, an enter- 
 prising speculator, known as " the ingenious Mr. 
 Cobb," projected a company to revive the 
 Blakeney fisheries, and so restore to the little 
 place something of its ancient importance. Had 
 this succeeded, Richard might have found an. 
 opening for business life in his native place.; but 
 the scheme came to nothing, and Blakeney's good 
 harbour sees little trade. 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 315 
 
 Richard's parents were originally of the 
 Anglican persuasion, and his mother, Anne 
 Wright (1732-1810) was a woman of superior 
 class, strong mind, and fair education, claiming 
 a cousinship with Sir John Fenn (well known as 
 the first editor of the Paston Letters), and 
 de"^oting herself to the training and teaching of 
 her six children, of whom Richard was the eldest 
 son. The reader may determine whether it was 
 proof of continued activity of mind, or of senile 
 decay, that she became a Unitarian at the age of 
 seventy. Richard, however, was sent to school 
 by a relative, a prosperous farmer, whose name 
 does not appear; neither does the place of 
 Richard's schooling. Blakeney had certainly lost 
 the educational advantages which it possessed 
 in the thirteenth century, when John Bacon- 
 thorpe, Doctor Resolutus and Princeps Aver- 
 roistarum, began his studies in the Carmelite 
 monastery, whose ruined arches yet remain. Nor 
 could his schooling have been long, for this 
 relative, from whom the family had expectations, 
 died when Richard was twelve — the age up to 
 which, according to Emile, the child should be 
 taught nothing — ^and by this time the family was 
 out of favour ; for they had dropped into Dissent, 
 forsaking the ancient parish church whose lofty 
 tower forms a mariner's landmark on the Norfolk 
 coast-line. Having toiled as a farmer's boy, and 
 done duty as a page, Richard went on trial to an 
 
3i6 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 Anglican shopkeeper at Holt, who did business 
 on Sundays; and was thereafter apprenticed to 
 a Dissenting blacksmith — ^presumably at the 
 inland village of Guestwick, for it was there that, 
 on attaining the age of sixteen, he was admitted a 
 member of the Independent Church. This was a 
 society dating from 1652. It had enjoyed, with- 
 out undue hilarity, the services of some dis- 
 tinguished ministers, including one of the Ejected 
 Nonconformists. Its last pastor had been the 
 father of William Godwin, succeeding whom 
 John Sykes had lately begun his pastorate of 
 iorty-eight years' duration. The ministry was 
 Calvinistic, of the genuine unadulterated type, 
 '' not what is now called moderate Calvinism," as 
 Richard remarks. Sykes had no moderation. 
 " Still," says Richard, " I thank God that I was 
 once a Calvinist, that I have known by experience 
 what Calvinism is. It was one important step 
 in my progress. However erroneous, its peculiar 
 doctrines are perverted truths, and some precious 
 metal may be extracted from the baser materials." 
 Richard's defection from Calvinism had an 
 interesting origin. 
 
 The lad was not without ambition. " Panting 
 to emerge from the lowly vale where I was 
 placed " (as he afterwards expressed it), he be- 
 thought him of what he could do which would 
 render him " of some value in society." With 
 this longing for distinction he conjoined what may 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 317 
 
 be not unworthily described as a love of souls. 
 Without any outward suggestion or authorisation, 
 the young church member, when the labour at the 
 anvil was over for the day, began week evening 
 preaching in the neighbouring villages. Now, to- 
 hold Calvinism is one thing ; to make it the basis- 
 of evangelical appeal is quite another. No doubt, 
 the proffer of salvation is easy, even should a 
 conceivable non-election stand in the way of its- 
 acceptance. If the present of gold spectacles to- 
 the blind inmates of a workhouse should seem the 
 indication of a world-wide generosity, there might 
 still be some little inconsistency in accompanying 
 the gift -with the assurance that it could be of no- 
 use to those most in need of vision. It may per- 
 haps have been noticed that predestination ifr 
 usually preached to persons whose calling and 
 election is, by themselves at any rate, regarded as- 
 already pretty secure. However that may be, it 
 seems that the youthful missioner's village appeals- 
 insensibly acquired a slight Arminian taint. The 
 church-meeting had him up, heard him preach, 
 bade him abide their sanction; and, as he per- 
 severed, cast him off. They had not ratified the 
 exercise of his gifts ; and while the symptoms oi 
 heresy were but slender, the defiance of church 
 authority was sufficient ground for excommuni- 
 cating him on both counts. By this sentence 
 Richard, like his pastor's predecessor, was ejected. 
 into freedom, in more respects than one. The: 
 
3i8 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 Wesleyan Methodists got wind of his zeal and his 
 leanings, and gave him preaching opportunities, 
 though he never joined their Society. His 
 master, " judging that he would make a better 
 preacher than a smith," handed him back his 
 indentures in all kindness. His first call to a 
 regular ministry was from Norwich, where an 
 eccentric gentleman — surgeon, ornithologist, and 
 gospeller — named John Hunt, had recently built 
 a General Baptist chapel. This conjunction did 
 not last long; neither did the congregation. 
 Hunt, it may be suspected, was not an easy person 
 to get on with. 
 
 An opening came to Wright in connection with 
 another Baptist flock. There were Baptists in 
 Norwich of every variant type. From the leading 
 Particular Baptist church in 1778, the minister, 
 Samuel Fisher, had been dismissed for unsound- 
 ness in a non-doctrinal matter. He took with 
 him a following, and attached himself to the cause 
 ■of his friend, John Johnson, a native of Eccles, 
 who had developed peculiar views, and had 
 founded a distinct Baptist body. From the 
 perusal of certain of Johnson's pamphlets one 
 rises in some perplexity as to what precisely the 
 good man was driving at. His Calvinism was 
 modified, but not exactly mellowed. Adam's 
 guilt was not a heritable property, yet Adam's 
 brood needed as strong remedies as if it were. In 
 handling the doctrine of the Trinity Johnson 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 319 
 
 managed to confound the persons; hence the 
 Johnsonians were known also as the Sabellian 
 Baptists. It was not, indeed, quite unusual to 
 find Sabellians among Baptists, but Johnson 
 insisted on making a distinctive feature of this 
 view, and so took his place as a heresiarch For 
 Fisher, on these lines, a chapel was erected. Its 
 minister in my Norwich days was Henry Trevor, 
 an upholsterer, for in Norfolk it was not then 
 unknown for a Baptist pastor to be in business ; 
 one working village pastor was a butcher — ^like 
 the priests of the old Law. 
 
 Wright became a coadjutor to Fisher. In 
 Norwich he found books, and without other aid 
 he gained enough of Greek and Hebrew to enable 
 him to enter with intelligence into the Biblical 
 criticism of that day, which was mainly of a 
 textual character. Johnson, who was now over 
 seventy, had charge of congregations as far apart 
 as Liverpool and Wisbech j Wright gave occasional 
 assistance at both these places. His intercourse 
 with Johnson, whom he found " to a high degree 
 bigoted and dogmatic," led him to study " first 
 principles." Eventually a curious arrangement 
 was made, by which. Fisher and Wright were 
 associated, each to take six months at Norwich 
 and six at Wisbech alternately. The Wisbech 
 flock soon exhibited a preference for Wright. 
 Fisher, with reluctance, confined himself to Nor- 
 wich, leaving Wright at Wisbech in sole charge. 
 
320 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 Here, then, at the age of thirty, began Wright's 
 career as a missionary of Unitarianism. He had 
 first to complete his own conversion. From the 
 Sabellian position, with some hazy remains of 
 Calvinism, he advanced to Humanitarian doctrine, 
 without passing through the Arian stage. His 
 views becoming known, the Johnsonian Baptists 
 did as the Guestwick Independents had done 
 before — they excommunicated him. His own 
 congregation, " most of them," he says, " very 
 illiberal and bigoted," nevertheless felt they were 
 in the hands of an honest man, retained his ser- 
 vices, and were accordingly cut off from the body. 
 
 Acquaintance with their old Minute-booJc 
 assures us that, in the days before Wright they 
 had not been in all respects a happy family. 
 Extracts in full would be undesirable. Un- 
 fortunately, the ladies had voices in the church- 
 meeting, and their remarks to one another were 
 both critical and caustic. It is recorded of two 
 married ladies, that one took upon herself to 
 reproach the other for an apparel too gaudy to be 
 consonant either with Baptist principles or with 
 her own advancing years; the aggrieved one 
 retorted by pictorially and pointedly designating 
 her censor a " goggle-eyed " — ^puppy's mother, 
 in a word. Standing in a mouldy graveyard in 
 rear of the little edifice in Deadman's Lane, it has 
 been possible to gaze on the contiguous tomb- 
 stones of these outspoken heroines. 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 321 
 
 With the arrival of Wright, the Minute-book 
 becomes much less graphic. The course he took 
 for the religious instruction of his people is worth 
 noting. They had been in the habit, he says, " of 
 laying an undue stress on their own opinions, and 
 of thinking that those who differed from them 
 were not Christians, and could not be saved." 
 So he began by teaching them " the value of 
 piety, integrity, virtue, and goodness, with what- 
 ever opinions associated." He was in no hurry 
 to bring forwaid " doctrines new to them," till 
 he could make clear their practical value. Ex- 
 pository preaching, and weekly meetings for the 
 study of the Scriptures, with free conference 
 thereon, proved of eminent utility. " It was 
 absolutely necessary," he observes, " to be blind 
 and deaf to many uncharitable and censorious 
 remarks." " By forbearance and kindness those 
 who opposed me were sometimes softened, and 
 continued friends." Yet were there " many 
 severe conflicts of opinion, many hard struggles 
 against what was called innovation "; and there 
 were those who affirmed that Wright's self-con- 
 trol simply made him the more dangerous; for, 
 aided by the Devil, that wily serpent, " Unitarians 
 had the art of commanding their temper, and 
 using soft words, that they might the better 
 deceive." While some left, and " though there 
 was a time when the congregation would have 
 been glad had I voluntarily left them, their attach- 
 
322 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 ment to me afterwards became stronger than it 
 had ever been." 
 
 His preaching was not confined to Wisbech, and 
 he had several calls to other charges, with better 
 pay. He had made up his mind not to leave 
 Wisbech " till I thought the Unitarian cause 
 firmly established there." For ten years he eked 
 out a very narrow income by school-keeping — a 
 resource then more open than now to the Dis- 
 senting ministry. One of his scholars became 
 famous. This was William Ellis, whose name 
 will ever be associated with the Christian civiliza- 
 tion of Madagascar. In his early boyhood the 
 future agent of the London Missionary Society 
 was under Wright's influence both in school and 
 chapel ; all the schooling he got, and indeed that 
 was but little, he received from Wright; his 
 father, also William Ellis, was a strong Unitarian 
 and always remained so. 
 
 It was during this period of pastoral assiduity, 
 tempered by school-keeping, that Wright made 
 the acquaintance of William Vidler (1758-1816) 
 who, like Wright had been successively Anglican, 
 Independent and Baptist, and was now the 
 successor of Elhanan Winchester in the Universal- 
 ist (but not Unitarian) ministry in London. 
 Winchester's Universalism meant a remedial Hell. 
 Hence the familiar tale that Robert Robinson met 
 him with the exclamation " So you're the man 
 to preach that God Almighty will burn all the 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 323 
 
 old tobacco-pipes white! " Vidler had started in 
 1797 the Universalists' Miscellany. To this 
 monthly publication Wright contributed a series 
 of letters and these, when collected, formed the 
 first of his many publications. 
 
 Next year Wright visited Vidler in London. 
 Their meeting must have been a sight for saints. 
 Wright was a very little man and nobody could 
 call him handsome. Vidler, his senior by nearly 
 six years, had a fine physiognomy surmounting a 
 corporal bulk of wellnigh elephantine propor- 
 tions. There is a pulpit of straitened dimensions 
 into which, according to the legend, he had con- 
 trived to squeeze himself when cool. Swelled by 
 the fervour of preaching, he found it impossible 
 to get out, and thought it safer to remain for the 
 afternoon service ; so they brought him his mid- 
 day repast as he sat in cathedra. There were 
 ■contrasts of opinion as well as of girth, stature and 
 comeliness between the two enthusiasts. Hence 
 they met with some shyness, attempting as 
 Wright says, " in as delicate a ^ay as possible to 
 feel out each other's views." Ultimately, but not 
 till 1802, Vidler's repugnance to so-called So- 
 cinianism was replaced, under Wright's influence 
 .by a hearty embrace of the Unitarian position. 
 
 In the absence of an exact chronology at this 
 point, the date is uncertain at which Wright was 
 enabled to free himself from the labour of keeping 
 jschool, but by 1804 he was in the full-swing of 
 
324 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 missionary enterprise. Already had he cultivated 
 relations with General Baptists of Lutton, Lincoln- 
 shire, resulting in the accession of this congre- 
 gation, avowedly Universalist, to the Unitariaa 
 cause, and further to the incorporation of his own 
 flock at Wisbech with the General Baptist 
 Assembly. Next he co-operated with John 
 Platts (1777-1837) in the establishment of a 
 Unitarian congregation at Boston. Thereafter he 
 visited most parts of Lincolnshire; at Lincoln 
 on his initiative a Unitarian congregation was 
 formed. Invited by Vidler, he visited Battle, 
 where Vidler had gathered a Universalist flock. 
 Thence he extended his travels to most parts of 
 Sussex and Kent. An appeal from Thorne took 
 him to Yorkshire on a similar errand. 
 
 His efforts had now begun to attract some 
 attention in London. The project of a Missionary 
 Fund was started by David Eaton (1771-1829) a 
 native of Brechin, who had been the leader of a 
 little knot of General Baptists at York, and was 
 now settled as a theological bookseller in Holborn 
 (he is not to be confused with Daniel Isaac Eaton, 
 also a London bookseller, and publisher of Tom 
 Paine's works, who died in 1814). It is to be. 
 noted that the five persons who met in August,. 
 1805, to frame the plan of a Unitarian Fund, all 
 were or had been in the Baptist connexion. Of 
 these the most distinguished was Robert Aspland. 
 (1782-1845) who in the previous month had 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 325 
 
 entered on his forty years' ministry at Hackney. 
 The plan was not much welcomed at the outset. 
 It was met by a loudly expressed dread of 
 "uneducated preachers." Only nine persons 
 attended the meeting establishing the Fund 
 {11 February, 1806). Among them was Daniel 
 Whittle Harvey (1786-1863) then a lad of twenty, 
 afterwards projector of the Sunday Times, and 
 the first (1840) Commissioner of the London City 
 Police ; he was the last survivor of the band. 
 
 The year of grace 1806 is memorable also for 
 the establishment by Aspland of the Monthly 
 Repository, that invaluable storehouse of Unitar- 
 ian history and biography. He had bought up 
 Vidler's magazine and enlarged its plan. Further- 
 more, it was in 1806 that the expulsion of Joseph 
 Cooke from the Wesleyan body led to the forma- 
 tion of a new group of congregations in Lan- 
 cashire. In 1806 Wright composed and published 
 " An Apology for Dr. Michael Servetus," based 
 on a work of 1724, and distinguished chiefly by 
 warm reflections, in which Calvin was not ex- 
 hibited in a flattering light. 
 
 The Unitarian Fund was started with Aspland 
 as secretary and Wright as travelling missionary. 
 By the end of the year nearly a couple of hundred 
 subscribers had been enlisted on its- roll. The 
 first annual sermon in its behalf was preached by 
 a doctor of divinity of Harvard, Joshua Toulmin 
 (1740-1815) another Baptist by the way. Bel- 
 
326 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 sham, at that time by far the most influential of 
 English Unitarians, held aloof from popular pro- 
 paganda, though six years later he handsomely 
 owned that the Unitarian Fund was " the Society 
 which at present holds the foremost rank," adding 
 that " after the success which has attended the 
 efforts of this Society, no person who is a real 
 friend to the cause can consistently be hostile to 
 its principle." 
 
 Thus was Richard Wright encouraged in the 
 career which, with unwearied industry, he 
 pursued,for nearly two decades till, in the course 
 of his journeyings he had traversed the whole 
 land, from Aberdeen to Marazion, from Milford 
 Haven to Yarmouth. His reports of his journeys 
 form a sort of itinerary of Great Britain, and are 
 crowded with interesting details. In 1804 Wright 
 was forty years of age, well seasoned for his work 
 by a preparation of experience which he had 
 turned to the best account. Being of great 
 muscular strength he could sustain the fatigue of 
 his long tramps — trudging as he did on foot 
 twenty, thirty or even forty miles in a day— and 
 still be fit for preaching in the evening. Frugal 
 and temperate, he was spare in diet, simple in his 
 requirements, content at night with a rough 
 shakedown, and allowing himself this one luxury, 
 an abundant use of the good old " churchwarden." 
 In the use of this sedative he certainly excelled. 
 Even Aspland who, like Dr. Parr, would give out 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 327 
 
 a long hymn and enjoy the refreshment of a pipe 
 before sermon, admitted that his friend's de- 
 votion to the weed surpassed his own. This 
 habit he turned to good account in many an inn- 
 parlour and by many a cottage fire, enlivening a 
 serene good-fellowship with an apt theological 
 discussion. 
 
 Equipped with an equal knowledge of Holy 
 Scripture and of human nature, he was master ol 
 a native force of logical argument, pressed closely 
 enough, but always applied with level good 
 humour. His pulpit style was clear and unpre- 
 tending. In personal intercourse — for which he 
 utilized the most casual occasions, never obtrud- 
 ing himself, yet never missing an opportunity — 
 his strongest powers of influence came out. His 
 writing was plain and strong, full of cool, clear- 
 cut reasoning, with ardent purpose behind it, but 
 no superficial display of emotion. This made 
 his polemical publications telling and efficient. 
 Handy in size, direct in statement, they just hit 
 the needs of his time and his public. They bred 
 in his readers the habit of thinking. Never was 
 there a man with less of the mystic. about him, 
 while few had more of the determination of the 
 educator than Richard Wright. Here is his table 
 of fourteen hints for the missionary; texts on 
 which he dilates in his memoirs. They will be 
 found to be valuable points, capable of further 
 expansion. 
 
328 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 1. He should count the cost before he engages 
 in the work. 
 
 2. His mind should be furnished and prepared 
 for the work. 
 
 3. Should be always ready to preach. 
 
 4. Be careful to use proper subjects. 
 
 5. The style should be suited to the hearers. 
 
 6. Preaching in the open air and other places. 
 
 7. A missionary must avoid having anything 
 to do with differences in congregations. 
 
 8. Modes of making the preaching known. 
 
 9. Much to be done besides preaching. 
 
 10. Tracts should be distributed. 
 
 11. A missionary must endure much hard- 
 ship. 
 
 12. He must be punctual to his engagements. 
 
 13. He must devote himself entirely to the 
 work. 
 
 14. He should cultivate an habitual sense of 
 the presence of God. 
 
 For five years, during which he had travelled 
 on an average some two thousand miles each year, 
 Wright still retained as missionary the charge 
 of Wisbech. At the end of 1810 he was prevailed 
 upon to devote himself wholly to the larger field, 
 on the modest salary of a hundred guineas in- 
 cluding expenses, which was more than he had 
 asked for. Manchester had something to ^do 
 with this move in 1810. In that year the preach- 
 ing of an evangelical Arianism at Cross Street 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 329 
 
 ceased with the death of Thomas Barnes (1747- 
 1810). The introduction of a positive type of 
 Unitarianism by his successor, John Grundy 
 ■^1782-1843) was hailed, or deplored, in many 
 quarters as marking a new departure. After 
 1810, the Lancashire Arianism either melted away 
 very rapidly, or drifted off to other denominational 
 conditions. 
 
 It was in 1810 that George Harris (1794-1859) 
 then a London apprentice of sixteen, destined 
 afterwards to devote himself to the spread of 
 Unitarianism in Scotland with an eloquence 
 which has never been excelled, first set eyes upon 
 Richard Wright. The occasion was the Unitarian 
 Fund annual dinner, a few months after Wright's 
 first visit to Scotland. Thus writes George to his 
 father, Abraham Harris, minister at Maidstone : — 
 
 " Mr. Wright, you know, is a short man. When 
 he rose, there was a universal cry of ' On the 
 chair, on the chair ! ' He got on the chair. 
 Another cry of ' Mr. Wright on the table ! ' So 
 he mounted the table, when we gave him three 
 rounds of applause. I think he made the- best 
 ■speech. He is quite an enthusiast. He said 
 that, in his opinion, if there was not an Unitarian 
 south of the Tweed, there would be enough, north 
 of it, to Unitarianise the world." 
 
 We are dealing with the character and example 
 of an individual, not that he had no coadjutors, 
 or that his zeal did not prove contagious. Others 
 
330 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 gave their help, good men too, though scarcely to 
 be reckoned his equals in blend of pith and tact. 
 Their names we have not space to mention, but 
 the brief history of an institution in aid must be 
 touched upon. The condition of his denomina- 
 tion in 1811 had suggested to Robert Aspland the 
 desirability of creating an agency " for the 
 training up of popular rather than learned 
 ministers." On 6 June of that year the plan of 
 such an institution was agreed upon, the following 
 being its main features. It was to bear the name 
 of " The Unitarian Academy," "and this " not for 
 the purpose of pledging either its students or 
 supporters to any particular system of faith, but 
 because it expressed the leading opinion of those 
 who interested themselves in its formation, and 
 their expectation of its results. They used the 
 term Unitarian in its broadest sense, including 
 under it all Christians that agreed in the sole 
 worship of One God, the Father, whatever might 
 be their views on minor topics." Hereupon the 
 critics divided themselves into two groups 
 whereof one objected to "a sectarian brand,"' 
 while the other looked askance at " the broad 
 definition." 
 
 Students were to be eligible between the ages 
 of eighteen and twenty-five, and to be under the 
 care of a Principal Tutor, who should board and. 
 lodge them. The period of study was to be two 
 years; with power of extension vested in the- 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 33 1 
 
 Gommittee. They did subsequently extend it, 
 by providing for two classes of students, those of 
 four years and those of two. Subsequently also 
 a.few lay students were admitted, at ^f 100 a year. 
 It was expected that within two years the stud- 
 ents might, in addition to acquiring " a fair 
 portion of general knowledge," learn to read " the 
 Scriptures in their original tongues," and be 
 exercised in " the best methods of commuiiicating 
 religious instruction." Belsham, who had at 
 heart the revival of the old Hackney College, 
 broken up in 1796, was opposed to the scheme. 
 He suggested a reverse plan, a normal course of 
 " four, five, or even six years," with power to the 
 Committee to reduce in particular cases. For a 
 two years' Academy he thought Wright would be 
 a competent head. From the first, however, the 
 projectors of the institution had relied upon 
 Aspland as its Principal and Theological Tutor;, 
 and Aspland, now in his thirtieth year, removing 
 to Durham House, opened the Unitarian Academy 
 at Hackney on 20th October, 1812. There was 
 to have been also a Classical Tutor, but John 
 Bickerton Dewhurst, designed for that post, died 
 before the opening day. Thomas Biggin Broad- 
 bent was Classical Tutor from 1814 to 1816. 
 Jeremiah Joyce, of the "Scientific Dialogues," 
 was Mathematical Tutor in 1814 and 1815; he 
 was succeeded by Dr. John Morell, who conducted 
 both these departments from 1817,. and was him- 
 
332 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 self succeeded for a short time by William John- 
 son Fox. 
 
 It is well to know that Belsham, having an 
 anonymous donation of £ioo to dispose of at his 
 own discretion, kept it a couple of years, while he 
 looked about him, and then sent it to the Unitar- 
 ian. Academy, with two years' interest, as the 
 best use he could make of the money. The 
 students seem to have worked hard. From the 
 Daybook of the Academy for 1813 I find that 
 they invariably began the duties of the day at 
 half-past six, grinding at Latin till breakfast 
 time. I find such entries as " studied Hebrew " ; 
 " composed a little of our themes." Occasionally 
 I find the entry, " worked one hour in the gar- 
 den " ; and, in spite of the early start next day, I 
 find " went to bed about 12." One of them 
 writes that Aspland was fertile in expedients for 
 filling up their leisure time, of which, he adds, 
 " he seemed to think we had far more than was 
 really the case." The Tutor's point of view is 
 not always that of the student. 
 
 This Academy lasted for five sessions only, 
 since, in 1818, Aspland's state of health made it 
 impossible for him to continue it with his other 
 engagements, and there was no one found to take 
 his place; In those five sessions, twelve theo- 
 logical students were enrolled; three soon gave 
 up ; the nine who entered the ministry all rendered 
 good service. The first to pass away was 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 33^ 
 
 Benjamin Goodier, the young evangelist to whom 
 the Oldham congregation owes its existence. He 
 died in 1818. The last survivor was Thomas 
 Cooper, employed by the founder of the Hibbert 
 Trust in the difificult task of Christianising his- 
 slaves ; he lived till 1880, a cheery little man, and 
 still a good speaker, at the age of eighty-eight. 
 During the same period, Carmarthen enrolled 
 seven Unitarian students, while Manchester Col- 
 lege, York, enrolled twenty divinity students, of 
 whom thirteen entered the ministry — the greatest 
 name among them being that of John James 
 Tayler. The last survivor of these was Richard 
 Shawcross, who had conformed; he died in 1886,^ 
 at the age of eighty-four. 
 
 The missionary movement in Manchester 
 College, York, was somewhat later than this- 
 period. It began in 1823 on the initiative of John 
 Kelly Beard, and enlisted the zealous co-operation 
 of James Martineau; who, long afterwards, bore 
 signal testimony to the value of these early 
 "missionary excursions," adding that "those- 
 who were most deeply engaged in them were 
 certainly the most assiduous and thorough 
 students in their College work." Wright's memoirs 
 were published in 1824, ^^^ i"- the preliminary 
 list of subscribers, will be found the names just, 
 mentioned, along with those of eleven other 
 students of the same College. . 
 
 Of the dozen entrants at the Unitarian Academy^ 
 
334 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 the one who made most history, though hardly 
 the kind of history he had intended to make, was 
 John Smethurst (1793-1859), of Moretonhamp- 
 stead. In the autumn of 1821 Smethurst went on 
 .a Unitarian mission to the North of Ireland. At 
 Killeleagh, Co. Down, the Presbyterian minister 
 was the redoubtable Henry Cooke. In his flock 
 the most prominent member was the United 
 Irishman, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had 
 spent some time (not entirely in study) at the 
 Warrington Academy, and was a Unitarian. 
 On Rowan's invitation Smethurst lectured in the 
 school-house at Killeleagh. This invasion of his 
 parish had the consequence of arousing Cooke to 
 tegin the fierce campaign which, after eight years' 
 hard struggle with Henry Montgomery, issued in 
 the elimination of the liberal element from the 
 older Presbyterianism, and the formation of the 
 Remonstrant Synod. Doubtless, had this occa- 
 sion not presented itself, Cooke would have found 
 some other ; yet to those who knew Smethurst in 
 later years as the gentlest of men, the model of a 
 •quiet country pastor beloved by all around, the 
 blameless authority on Anglo-Saxon and on trout 
 fishing, " the Walton of the moor," as they called 
 him, it seemed a strange irony of fate that he 
 should have been the one to pit against each other 
 the giant powers of the two great orators of 
 Ulster, and so tofasten on Irish Presbyterianism 
 ihe bondage of the Westminster Confession. 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 335 
 
 In this excursus we are not really deserting 
 Richard Wright, for the students of the Unitarian 
 Academy were, almost to a man, brought into 
 missionary and then into ministerial work by his 
 personal influence or that of his reputation. 
 Several had been his companions in travel and 
 comrades in toil. Now, however, we must advert 
 to an event, if I may so call it, which, like Smet- 
 hurst's mission, also bore consequences little 
 •expected. 
 
 Wright had two brothers settled in Liverpool, 
 both of them ardent propagators of their brother's 
 faith, though not with their brother's power. 
 John Wright, the younger of the two, had opened 
 a room in Marble Street, and advertised a course 
 of lectures. It so happened that the Mayor of 
 Liverpool was also named John Wright. He cast 
 an indignant eye upon his namesake's advertise- 
 ment, and dispatched an informer to Marble 
 Street. On Tuesday, ist April, 1817, John 
 Wright opened his course of lectures by reading 
 (though this was not known at the time) one of his 
 brother Richard's " Evangelical Discourses " — 
 such was the title of the book— published six 
 years previously. To his amazement he found 
 himself brought up on a double charge. The 
 magistrates summarily convicted him of the 
 offence of preaching in an unlicensed place, 
 though the room had, in fact, been licensed 
 twenty years before, but not in favour of Wright. 
 
336 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 They further, on the advice of Statham, the Town 
 Clerk, committed him for trial at Lancaster on 
 the charge of blasphemy, in denying the Trinity 
 and the Atonement. This raised the question 
 whether Unitarians, who in 1813 had been relieved 
 of the statutory penalties attaching to these 
 denials, could still, as the Town Clerk believed, 
 be proceeded against at common law. The Com- 
 mittee of the Unitarian Fund was appealed to for 
 aid in the defence. When they met, Aspland, 
 their Secretary, was absent, and on the advice of 
 their solicitor, John Wilks, they decided against 
 interference. The prosecution, as a matter of 
 fact, was soon dropped, for Aspland called the 
 attention of Lord Holland to it, and Holland made 
 some strong remarks in the House of Lords. 
 Wilks, who was Secretary to the " Protestant 
 Society for the Protection of Religious Freedom," 
 had been consulted as solicitor by local worthies, . 
 anxious to find means of wresting from Unitarians 
 the chapel in which they worshipped at Wol- 
 verhampton. Accordingly, the Wolverhampton 
 Chapel case was first brought before the Superior 
 Courts in the following July (1817). The common 
 law doctrine, started by Statham, was without 
 hesitation taken up by Wilks, and played a con- 
 siderable part in the early stages of the case. 
 During many years the Wolverhampton case pro- 
 ceeded from court to court, and as it seemed likely 
 to go against the Unitarians, and orthodoxy had 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 337 
 
 been further inflamed by a speech by George 
 Harris in 1824, the more important Hewley suit 
 was begun in 1830. The final and adverse 
 decision in both suits was not rieached till 1842- 
 Then followed the remedial legislation effected by 
 the Dissenters' Chapels Act of 1844. Again we 
 may say that, had the actual occasion not pre- 
 sented itself, in all probability another would 
 have been found; but it is curious to trace the 
 long history which ended in the Dissenters' 
 Chapels Act to the reading of one of Richard 
 Wright's old sermons by a namesake of Liver- 
 pool's Mayor. 
 
 There can be no disputing the fact that this 
 long history exercised a detrimental influence on 
 the progress of the Unitarian cause in this 
 country. Not merely was there, in some quarters, 
 a temptation to make as little show as possible of 
 Unitarian opinion, and to raise as much legal 
 capital as might be accumulated out of a real or 
 fancied Presbyterian ancestry. There was the 
 hard fact, ever5rwhere present, that the efforts of 
 Unitarians had to be very sedulously directed 
 toward purely defensive measures. There was 
 further the peril of creating, the futility of im- 
 proving, properties which might at any moment 
 be snatched away at the bidding of legal doctrine, 
 however opposed to common sense or to public 
 interest. That, notwithstanding all this, much 
 was actually done, is a tribute to the high spirit 
 
338 RICHARD WRIGHT 
 
 and the steadfast loyalty of the men of that 
 generation. Still, looking back to the middle 
 of last century, it must be admitted that Unit- 
 arians emerged from a great struggle, with a sense 
 of triumph at last, due to energies well spent, but 
 already somewhat exhausted. 
 
 After the closure of the Unitarian Academy 
 Richard Wright had been called to London by 
 the Unitarian Fund to superintend the organiza- 
 tion of local preachers. This he did without re- 
 mitting his missionary travels, continued until 
 he was well on in his fifty-ninth year. Then, in 
 September, 1822, he re-entered the regular 
 ministry, as pastor of a Baptist congregation at 
 Trowbridge. He brought this congregation into 
 union with the General Baptist body. He did 
 more. Before leaving, he provided a successor 
 in the person of Samuel Martin (1801-1877), his 
 pupil, whom he had met at Nantwich, who, after 
 a time of similar work in Cheshire, had succeeded 
 Wright as travelling missionary in Cornwall, and 
 whose fifty years' ministry in Trowbridge was a 
 shining example of the effective power of the 
 simplicity of godliness. 
 
 Finally in 1827 Wright returned to Lincoln- 
 shire, ministering to a little congregation at 
 Kirkstead, a spot made famous as the scene of 
 the initial labours of John Taylor, the Hebraist. 
 Not in the ancient shrine, that jewel of Early 
 English architecture, with its canopied Puritan 
 
RICHARD WRIGHT 339 
 
 pulpit of 1620, where Taylor preached, did 
 Wright minister. This had been filched from 
 Nonconformists near the close of the previous 
 century, and since disused. A plain building, of 
 then very recent date, had risen in its vicinity. 
 It appears to have been without a minister for 
 five years until Wright's appointment. In this 
 retired spot the nine remaining years of his busy 
 life were employed. Tranquilly he passed the 
 allotted span. On 16th September, 1836, in his 
 seventy-third year, the summons came.. Friday 
 afternoon he spent at his writing-desk. Scarcely 
 had Saturday morning arrived and he was gone. 
 The history of missions all over the world, look 
 where we may, assures us that it is the individual 
 that tells ; first by achievement, then by sugges- 
 tion. No apology then is needed for a revival of 
 the ancient story which forms the topic of this 
 address, a story which may well strike home with 
 the potent force of a stimulating example. Ex- 
 cellent are the words of Robert Brook Aspland, 
 to be found in his Memoir of Robert Aspland his 
 father: "How invaluable would the labours of 
 such a man as Richard Wright now prove ! But 
 ■not of every day's growth is his ardour of feelingj 
 combined with sobriety of judgment; his con- 
 troversial skill, combined with piety ; his freedom 
 of speech and thought, combined with modera- 
 tion and wisdom." 
 
 8 October, 1908. 
 
INDEX 
 
 [Every proper name is indexed, with a selection of other 
 matters; the figures refer to the pages of the text.] 
 
 Academies : 
 
 Attercliffe...8i, 202, 204 
 Daventr5'...72, 82, 220, 
 
 288-289 
 Exeter... 1 28 
 Findem...76, 208 
 Hackney.. .293-294, 331 
 Independent — 83, 202-203 
 Kibworth...i89, 206, 209 
 London. ..83, 211 
 Manchester... 80, 81 
 Northampton... 209, 220 
 Northern. ..73 
 Presbyterian . . .202-203 
 Puylaurens...i59, 160 
 Rathmell...72, li, 78, 81,82 
 Sedan.. .161-162 
 Siilby...8o 
 Taunton... 8 1 
 Tewkesbury... 85 
 Unitarian... 300, 330-335 
 Warrington... 20 3, 207,292, 
 
 334 
 Acton, Baron. ..21, 178 
 Advices for Peace ...137, 151- 
 
 152 
 Agrippa, Cornelius... 16 
 Aikin, John. ..221, 293 
 Aleander, Jerome...2i, 24, 25 
 Almsgiving. . . loo 
 Anabaptists... 50, 55 
 Anne, Queen... 136 
 Annet, Peter.. .216 
 Anthropomorphism... 107, 252 
 Antichrist...: 8 
 
 Antinomianism... 1 39-140 
 Antitrinitarians.-.jo, 51, 52, 
 
 no, 273 
 Apostates... 50 
 Arianism... 128-129, 146, 166, 
 
 195, 221, 230, 247, 248, 
 
 328 
 Arians...SO, 58, 114, 115, 226, 
 
 227, 257, 258, 261, 272, 
 
 274, 275, 294, 297, 302 
 Aristotle... 2 2, 81, 161 
 Arius...6 
 Arminianism...97, 98, 102, 
 
 _ 103, 226, 317 
 Articles, Thirty-nine... 14 5, 
 
 200 
 Ashworth, Caleb. ..203, 220 
 Aspland, Robert. ..273, 298, 
 
 300, 324, 32s, 326, 330- 
 
 332, 336, 339 
 Aspland, Robert Brook... 3 39 
 Atheism. ..164-165, 181 
 Augustine, St 22, 196 
 
 Babinecki...56 
 
 Bacon thorpe, John...3i5 
 
 Baptists : 
 
 General... 102, 126, 128, 
 
 131. 134. 138, 139. 141. 
 145, 318, 324, 338 
 Johnsonian ...318 
 Particular... 1 3 8, 139, 145, 
 31S 
 Barbauld, Anna Letitia...2o6 
 Barke?-, John. ..217 
 
INDEX 
 
 341 
 
 Barling, John... 196 
 Barnes, Thomas... 294, 329 
 Barrington, Viscount... 124, 
 
 135-137. 152 • 
 Basil the Great, St.. ..22 
 Basnage, Jacques(?)..i6i, 162 
 Basnage, Madame... 177 
 Basques, the. ..31 
 Baxter; Richard.../, 75, 140, 
 
 185, 213, 235 
 Baxterians...2o6, 226 
 Bayle, Jean... 159 
 Bayle, Pierre... 157-182 
 Beard, John Relly...273, 333 
 Beccaria, Cesare...3i4 
 Bedford, Duchess of... 188 
 Beke, Daniel... 60, 61 
 Belsham, James. ..287 
 Belsham, Thomas. ..221, 249, 
 
 254, 270, 271, 272, 277, 
 
 281, 282, 285-310, 326, 
 
 331. 332 
 Benedictine... 1 23 
 BibUcal Criticism... 303-306 
 Bibliotheca Fratrum Polon- 
 
 orum.,.62, 
 Bidle, John... 99- 1 00, 105, 
 
 107, 108, 1 1 3-1 1 5, 251 
 Bingham, Joseph... 196 
 Birch, Thomas... 1 71 
 Blackbume, Francis... 24 5, 
 
 249, 250, 252, 254, 259- 
 
 261, 263 
 Blasphemy... 3 36 
 Book of Sports... 96 
 Bourn, Samuel... 227 
 Bradbury, Thomas. ..1-24-125, 
 
 136, 142-146, 149, 152, 
 
 204, 226 
 Bright, Henry Arthur... 273 
 Broadbent, Thomas Biggin 
 
 —331 ■• 
 Brownists...96 
 Burgess, Daniel. ..162, 114 
 Burke, Edmund... 261 
 
 Butler, Joseph. ..48, 85, 198, 
 
 244, 245 
 Buxtorf, Johann...23 
 Bjnrom, John...2i6 
 
 Caffyn, Matthew... 141 
 Calamy, Edmund. ..69, 133, 
 
 144, 152, 185-188, 189, 
 
 222, 229, 241, 263 
 Calendar, Gregorian. ..46 
 Calves' head feasts. ..83 
 Calvin, John... 4, 8, 13, 15, 70, 
 
 71, 244, 325 
 Calvinism... 8 1,' 97-98, 166, 
 
 195, 244, 316-317 
 Calvimst...206, 287 
 Campeggio, Lorenzo... 22 
 Cappe, Catherine... 2 52, 265- 
 
 266 
 Cardale, Paul. ..248 
 Carlile, Richard... 306 
 Carpenter, Lant...273, 301 
 Catechism : 
 Scripture... 93 
 Shorter... 1 29, 143, 145, 288 
 Catholic Christians... 62 
 Catholic Church. . .18. 
 Cato...i76 
 
 Cervantes, Miguel... 9 
 Chaldee, Paraphrase... 22 
 Chalmers. Alexander... 158 
 Champier, Symphorien, 31-33 
 Channing, William £llery,278 
 Charles I.... 8 3 
 Charles II.. ..73, 83, 93 
 Charles V....16 
 Cljannier, Jacques... 19 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey... 3 3 
 Chimhi, Rab...22 
 Chorlton, John... 80 
 Christian Era.. .45 
 Christina, Queen... 169 
 Christ's Hospital... ^3 
 Christie, Richard Copley... 6 
 Cicero. ..71 
 
342 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Clark, Samuel. ..iS8, 235 
 Clark, Samuel (2). ..220 
 Clarke, Samuel... 127, 195, 
 
 247, 250, 254, 268 
 Clarkeans...8i, 127, 288, 290 
 Clegge, James... 78, 80, 8r 
 Clement, St., of Alexandria... 
 
 22 
 Clement, St., of Rome... 2 2 
 Clementines, the. ..22 
 Cobb, Mr.. ..314 
 Colleges : 
 
 BalUol...256 
 
 Carmarthen ... 3 3 3 
 
 Christ's... 70, 73 
 
 Durham... 70, 201 
 
 Emmanuel... 69 
 
 Eton. ..245, 253 
 
 Hte.ckney...22i 
 
 Huesca...i2 
 
 Man Chester... 20 1, 221, 271, 
 294, 333 
 
 Rak6w...s6, 58, 59 
 
 St. John's. ..243 
 
 Summerville...49 
 
 Wadham...69 
 
 York.. .271, 333 
 Columbus, Christopher. ..11 
 Comets... 164 
 
 Complutensian Polyglot... 15J 
 Conesa, Catalina...8, 11 
 Confessions : 
 
 Augsburg... 2 1 
 
 Dort...97 
 
 Personal 231 
 
 Scriptural... 1 43 
 
 Unitarian. . .60-61 
 
 Westminster. . .225 
 Congregationalism. . .228 
 Conventicle Act... 72 
 Cooke, Henry.. .334 
 Cooke, Joseph.. .325 
 Cooper, Grey... 264 
 Cooper, Thomas... 333 
 Corpus Juris. ..22 
 
 Cotton, John... 1 75 
 Covenants, the. ..51, 10& 
 Cradock, Samuel... 69, 87 
 Cranworth, Baron... 242 
 Creeds : 
 
 Apostles'. ..103, 26.8, 295 
 Athanasian...250, 257 
 Nicene...i34 
 Crellius, John... 81 
 Cromwell, Oliver... 70, 99-100 
 Cyprian, St.. ..23 
 
 Dante. ..13 
 Decretals, the... 2 3 
 Dees, Complanatio...6o 
 Defoe, Daniel.. .87, 123 
 D'Herbelot, Barthelemy..i74 
 Deists...! 1 5, 226-227, 294 
 Denominational names. ..232 
 Descartes, Rene.. .77, 161, 
 
 204 
 Des Maiseaux, Pierre... 159 
 Determinism. .. 308 
 Dewhurst, John Bickerton... 
 
 331 
 Dickens, Charles... 178 
 Dionysius Alexandrinus...23 
 Dionysius Exiguus...45 
 Disney, John. ..268, 270 
 Dissenters : 
 
 Liberal... 2 1 7, 232, 241, 271 
 . Rational.. .219, 227, 299 
 Dissenters' Chapels Act... 
 
 301. 337 
 Doddridge, Mercy. ..191 
 Doddridge, Philip. ..27, 48, 
 
 69, 76, 77, 79. 152. i8s. 
 
 237, 241, 289-290 
 Doddridge, Philip (2)... 188 
 Dodwell, Henry... 199 
 Dolabella, Thomas... 5 7 
 Dolet, Etienne...6, 32 , 
 
 Eames, John... 20 5, 207 
 Eaton, Daniel Isaac... 324 
 
INDEX 
 
 343 
 
 Eaton, David. ..324 
 Edward III.... 69 
 Eighteenth Century... 48, 198 
 Ejected Ministers. ..69, 185, 
 
 241 
 Ellis, William... 322 
 Ellis, William (2)... 3 22 
 Els worth, Hannah... (see 
 
 Lindsey) 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo ... 1 80 
 Emlyn, Thomas... 26, 80, 274 
 Enfield, William. ..298 
 England, characterized 1.. 30 
 Ennius...i4 
 Episcopius, Simon. ..81 
 Erasmus, I)esiderius...23, 24 
 Eternity of the Son. ..132 
 Eunon\ians...258 
 Eutychians...258 
 Evanson, Edward... 269 
 Exeter : 
 
 Assembly... 1 31 
 Meeting-houses... 1 30, 135 
 Proprietors... 1 30, 135, 138 
 Thirteen... 1 30^134 138, 
 147. 151 
 
 Falibowski...56 
 Farmer, Hugh...2i9 
 Feathers Petition. ..260, 266 
 Fenn, Sir John. ..31 5 
 Firmin, Henry... 96 
 Firmin, Prudence... 97 
 Firmin, Thomas. ..93-1 19, 
 
 251, 267 
 Fisher,. Samuel... 31 8-319 
 Fleming, Caleb... 248 
 Fowler, Edward... 102, 103, 
 
 119 
 Fox, George. ..97 
 Fox, WilUam Johnson... 3 82 
 Frampton, Robert...iii 
 Frankland, Richard... 70, 72- 
 
 76, 78, .87, 201, 294, 221 
 Franklin, Benjamin... 267 
 
 Freke, William ...116 
 Freeman, Catherine... 190 
 Friends, Society of. ..103-4, 
 
 112, 139, 200, 234 
 Fuchs, Leonard... 3 3 
 Funds : 
 
 Common... 140, 150 
 Congregational... 1 40, 205, 
 
 210 
 Hibbert...i58 
 Presbyterian ... 1 40, 150, 
 
 188, 205, 210 
 Unitarian... 299, 324-326, 
 329. 336 
 
 Galen, Claudius... 34, 37 
 Gaskell, Mrs. 263 
 Gaudano, Henricus de...23 
 Gener, Pompeyo...i2 
 George I.... 144 
 CJeorge II. 69, 209 
 George III.... 202 
 George IV. 177 
 Gibbon, Edmund...Si, 79 
 Gillespie, Thomas...2i8 
 Glaire, Jean Baptiste...i5S 
 Glossa Ordinaria...23 
 Godwin, William. ..316 
 Goldsmith, OUver...3i4 
 Goodier, Benjamin...333 
 Goodwin, John. ..97-99, 108 
 Gordonius, Bernard... 3 5 
 Gouge, Thomas. ..104, 105, 
 
 108, 113 
 Gough, Strickland. ..221-224. 
 Grafton, Duke of... 277,296 
 iGregory Nazianzen...23 
 Grosvenor, Benjamin. ..204 
 Grove, Henry... 204 
 Grundy, Jolm...329 
 
 Hallett, John... 1 34, 147 
 Halley, Edmund. ..163 
 Hapjjy Union. ..229, 233 
 Harris, Abraham... 3 29 
 
344 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Harris, George... 3 29, 337 
 Hartley,- David... 2 14, 216 
 Harvey, Daniel Whittle ... 3 2 5 
 Haynes, Hopton...249, 274 
 Hedworth, Henry. ..62-63, 
 
 107 
 Henry VIII.... 22 
 Henry, Matthew... 204, 287 
 Herring, Thomas... 225, 247 
 Hewley suit ... 3 3 7 
 Heywood, Oliver... 287 
 Hibbert, Robert. ..333 
 High Commission Court... 96 
 Hilary, St. of Poitiers... 2 3, 
 
 196 
 Hill, Thomas... 76 
 Hoadly, Ben jamin . . . 1 50, 222, 
 
 244 
 Hoadly, John... 2 56 
 Holcot, Robert... 23 
 Holland, Lord. ..336 
 Hollis, Thomas... 264 
 Homer... 1 61 
 Horsley, Samuel... 303 
 Howe, John... 1 40 
 Huguenot Refugees . . . 1 1 1 , 
 
 129, 1.67 
 Humanity of Christ. . .248-249 
 Hume, David... 48, 314 
 Hungary.. .51-52, 59, 62 
 Hunt, Jeremiah... 1 49, 153, 
 
 204 
 Hunt, John...3i8 
 Huntingdon, Countess of (i) 
 
 ...243 
 Huntingdon, Countess of (2) 
 
 ...243 
 Huntingdon, Earl of (i)... 
 
 243, 246, 249 
 Huntingdon, Earl of (2)... 
 
 243, 264 
 Hutcheson, Francis... 67 
 Hutchinson, Francis... 67 
 Hutchinsonians ...39 
 Hutton, Matthew... 247-248 
 
 Huxley, Thomas... 220 
 
 Idolatry... 165 
 
 Ignatius, St 23 
 
 Improved Version ... 304 
 Independents... 102, 125, 126, 
 
 139, 147, 151, 189. 251, 
 
 270, 300 
 Indulgence. ..74 
 Industrial enterprises... 108- 
 
 109 
 Indwelling scheme, 108 
 Inspiration . . . 306 
 Ireland, character] zed... 30, 
 
 168 
 Irenaeus, St. 23, 305 
 Irish Meeting-houses. ..136 
 Irish Protestants...! 1 1- 
 Isaiah...i8, 280 - 
 Jacombe, Samuel... 10 1 
 Jal, Augustin...i72, 175 
 
 James II 112-113 
 
 James VI. ...72 
 James, Jonathan... 99, 108 
 Jebb, John... 269,. 270 
 Jeffreys, George... 7 5 
 JekyI, Sir Joseph. ..143 
 Jennings, David.. .149, 205, 
 
 206, 209, 211 
 Jenning!5, John... 206, 208, 
 
 209, 211-212, 215, 289 
 Jesuits. ..53, 56, i60'i6i 
 Jews... 24, 114, 272 
 Joachim of Flores...23 
 John Casimir...58 
 John Damascen, St.... 2 3 
 Johnson, John... 3 18-3 19 
 Johnson, Joseph. ..267 
 Johnson, Samuel. ..24, 168, 
 
 237 
 Johnsonians ... 3 1 9 
 JoUie, Timothy... 202, 204 
 Jonah. ..26 
 
 Jones, Jeremiah... 20 5 
 Jones, John. ..257 
 
INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 Joyce, Jeremiah... 33 1 
 Judd, Sylvester.. .273 
 Julius Caesar... 46 
 Jurieu, Pierre... 161 -167 
 Justin Martyr, St.... 30 5 
 
 Karwath, Severin...58 
 Kenrick, John... 364 
 JECing, Sir Peter.. .256 
 King's Head Society. ..203 
 Kippis, Andrew. ..23, 177,219 
 ICirkpatrick, Hezekiah...265 
 Krasinski, Count W. S....58 
 
 Xactantius...2.3 
 Xambert, James... 2 70 
 Xardner, Nathaniel... 48, 149, 
 
 202, 248 
 Latham, Ebenezer...208 
 Jjatin...76, 78, 212-213 
 Laud, William... 48, 96 
 Lavington, John... 13 2, 134 
 Le Clerc, Jean... 166, 174 
 lectures : 
 
 Merchants'... 1 3 3, 140 
 
 Salters' Hall... 133 
 X.egate, Bartholomew... 274 
 Leibnitz, Gottfried W., von... 
 
 166 
 Libraries : 
 
 Bishopthorpe ... 76 
 
 Bodleian... 80 
 
 Chetham's...8o, 81 
 
 Northampton ... 79 
 
 St. Victor... 3 2 
 
 Summerville...3 
 Xindsey, Hannah... 2 5 2, 254 
 Lindsey, Robert... 243 
 Lindsey , Theophilus ...118, 
 218, 221, 241-282, 286, 
 
 - 293, 295, 297, 301, 302, 
 
 ' 309. 314 
 Linen Company... 109 
 JLtScke, John. ..77,204, 207 . 
 louis XI v.... 1 62 
 
 Lowman, Moses.... 149 
 Lubieniecki, Stanislaus... 62 
 Luther, Martin. ..14, 24, 39 
 
 Macedonians... 258 
 Maddox, Isaac...235 
 Maimbourg, Louis ... 1 66 
 Manardus, John... 3 5 
 Manichaeans ...180 
 Mapletbft, John ...99 
 Maris, Mercy (see Doddridge) 
 Marryatt, Zephaniah...203 
 Marshall, Stephen... 106 
 Martin, Samuel... 3 38 
 Martindale, Adam. ..243 
 Martineau, James. ..27, 163, 
 
 2i6, 273, 333 
 Mary L...19 
 Mary II.... 102 
 Mason, John. ..226, 263 
 Maxentius, Johannes. ..23 
 Mead, Matthew. .,125 
 Melanchthon, Philip... 20, 24, 
 
 37 
 Menage, Gilles...i66 
 Mere Christians. ..62, 251 
 Methodism... 1 99, 218, 232, 
 
 234. 2SS, 318 
 Milboume, Luke . ; . 1 1 4 
 Milton, John... 39, 107, 276 
 Minor Church... 5 3-58 
 Missions, foreign. ..235-236 
 Missionary hints... 328 
 Molinos, Miguel dc.g 
 Montaigne, Michel de...i59, 
 
 180 
 Montgomery, Henry. ..334 
 More, Henry... 1 97 
 Morell, John...33i 
 Moreri, Louis. ..173-174 
 Morton, Charles... 69, 74, 85, 
 
 86, 87-88., 
 Moses. ..39,, 302 
 Moyses, Rab...23 
 Muhamm ad ... 2 3 
 
346 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Muhammadans...si, 114, 
 
 272, 275 
 Miinster, Sebastian... 3 3 
 
 Neal, Daniel. ..149, 203, 204 
 Nestorians...258 
 Newcome, William... 304 
 Newman, Cardinal... 178 
 Newton, Isaac... 204, 205 
 NichoUs, William... 1 25 
 Nonjurors...! II 
 Non-trinitarians. . .54 
 North, Baron. ..262 
 Northumberland, Countess of 
 
 ...248 
 Northumberland, Duke of 
 
 ...253 
 Northumberlana, Duke of 
 
 (2)... 244 
 Nye, Philip... 106 
 Nye, Stephen. ..63, 106-108, 
 
 113, 114, 115, 247, 251, 
 
 252 
 
 Occam, William.. .23 
 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 25 
 Oldfield, John. ..263 
 Oldfield, Joshua. ..145 
 Ordination... 1 48, 230-231 
 Orphic hymn... 1 4 
 Orthodoxy... 225, 299 
 Orton, Job.. .195, 210, 217, 
 241 
 
 Pagnino, Sanctes...24, 36 
 Paine, Thomas. ..293-294, 
 
 306, 324 
 Palmer, Thomas Fyshe...270 
 Papinian...i53 
 Parr, John. ..132 
 Parr, Samuel... 326 
 Patripassianism ...196 
 Patrolatry...274, 277 
 Paul, St.... 40, 280 
 
 Pauli, Gregory,.,54-5, 61, 63 
 Paulmier, Pierre... 36 
 Paulus Burgensis...23 
 Peel, Sir Robert... 1 77 
 Peirce, James. ..124-148, 196, 
 
 202, 226, 229 
 Pell, William... 70 
 Penn, William... 104, 115 
 Pepys, Samuel... 93, 117 
 Persecution ...i6g 
 Peter, St.... 40 
 Peter de Aliaco...23 
 Peter, Lombard. ..23 
 Philip II.... 108 
 Pitman, Isaac... 97 
 Plato. ..71 
 Platts, John. ..324 
 Plutarch.. .159, 180 
 Poland... 51 sqq. 
 Polish Bible... 5 6 
 Polish exiles. ..61, iio-iii 
 Pompey...i73 
 Pope, Alexander... 68 
 Popes : 
 
 Alexander VII.... 5 8 
 
 Clement VII.... 17 
 
 Clement XIII.... 50 
 
 Gregory I.... 30 
 
 Gregory XIII.... 46, 50 
 
 Julius III.... 1 9 
 
 Leo XIII.. ..Ill 
 Prayer Book.. .250-252, 296 
 Praxeas...i96 
 
 Pre-existence of Christ. ..196 
 Presbyterian Separation... 74 
 Presbyterianism : 
 
 Exeter. . . 1 30 
 
 French... 1 29 
 
 Irish... 3 34 
 
 Scottish.. .51, 185, 187 
 Presbyterians, so-called... 
 130, 139. 148- 217. 229» 
 337 
 Price, Richard. ..293, 297, 307 
 Price, Sir Robert... 129 
 
INDEX 
 
 347 
 
 Priestley, Joseph... 13, 38,48, 
 203, 207, 214, 216, 220, 
 241, 24s, 248, 253, 255- 
 266, 267, 268, 272, 280, 
 282, 285, 288, 289, 293, 
 295. 298, i02, 303, 307, 
 
 309 
 
 Prison reform. ..109 
 Protestant Dissenters... 124 
 
 126, 298 
 Ptolemy, Claudius. ..28, 33 
 Pulmonary circulation... 36 
 Puritans...5i, 96 
 Pusey, Edward Bouverie...5i 
 PyiThus.,.173 
 
 Quaker...! 1 2 
 
 Quintana, Juan de...i6, 20, 
 
 21, 22, 24 
 Qor4n, the... 2 3 
 
 Rabelais, Francois. ..32 
 Radecki, Valentine... 5 9 
 Eaikes, Robert. ..255 
 Rak6w...S4-S9 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter. ..171 
 Ramus, Peter.., 81 
 Reid , Thomas ...314 
 Relapsed, the... 161 
 Remonstrant ... 206 
 Remonstrant Synod... 3 34 
 Republicans . . . 293-.294 
 Reves, Casa...io.. 
 Reves, Pedro Antonio de, . . 1 2 
 Ricardus de Media Villa... 2 3 
 Rich, Jeremy...2i6 
 Richardson, Samuel... 190 
 Robertson, William. ..255- 
 
 259, 266, 270 
 Robinson, Robert... 279, 322 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques. ..314 
 Rowan, Archibald Hamilton 
 
 •••334 
 Rowe, Thomas... 203 
 Russell, James... 269 
 
 Sabellius...i96 
 Sabellians...ii4,. 116, 251, 
 
 252, 258, 272, 319 
 Saints, cultus of. ..161 
 Sale, George... 1 71 
 Salters' Hall.. .123-153, 189, 
 
 195, 204, 231. 
 Sancha, Queen... 9 
 Savile, Sir George. ..262 
 Schism Act... 1 36, 142 
 Scholefield, RadcLiffe.,.290 
 Schools, Nonconformist... 8 5 
 Scotland, characterized ... 29 
 Seeker, Thomas. ..202, 235 
 Seddon, John... 248 
 Serveto, Antonio... 8, 13 
 Serveto, JuAn...8, 11 
 Serveto, Marco Antonio ... 1 2 
 Servetus, Michael... 3-41, 50, 
 
 32s 
 Setzer, Johanu...20 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of ...166 
 Sharp, John. ..75, ,76 
 Shawcross, Richard...333 
 Sherlock, William... 196. 
 Shortland,.,97, 215-216 
 Shuto, John (see Barrington). 
 Shuttle wood, John... 80 
 Sibylline verses. ..14 
 Sichem, Christopher... 6 
 Siennjmski,. James ... 5 5 
 Siennjoiski, John... 54 
 Smethurst, John... 3 34 
 Smith, John. „. 1 16 
 Socinians...53, 114, 126, 167, 
 
 251, 258, ,272, 274 
 ,Socinianism,..i02, 128, 196, 
 
 _ - 206, 264, 290 
 Somerset, Duke of. ..244 
 Sozzini, Fajisto Paulo ... 5 , 13, 
 
 26, 27, 81, 246, 272 
 Spaniards, characterised... 31 
 Stadipn, Christopher von . . .20 
 Statham, Wi lliam ... 3 3 6 
 Stillingfleet, Edward... 74 
 
348 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Stogdon, Hubert... 128 
 Subscription...23i, 243, 251, 
 
 257. 258 
 Sunday Schools. ..255, 263 
 Swift, Jonathan. ..256 
 Sykes, John...3i6 
 Symonds, John... 208 
 
 Tachella, Benjamin... 176 
 Tayler, John James. ..72, 173, 
 
 207, 273, 333 
 Taylor, Jeremy... 97 
 Taylor, John... 195, 245, 293, 
 
 305, 338 
 Taylor, William. ..273 
 Tertullian...23 
 
 Thom, John Hamilton...! 04 
 Three Denominations... 131, 
 
 141 
 Tillotson, John...75, 102, 103, 
 
 lOS 
 - Toland, John ...115 
 Toleration... 98, 141 
 Toleration Act (1689). ..69, 
 
 114, 200, 225 
 Toleration Act (1779). ..200, 
 
 262 
 ToUin, Henri Wilhelm Nath- 
 
 anael...8, 9, 11, 12, 14,23 
 Tong, William... 204 
 Toulmin, Joshua... 32 5 
 Transubstantiation ...161 
 Transylvania... 50, 60 
 Trevor, Henry...3i9 
 Trinitarian. ..49-50, 292 
 Trinitarianism...i03, 150 
 Trinity, the... 98, 107, 114, 
 
 127, 137, 143, 146, 195, 
 
 246 
 Trinity Act. ..271, 298 
 Tritheism...i96 
 Trustees : 
 
 Coward. ..218, 220, 290 
 Hibbert...i58 
 Radcliffe...235 
 Wilhams'...i49, 290 
 
 Tucker, Abraham. ..281 
 Turner, William. ..260,265 
 Tyrwhitt, Robert.. .269 " 
 
 I 
 Uniformity Act... 68 
 Unipersonality of God... 100, 
 
 107, 114, 272, 275 
 Unitarian Associations. ..295, 
 
 301 
 Unitarian Book Societies... 
 
 27.";. 297 
 Unitarian Chapel... 267, 268, 
 
 278, 297 
 Unitarian Church... 63, 273 
 Unitarian congregations...: 17 
 Unitarian name. ..49 sqq, 113 
 
 272, 275 
 Unitarian religion... 50, 63 
 Unitarian Tracts. ..115, 247, 
 
 251 
 Unitarianism...9S, 128, 150, 
 
 221, 271, 290, 2$5 
 United Brethren... 139 
 Unity of God. ..219, 275 
 Universalists ... 3 22 
 Universities : 
 Aberdeen...233 
 Cambridge.. .69, 72, 204, 
 
 207, 233, 243 
 Durham... 70, 201 
 Edinburgh...7i, 72 
 Geneva. ..70, 161 
 Glasgow.. .256, 259 
 Harvard. ..88, 325 
 Leiden... 202 
 Nonconformist. . .20 1 
 Oxford. ..69, 72, 73, 78, 
 
 85, 202, 233 
 Paris... 3 2, 202 
 Rotterdam... 1 63 
 Stamford... 69 
 Toulouse... 1 3, 16, 25, 159, 
 
 160 
 Zaragoza...i2 
 
 ■Velasco,Pedro Gonzales tic. .6 
 
INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Vergil... 1 4, i6i 
 Vesale, Andre. ..32 
 Vesey, John ...112 
 Victoria, Queen... 157, 242 
 Vidler, William. ..322-323 
 Villano vanus ... 28 
 Villanueva de Sigena...7-ii 
 Voltaire... 1 7 2, 259, 314 
 
 Wakefield, Gilbert. ..269 
 Walker, George... 98 
 Wallis, John... 1 96, 247 
 Walpole, Horace...3i4 
 Warburton, William... 234, 
 
 250 
 Ward, Samuel. ..96 
 Warren, Matthew.. .82 
 Warren, Thomas. ..269 
 Watts, Isaac. ..144, 193, 195, 
 
 196-198, 200, 204, 205, 
 
 208' 
 Wellbeloved, Charles... 221, 
 
 271, 295 
 Welsh Bible... 105 
 Wesley, John... 48, 51, 94, 
 
 187,' 199, 216, 233, 272 
 Wesley, Samuel... 8 7 
 Westbury, Baron... 242 
 Wetenhall, Edward ...112 
 Wezyk, Jan... 5 7 
 
 Whichcote, Benjamin. ..102, 
 
 IDS 
 
 Whitefield, George... 48, 199, 
 
 226 
 Wilcox, Daniel. ..149 
 Wilkins, John. ..102 
 Wilks, John... 3 36 
 William III....! 11 
 Williams, Daniel. ..140 
 Williams, John... 308 
 Willis, Robert. ..28 
 Wilson, Walter.. .232 
 Winchester, Elhanan...322 
 Wiszowaty, Andrew... 61 ,62 
 Witchcraft... 1 68 
 Withers, John... 134 
 Wladyslaw IV.... 5 7 
 Wolverhampton suit... 3 36 
 Worthington, John. ..162 
 Wright, Anne...3i5 
 Wright, John. ..335-336 
 Wright, John (2). ..335, 
 Wright, Richard...3i3 
 
 Yates, James... 27 3 
 
 Zadrik, Jacob... 57, 5 8 
 Zinzendorf, Nicolaus Ludwig 
 
 von... 236 * 
 Zoelen, Van. ..163 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Note 
 
 I. The Personality of Michael 
 
 Servetus .... 3 
 
 II. The Tercentennial of a Name . 45 
 
 III. Early NoNFORMiTY AND Education . 67 
 
 IV. Thomas Firmin, the Philanthropist 93 
 V. The Story of Salters' Hall . 123. 
 
 VI. Peter Bayle and His Dictionary . . 157 
 
 VII. Philip Doddridge and the Catho- 
 licity OF THE Old Dissent . 185 
 
 VIII. Theophilus LiNDSEY AND His Chapel 241 
 
 IX. Thomas Belsham, His Place in the 
 
 Unitarian Movement . . 285 
 
 X. Richard Wright and Missionary 
 
 Enterprise .... 313 
 
 Index 340 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Heresy : its Ancient Wrongs and Modern 
 
 Rights in these Kingdoms. By Alexander 
 
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liiiSiiiJiiiiiiliiiiilililiiiiiiliiliill^