In 1772 the Presbyterian and Independent congregations numbered together only 702; probably 400 being Independent, and the remaining 302 Presbyterian, divided, in all likelihood, about equally between orthodox and heterodox. III. ARIANISM DRIVEN TO UNITARIANISM. 1782-1812. THE name Presbyterian, as the century rolled on, became in popular parlance looser than ever in its application, a minister and an audience being all it seemed to imply; the old traditional technical reverence for regular ordination being, however, carefully maintained. The name, Presbyterian, indeed, was acquiring more and more a doctrinal signification, having reference to those Churches whose ministers preferred speculative liberty to Evangelical orthodoxy, and that were in the main current or drift toward Unitarianism. The "MEETINGS " were simply worshipping assemblies, and most of them dwindling away into mere handfuls of people. They were congregations rather than Churches; where the principles of congregational independency" were, however, not only not in use, but positively abhorrent to the ministers and trustees. There were numbers of very rich and prosperous congregations throughout the country representing this side of the old Presbyterian traditions, as at Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Norwich, Bristol; and very able men were secured for such places. Some of these Presbyterian ministers were pre-eminent among their contemporaries for their literary abilities and for their skill and attainment in scientific and philosophic pursuits. Chief of them were (after Dr. Nathaniel Lardner's time), Dr. Samuel Chandler, Dr. Priestley, Dr. Price, Dr. Kippis, and George Walker, all of whom had high academical degrees and were all Members and Fellows of the Royal Society. Their speculative heterodoxy had of course various shadesfrom that High Arianianism which could use a kind of Trinitarian phraseology with cautious reserve, down through all stages, till it reached the condition of dull, listless, platitudinizing about religion and virtue, that was but a poor echo of Seneca or Epictetus. Socinianism did not come into vogue, as a militant or fighting creed, till the later days of Dr. Priestley, half a century after Arianism had been quietly and sleepily holding the field; and then the great premonitory shakings that issued in the French Revolution and the Methodist revival, brought a new spirit into play. It was in 1782 that Priestley published his History of the Corruptions of Christianity,1 and in 1786 his History of Opinions Concerning the Person of Jesus Christ. These books marked an epoch in the evolution of Unitarianism in England. But if Dr. Daniel Waterland and others smote Arianism to the dust and drove it from its position by sheer force of argumentativeness, however unevangelical in temper and spirit, by their Defences and Expositions of the Nicene Theology; it was Dr. Joseph Priestley and men of his school and training that may be said to have destroyed it in the opposite way, by compelling its adherents to be consistent and go some stages further, so as to become clearly and unmistakably Socinian and Unitarian, or to fall back again within the lines of the orthodox profession. This was much what Butler, by his Analogy, was simultaneously doing in another spheremaking the old and fashionable half-way house of Deism untenable, consistently with its own assumptions; and so he drove it out of fashion and out of countenance by compelling the rejectors of Christianity to move forward logically and irresistibly to sheer Atheism or universal scepticism, with no intermediate halting-place. It is very remarkable to notice how thoroughly routed Arianism was in all its disguises, and all along the line, before the end of the century, and how speedily it was supplanted by the new explosive force of Unitarianism. Priestley's ancestors had been for generations Independents; and he had himself, though minister of a 1 Of Priestley's History of the Corruptions of Christianity, Bishop Horsley says (Tracts in Controversy with Dr. Priestley, p. 72), "No work was ever sent abroad under the title of a History, containing less of truth than this, in proportion to its volume." 2 Some drew the distinction between the Socinian and Unitarian positions-the former admitting of prayer being offered to Christ, but the latter disallowing it altogether. Presbyterian "meeting," very little similarity in tone and temper to the old Arianizing Presbyterians; being remarkably out-spoken and uncompromising; showing an air of defiance, and an impatience of shams, very contrary to the staid, easygoing, and not highly honourable tactics of the Arian ministers.1 This new style of thoroughgoingness, indicating a more earnest spirit, began to clear the marches; and caused many ministers to define their position. There, no doubt, remained "a high and dry lot" both among Presbyterians and Independents at the head of whom may be placed Dr. Abraham Rees, the Presbyterian of Encyclopædic fame, minister of the Old Jewry, or Dr. Andrew Kippis, the learned and laborious compiler, editor of the Biographia Britannica, who was another nondescript both in his doctrinal and ecclesiastical position." We find this great change-this vast difference in spirit between the old and new state of things-which was about to toss Arianism aside like a bundle of old used-up clothing, in favour of the more advanced and pushing habit of the new Socinianism, admirably portrayed in a recent publication. "Towards the end of the century a rapid and startling change occurred. Mankind had awakened from its lazy lethargy. A spirit was abroad that was producing, more especially among the younger and more enthusiastic, a delight and happiness in present being and in hopes for the future that can now scarcely be realized. It was the period of which Wordsworth has said, "Joy was it in that dawn to be alive; But to be young was very heaven." It was almost inevitable that not a few of the leaders of the science 1 "I do not wonder," says Dr. Priestley, in memorable words used by him to the Rev. Dr. Miller of Princeton, "that you Calvinists entertain and express a strongly unfavourable opinion of us Unitarians. The truth is, there neither can nor ought to be any compromise between us. If you are right, we are not Christians at all; or if we are right, you are gross idolaters." 2 Not to be confounded with the later Unitarian Secretary, Dr. Thomas Rees. 3 The ideas of many of the speculative Presbyterian ministers concerning the person of Christ, were greatly determined by the views and arguments of a curious and at the time popular tract, The Scripture Trinity, intelligibly explained by Dr. Thomas Burnet, the remarkable Rector of West-Kingston, Wilts, and Prebendary of Sarum, who died, May, 1750. "In this performance," says Dr. Kippis (Biog. Britan. iii., 41), "the author endeavours, with great ingenuity and plausibility, to unite the rationality claimed by the Unitarians with the orthodox language of those who admit the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity." and of the reasoning of the time should be men who had either abandoned or been ejected from other communions, and had therefore attached themselves to the Presbyterians. But their spirit was not that of the Presbyterians of 1719, but its direct antagonist. The spirit of Presbyterianism had been that of tolerance carried to its utmost limit; the new apostles who joined it from without, and of whom two notably, Priestley and Belsham, formed and all but formulated for it a creed, were men of vehement assertion and scarcely disguised contemptuous aggression against all who differed from a pure Unitarianism. As a consequence of the changes that had been taking place, a large body among the socalled Presbyterians were prepared to accept as the exponents of their faith these new leaders when they appeared; but the society of which Priestley and Belsham were thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the avowed leaders, had never at any time formally repudiated the faith of their Puritan forefathers. Amongst many of them the old Puritan traditions remained in almost full vigour, so that, living in the same body, sending their sons to the same schools, identified by the same name, were men who scarcely differed in opinion from the great body of English Evangelicals, whether within the Established Church or among "Orthodox Dissenters," and others from whom these latter would, at all events now-a-days, recoil as from the worst of heretics. Thus it happened that a man whose opinions were in all main points orthodox might in the same chapel succeed, or be succeeded by, one under the direct influence of dogmatic Unitarianism; and between these extremes there was a considerable number who, whatever their individual opinions might be on one side or the other, yet adhered to the old Presbyterian tradition, and therefore abstained, in the pulpit at least, from all doctrinal discussion. During the period of transition, before the new masters had finally established their ascendency, a certain reluctance to permit the change from toleration to dogmatism to take place needed only an opportunity for its expression. Such an occasion arose when, in 1792, Belsham was proposed as the afternoon preacher in the same chapel in which Priestley was already morning preacher. Belsham was, to his infinite annoyance, then rejected, and a young man, twenty-six years of age, was elected in opposition to him. That young man was Michael Maurice. The position which was thus, by an accident, forced upon him defines accurately the standpoint of the man. Descended, according to his own statement, from one of those who had suffered at the time of the passing of the Act of Uniformity, the history of his family, of which he left a manuscript record of no general interest, was one exactly characteristic of the ordinary course of life of the English Puritans. In the days of Michael Maurice's father the family appears to have been strictly and even zealously orthodox, and almost unconscious of the |