their divisions of belief to a hearty union of spirit, is the desire and prayer of

Us, who in this temper, and in better times, might have been owned as

Your fellow-labourers,

JAMES MARTINEAU.

March 25th, 1839.

JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
HENRY GILES.

THE

PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE

OF THE

UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY;

A LECTURE,

DELIVERED IN PARADISE STREET CHAPEL, LIVERPOOL,

ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1839,

BY

REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.

BEING THE FIRST OF A SERIES, TO BE DELIVERED WEEKLY, IN ANSWER
TO A COURSE OF LECTURES AGAINST UNITARIANISM, IN CHRIST
CHURCH, LIVERPOOL, BY THIRTEEN CLERGYMEN OF THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

LIVERPOOL:

WILLMER AND SMITH, 32, CHURCH STREET. JOHN GREEN, NEWGATE STREET, LONDON; FORREST AND FOGG, MANCHESTER; J. DRAKE, BIRMINGHAM; W. TAIT, EDINBURGH; HEDDERWICK AND SON, GLASGOW; ARCHER AND SON, BELFAST; CUMMING, DUBLIN; KING AND CO., CORK; WILEY AND PUTNAM, NEW YORK; CAREY, PHILADELPHIA ; AND MUNROE AND CO., BOSTON.

An attempt has been made, in a preface to the Lecture to which the following pages are a reply, to break the force, by anticipation, of the statements they contain. The Answerer, however, evidently did not hear the statements; and the preface proceeds upon some rumour of what was said. If Clergymen are conscientiously prevented from going to hear Unitarians, they ought also to be conscientiously prevented from answering what they did not hear. I am represented as saying that Trinitarians do not gather, but lecture: I said Trinitarianism does not gather, but scatters. I am represented as arguing the tendency of Trinitarianism to Popery from the recent movement of the Oxford Tract divines in that direction: I argued the tendency of Trinitarianism to Popery from its fundamental principles, and I referred to the Oxford movement as one of the visible manifestations of the demonstrated tendency.

I shall notice the instances in which the Preface proceeds upon anything like a true apprehension of what was said.

1. Page vii, viii.-" When men tell us that Jesus did not weep over errors of opinion, we maintain that it was the 'error of opinion' which led them to reject him as the Messiah over which he lamented." Now, 1. Is the unbelief of the Jews in the Christ, when he was exhibiting his divine credentials in his Character and in his Miracles before their eyes and to their hearts, in any respect similar to our unbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity, which we, accepting both the Scriptures and Christ, declare we cannot find to be authorized by either? And 2. Is it not evident that Jesus attributed the unbelief of the Jews to Moral Causes, and that therefore, and only therefore, he condemned it? "This is the Condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." John iii. 19.

2. Page viii." But these principles involve a violation of unity." And what if they do? Did not our Saviour emphatically declare, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace but a sword." 1. Christ is here not describing the final purpose of his Mission nor the natural operation of his Spirit, but the immediate opposition and contention which his religion would excite both in Jew and Gentile before it rooted out the old Faiths: And 2. The Christ is not here alluding to differences between Christians themselves, between those who did accept him; but to the necessary conflict of the Spirit of Jesus with the Antagonist spirits of Judaism and of Heathenism. This also is the great subject of the Book of Revelations.

3. Page xi." But it is a priestly spirit which says, 'you must believe.'' This ought to be reckoned with the instances in which the answer proceeds

upon an incorrect rumour of what was said; which was to this effect,"that it is the priestly spirit, whose constant cry is, unless you believe this doctrine, and unless you believe that doctrine, you cannot be saved." Belief in Jesus, entire spiritual Trust in him, as, for all providential purposes, one with God, we have explicitly stated as our view of the essentials of Christianity.

Page xxi.-We do not know how far the Author extends his approval of "the tactics of holy war." For ourselves we disapprove of all such tactics, especially the tactics of substituting a mere illustration or practical verification of an argument, for the argument itself, and then dealing with the illustration as if there was no general principle behind it, as if the illustration was represented as the grounds of the principle, when it was only represented as one of its outward operations. And yet this "argumentum a particulari ad universale," is one which the author employs in his description of Unitarianism in almost every page of his Lecture.

J. H. T.