LETTER SECOND.

A recapitulation of the Archdeacon's Charge.

DEAR SIR,

IF I could adopt your heroic plan, of writing on till I should have nothing left to say, our correspondence would run to an enormous size: for I should have more than a single remark to make upon almost every sentence of every one of your Ten Letters. But as we both write for the edification of the public, and yet few, I fear, will be disposed to give a long or a close attention to our subject; the ease of our readers, if we mean to be read, must be consulted. You, I am told, in defiance of your bookseller's sage counsels, despise such considerations. But they will have their weight with me. I shall be unwilling either to fatigue by the length, or to perplex by the intricacy or obscurity of my reasoning. To avoid the first miscarriage, I shall be content to give you a sufficient, rather than a full reply; and to avoid the second, I shall endeavour so to frame my argument, that my readers may perceive the force of it, without the trouble and interruption of frequent recourse to our former publications. For this purpose, I shall begin with a recapitulation of the substance of my Charge; that before I enter

upon particular discussions, the points to be disputed may be brought at once in view.

2. The general argument of my Charge was a critical review of your History, in that part of it which relates to the doctrine of the Trinity in the three first ages. This review consisted of two parts: a summary of the account, which you pretend to give, of the rise and progress of the Trinitarian doctrine; and a view of the evidence, by which your narrative is supported, consisting of nine select specimens of the particular proofs of which the body of that evidence is composed.

3. Of your account of the rise and progress of the Trinitarian doctrine, I said in general, that it is nothing new; that it is in all its essential parts the same, which was propagated by the Unitarian writers of the last century, and, upon its first appearance, refuted by divines of the church of England. Your answer to this part of my Charge, is, as I have already had occasion to observe, complete. You repel the imputation of plagiarism, by the most disgraceful confession of ignorance, to which foiled polemic ever was reduced. To this part of your defence I have nothing to reply.

4. To your evidence, I made the same general objection, that it is destitute of novelty; consist

ing of proofs long since set up, and long since confuted that if you have attempted any thing new, it is only to confirm the gratuitous assumptions of. former Unitarians, by inconclusive arguments, and false quotations. The nine specimens of your proofs, by which this heavy accusation was supported, were nothing less than your principal arguments in support of your three fundamental assertions: that the primitive church was simply Unitarian; that our Lord's divinity was an innovation of the second century; and that the innovation was made by the Platonizing fathers. If your principal arguments were fairly adduced, as instances of weak, insufficient proof; your whole notion of the gradual progress of opinions, from the Unitarian doctrine to the Arian, and from the Arian to the Nicene faith, is overthrown. Of this you have shewn yourself not insensible, by the great pains which you have taken, to what purpose will soon appear, to answer my objections.

5. The nine specimens of insufficient proof were these.

6. Two instances of the circulating syllogism. The first, when you allege your own sense of Scripture as the clear sense, in proof of your pretended fact, that the primitive faith was Unitarian; whereas the fact must be first proved, before your particular interpretation can be admitted.

The second, when in like manner you allege the pretended silence of St John about the error of the Unitarians, in proof that the Unitarian doctrine is no error, but the very truth of the gospel. The assumption that St John is silent upon this subject in his first epistle, is gratuitous and disputable. It rests upon a particular interpretation of St John's expression, that "Christ is come in the flesh," which will be admitted by none, who are not previously convinced that St John's own faith was Unitarian. If St John's faith was Unitarian, the phrase that" Christ is come in the flesh," signifies only, that Christ was a man: and thus we shall find no censure of the Unitarian doctrine in St John's first epistle. But if St John was no Unitarian, but a believer in the incarnation and divinity of our Lord; then the phrase of Christ's coming in the flesh cannot but be understood to allude to both these articles, as parts of the true faith; and alluding to both these articles, as parts of the true faith, it conveys a censure upon the Unitarian doctrine in every form. The assumption therefore of St John's silence, concerning the Unitarian doctrine, presumes another fact, that St John was himself an Unitarian. This is the primary, though tacit assumption, on which this argument is built. This argument therefore, fairly analysed, is found to circulate like the former. For the conclusion to be established, is the prétended fact, that the faith of the primitive

church was Unitarian. The mean of proof is the gratuitous assumption, that the faith of St John was Unitarian. But to assume the faith of an inspired apostle, is the same thing as to assume the faith of the primitive church.

7. My third specimen was an instance, in which you cite a testimony, which no where exists. The pretended testimony is of no less a person than Athanasius. The fact, to which Athanasius is made to depose, is the high antiquity of the Unitarian faith. His testimony to this fact, you find in his piece upon the orthodoxy of the Alexandrine Dionysius; in a certain passage in which he affirms, that the Jews were firmly persuaded that the Messiah was to be a mere man; and alleges, as you understand him, this persuasion of the Jews as an apology for a caution, used by the apostles, in divulging the doctrine of our Lord's divinity. The Jews, of whom Athanasius speaks, you preposterously imagine were Christians, the first converts from Judaism. Whereas he speaks of plain downright Jews; and what you take for his apology for caution in the apostles, is in truth a commendation of the sagacity, which they displayed in a judicious arrangement of the matter of their doctrine.

8. My fourth specimen was your capital argument for the antiquity of the Unitarian faith,