present Majesty, are requisite to make a meeting, upon the pretence of divine worship, not a conventicle in the strict sense of the word. I told Dr Priestley, that I had found neither entry of the house, nor record of the minister's declaration. Dr Priestley replies, that I could, indeed, find no record of declaration; for none was ever made: but that I ought to have found an entry of the house; for the entry was duly made. Now the truth is, that I employed the clerks at the different offices to make the search, for which I paid the accustomed fee. I trusted to their report, which I find was not accurate. I believe the fact to be, as Dr Priestley states it. The house is entered; but the minister hath never declared his principles, as the law requires. The defence of a strong word, which hath been taken personally, would be to me the most unpleasant part of the controversy, were it not that the style of Dr Priestley's Second Letters, and of some other publications upon that side, hath put an end to all ceremony between me and the leaders of the Unitarian party. I therefore still insist, that all meetings under ministers who have not declared, whether the place of meeting be entered or be not entered, are illegal; and that the word conventicle, as it was used by me in my Charge, was not misapplied.*

Dr Priestley in his Third Letters, insists that his own

N. B. The preceding chapter gave occasion to a pamphlet, entitled, The Calvinism of the Protestant Dissenters asserted: in a Letter to the Archdeacon of St Alban's. By Samuel Palmer, Pastor of the Independent Congregation at Hackney. London, Printed for J. Buckland, &c. 1786.

The sum of Mr Palmer's argument, is contained, I think, in these three propositions. That of the thirteen ministers who signed the protest against the resolution for the application to Parliament, six were Scotsmen, true members of the Kirk, and therefore not properly among our English disenters. That the cross petition was not presented by the thirteen; that the fifty who signed it were chiefly lay-preachers, not belonging to the body of the London ministers; Methodists; unacquainted with the fundamental principles of the Protestant dissenters. That a great

meeting-house, and Mr Lindsey's, cannot be brought under the denomination of conventicles merely because they, who preach in them, are not authorised by law. He thinks," that if, by any accident, an unauthorised dissenting minister, like himself, should preach in a parish church, it would not on that account become a conventicle." But whatever he may think, an assembly in a parish church to hear Dr Priestley preach, or even to assist, at divine worship performed by a priest of the church of England, otherwise than according to the form prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, would be a conventicle; and all persons resorting to it would be liable to the penalties, which the laws denounce against persons frequenting conventicles.

body of Calvinists concurred in the application to Parliament upon a general principle of Liberty, disliking any interference of the magistrate in religious matters.

Of these three propositions, the two first seem to militate strongly on my side, heightening the appearance at least of a paucity of Calvinists among our dissenters, since six of the thirteen who protested, and all the fifty who petitioned, according to Mr Palmer, were not English dissenters. As for the third, if the fact be as Mr Palmer states it, I can only lament that a republican principle should so strongly have infected so respectable a branch of the Christian church, as the Calvinists are in my estimation. I believe however, that the truth is, and is pretty notorious, that Calvinism is gone among the dissenters of the present times; though, for what reason I presume not to say, the dissenting teachers dislike to he told of its extinction.

CHAPTER FIFTH.

Of the doctrines of Calvin.-Of Methodists.

I Now proceed to reply to Dr Priestley's insinuation, that I have spoken with contempt of the doctrines of Calvin, which at the same time he presumes, I really believe. He was in good humour with me, when he drew up this concluding paragraph of his third letter; for his reason for presuming that I believe what, he imagines, I speak of with contempt, is, that he is unwilling "to tax me with insincerity."

2. If any where I seem to speak with contempt of the doctrines of Calvin, I have certainly been unfortunate in the choice of my expressions. It is one thing not to assent to doctrines in their full extent; quite another to despise them. I am very sensible that our articles affirm certain things, which we hold in common with the Calvinists so they affirm many things which we hold in common with the Lutherans; and some things which we hold in common with the Romanists. It cannot well be otherwise; for as there

*Second Letters, p. 35.

+Ibid.

are certain principles which are common to all Protestants, so the essential articles of faith are common to all Christians. Perhaps, in points of mere doctrine, the language of our articles agrees more nearly with the Calvinistic, than with any other Protestant confession, except the Lutheran. But I never was aware, till Dr Priestley informed me of it, that I am obliged, by my subscription to the thirty-nine articles, to believe every tenet that is generally known by the name of Calvinistic: and, till the obligation is enforced upon me by some higher authority than his, I shall, in these matters," stand fast in my liberty." Nevertheless, I hold the memory of Calvin in high veneration; his works have a place in my library; and in the study of the holy Scriptures, he is one of the commentators whom I frequently consult. I may appeal to my own congregation at Newington, and to other congregations to which, by my situation, I am occasionally called to preach, to witness for me, that I never mention the Calvinistic divines without respect; even when I express, what I often express, a dissent, upon particular points, to their opinions. The respect with which they are mentioned in my Good-Friday sermon, in which I asserted the doctrines of Providence on the one hand, and of Free-agency on the other, is, per

* Second Letters, p. 25.