ing Tracts, first suggested to my mind the wish of introducing under the sanction of YOUR High Patronage the present edition of them to the public.

This wish received additional strength from the reflection that the republication of the Tracts being intended as an antidote to the dissemination of false doctrine, the success of the design would be greatly promoted, were the work to appear under the immediate auspices of HIM to whom the Church of England looks up as her legitimate Protector.

The ready and condescending manner in which Your ROYAL HIGHNESS hath been graciously pleased to accede to the petition expressive of my wish, affords to the Church of England at a crisis when "those who hate her wrongfully are many in number and mighty" the high consolation, that she finds in You what she hath ever found in YOUR ILLUSTRIOUS FATHER, not merely a nominal but a real DEFENDER of her Faith-while the personal honour conferred upon myself, and the expressions of regard with which Your ROYAL HIGHNESS has been pleased to speak of the memory of

the late Bishop of St Asaph must ever be remembered with a sense of the deepest gratitude, and with feelings of unfeigned loyalty and zealous attachment to Your ROYAL PERSON, by

THE

EDITOR'S

PREFACE.

N

In the interval between the time of Dr Priestley's emigration to America and the death of Bishop Horsley, the exertions of the Unitarians appear to have lost much of their wonted activity. "The patriarch of the sect (strange result of victory) had fled; and the oracles and orators of Birmingham and Essex-Street were dumb; or if they

spoke, spoke only to be disregarded."* No sooner however had happened the melancholy event which deprived the church of England of one of her most able champions, and at the same time released the Unitarians from the fears which they had justly entertained of their indefatigable opponent, than the party again ventured forth from their hiding places. The columns of the daily papers were once more filled with their speeches at public meetings, and the again groaned under their pamphlets. At a meeting of the friends to the Unitarian fund held at the London Tavern immediately after the rejection of Lord Sidmouth's bill in 1811, one orator insisted upon the necessity of diffusing the advantages of the

press

* See the Bishop of Rochester's Charge to the Clergy of his Diocese in the year 1800.