and act confiftently in it. In Dr. Horne's letter drawn up for you, we find many things at your time of life, never likely to have entered into your thoughts; particularly, the mystic notion, p. 40, that the epiftle to the Hebrews is a divine expofition of the Old Teftament. We also perceive not in the author, that curiofity, and ardent thirst after and love of truth, which belong to the human mind in the early prime of life: but, what is most unnatural to that age, a fixed refolution to make no inquiry into fubjects of the highest moment, but to fit down lazy and fatisfied with what others, without any just pretenfions, have decided concerning them, before he was born.

By writing however in the character of a young difputant, he has a plaufible excufe for paffing over a circumftance, with which you ought by no means to be unacquainted; which is, that however he pleads for fubfcription to creeds and articles, and will not admit the idea of any alteration or relaxation, a reformation therein has from the first, more particularly of late, been defired

and

and fought for by fome of the wifest and beft men of the nation.

To touch only upon fome things that have fallen out within a century past.

Archbishop Tillotfon writes from Lambeth to Bp. Burnet, in 1694, upon reading his expofition of the 39

articles:

"In the article of the Trinity, you have "faid all that I think can be faid, upon fo

obfcure and difficult an argument. The Socinians have juft now published an "answer to us all; t I have not had a fight of it. The account given of Athanafius's creed feems to me no-wife fatisfactory. "I wish we were well rid of it." Life of Tillotson by Birch, 8vo. p. 342. 343.

It is a great misfortune not to do right things, and give up what is wrong and indefenfible, at the time, as foon as perceived, especially in religious matters; because doctrines the most groundless and irrational, when stamped by authority, foon grow to be received without examination as the most facred truths; and reformation,

from

from various caufes, becomes the more difficult, the longer it is delayed.

Thus the fufpected text, 1 John v. 7. which was marked out as fuch in our english bibles, at the time of the reformation, and whofe fpurioufnefs has been more and more evinced fince that period to the prefent day, by the critical inquiries of learned men, is, nevertheless, in the face of all the demonstration of its not having been of the writing of the apostle that the subject is capable of, now afferted to be genuine, with a temper and spirit and by a method of argument, which certainly does no credit to the writer, or the caufe he would maintain. For this I would refer all that are judges, to Mr. Travis's own work, or to a Gleaning of remarks upon it, at the end of vol. 1, of "Commentaries and Effays, published by "the Society for promoting the know"ledge of the Scriptures, 1786."

And yet, on this gentleman's hardy affertions, devoid of all proof, bishop Seabury has lately proclaimed this exploded text to be authentic, throughout America, as far as his feeble

C

feeble voice and little authority can go, in a charge delivered by him at Derby in the State of Connecticut, September 1786. "I am not ignorant, fays he, p. 10. that the authenticity of 1 John v. 7. is dif

puted. Nor am I ignorant that it has "been incontestably established by the Rev. "Mr. Travis, in his letters to Mr. Gibbon.' Dr. Croft alfo, p. 8o. and Mr. Hawkins, p. 188. the two laft Bampton-Lecturers, have fent their readers to Mr. Travis, as hay

ing evinced the genuineness of the text to "the intire fatisfaction of every candid "and impartial inquirer." Ye will judge for yourselves, ye virtuous youth and searchers after truth, whether thefe gentlemen have not been too foon and cafily fatisfied.

Thus alfo the following hiftory of recent facts will fhew, in what different eftimation this creed of Athanafius is held by fome in high places in the church, than it was in Tillotfon's days, by him, and others and

this, even after it has been ftill more clearly demonftrated not to have been compofed by Athanafius, but drawn up long after his time, and put out under his name, most probably by one Vigilius Tapfenfis; the fame who first cited the fpurious text of 1 John v. 7, as genuine; one who accustomed himself to put the names of learned men of former times to his works, and pafs them off as their's; a practice, whatever his motive was for it, most highly to be condemned, tending to throw confufion into history, and to prevent our coming at certainty about any perfons or things in former ages.

Soon after the feparation of the Ameri. can States from the mother-country, in the year 1785, a liturgy was published at Bofton in New England, for the use of the first epifcopal church in that city, in which the plan of Dr. Clarke's reformed liturgy was adopted, and the worship made ftrictly unitarian, being addrefled throughout to the One Almighty Father of all through Jefus Chrift. In this, however,