great general council of the Church was assem bled at Nice, by Constantine the Great, to defend this faith, and to compose the troubles of the church occasioned by the Arian controversy. It consisted of three hundred and eighteen bishops from Greece, from Egypt, from Lybia, from Thrace, and from the provinces of Asia Minor; and a very considerable number of other ecclesiastics. The learning, the talents, the piety, and the age of those ministers were such as eclipsed all convocations of like nature. Never was council more unanimous than they in drawing up the credenda of the church. The aged men among them might be called grandsons of the holy apostles and apostolic men. They had known nothing of heresy, or apostacy. They have declared their faith in plain and unequivocal words. The English version, as the Latin, is a pure metaphrase of the Greek.

"We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were created, &c. Και εις τον ἕνα Κυριον Ιησούν Χρισον, τον υιον του Θεου, γενηθέντα εκ του πατρος μονογενη, τουτέσιν εκ της ουσίας του πατρος, Θεον εκ Θεου, φως εκ φωτός, Θεον αληθινον εκ Θεού αληθινου, γενηθέντα ου ποιεθέντα, ομοούσιον τω πατρι, δι' ου τα παντα εγενετο, &c. vide Euseb. hist. eccles.

We believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth, &c. &c. Some creeds use stronger language than the one in the communion service of the Common Prayer. e. g. Credimus-in Spiritum sanctum. Eos autem, qui dicunt, erat, quando non erat, et priusquam nasceretur, non erat, aut ex non-existentibus factus est, vel ex alid hypostasi sive substantia, vel creatum, aut convertibilem, aut alterabilem dicentes Dei Filium, hos anathemate ferit Catholica et Apostolica Ecclesia. -Vide Bulli Defen. p. 7. Ed. Lond. 1721.

Is it likely that a council so respectable could be any other than the echo of the apostolic voices to all future ages of the church? They were left perfectly free in their deliberations: they are not accused of acting by either interest or fear. They were assuredly the church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of truth. And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness, foc, God was manifest in the flesh. These are our foundations which cannot be destroyed; foundations against which the pride of reason, and the philosophy of the age, cannot prevail.

You tell us, Sir, that you have been twelve years in completing your Unitarianism; I grant that you have said the substance of what can be said on the subject. I believe your work will proselyte many to your opinion; for with regard to abstract truths, men have a strong resemblance to infants but just emancipated from their nurses' arms. "If we suffer our neighbour," says Edmund Burke, "to tell us his tale for half an hour every morning, we shall no longer be in our

own power." On this account I recommend those who will read such books to see both sides.. Bishop Bull's Defence in Latin, with Professor Grabe's notes, is an unanswerable work; Dr. Waterland's Defence of the Trinity; Bishop Horsley's Answer to Dr. Priestly; Mr. Abraham Taylor's small work on the Trinity, and Dr. Pye Smith's Scripture Testimonies, are all works of great merit. I am bound, however, to add, that your book has not made a proselyte of me. I have closed it with an untainted mind; a mind if possible more determinately attached to the unshaken faith of the primitive church. That you, sir, should twenty times avow your belief in what you have written, I am not surprised. I give you the credit of sincerity. But for your frequent assertions, that there is not one word in all the New Testament which is not perfectly reconcileable with a belief in the simple humanity of Jesus, I am quite unable to account. Before the Arian controversy, before Tertullian and others had written apologies for the Christian religion, churches were formed in the whole Roman empire, then comprising the vast extent of Persia, Britain, Spain, and Northern Africa; yea, those apologists tell us, that this gentle philosophy of Jesus, had softened the ferocious manners of Barbarians amongst whom the Roman arms could never penetrate. Now, as all those churches had τας μεμβρανας, the parchments, as well as books, 2 Tim. iv. 13, it must be an unaccountable effrontery in Griesbach, whom you follow, to suppress, to augment, to corrupt and alter those

sacred parchments on the grand articles of faith, unless on the authority of a majority of copies. It is a just remark of Dr. George Benson, that if all the different readings were put together, they would not affect any one doctrine of the Christian religion. Why then should "Unitarianism, which is so very clearly and evidently the doctrine of the Bible," need a thousand suppressions, corruptions, and false readings of the New Testament ? Were not the holy apostles, 66 men unskilled in arts," capable of telling a plain tale? Or can we for a moment admit the supposition, that every expression relative to the glorious person of their Lord, is full of ambiguity? Was not most of the New Testament read in the vulgar tongue in all the churches of the Roman Empire, before St. John died; for St. Paul advises the pas tors of different churches to exchange his epistles, and read them publicly? Surely the blessed men who translated those writings, and were themselves confessors and Martyrs, could not become corruptors of the faith.

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You say, page 6. My belief is, that God pointed the man Christ Jesus, to reveal the doctrine of free pardon and everlasting life." It is replied, that Jesus Christ pardoned sins in his own name and right; but a free pardon he did not reveal: his words are "this is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many, for the remission of sins." How can a pardon be free which cost the Saviour his life! And as to everlasting life; that was revealed in the Old Testament. Abraham sought a better country; Jacob

called dying, Salvation ;-David saw the path of Life; and Daniel spake of the Resurrection. The Saviour came to demonstrate immortality and life.

While speaking of a future state, we may add that you quote the disquisitions of Dr. Priestley, and perhaps twenty times with approbation. Of this book it was satirically said, that Dean Berkley had proved that man has no body, and Dr. Priestley, that he has no soul. Take a few extracts from this standard book of Unitarian faith. Dr. Priestley, ridiculing the doctrine most dear to a Christian, the happiness of separate spirits, as laid down in the Scriptures, says, "nothing can be found in those books to countenance the vulgar opinion, except a few passages ill-translated or ill understood, standing in manifest contradiction to the rest." Disquisition page 114. It is replied, they are not vulgar opinions; but the faith of the whole world, though with variations among the learned. Trismegistus, the first of philosophers, says, ανθρωπος διπλους, δια το σωμα θνητος, αθανα τοσδε δια Ψυχην τον ουσιωδη ανθρωπον. Man consists of two [natures,] being mortal in regard to the body, but deathless in regard of his soul, which is the real substance of man." But why swell this reply with quotations? The Theogony of Hesiod, a versification of the Mythology of the ancient temples, the Iliad, the Cyropædia of Xenophon, and in fact, the whole world, except a few Atheists in Greece, are of one mind, and every where have raised their tumuli, and mausoleums, or sunk their catacombs for the dead. From time imme