zen.

The second time that he went was in order to be received into the house of a merchant at Nantes, from which place, on account of the troubles in that neighbourhood, he removed to this country.

When the anniversary of the French revolution was celebrated at Birmingham, the constitution of France was a limited monarchy, very much like that of England, and had been solemnly accepted by the king himself. Though I approved of that celebration, I neither projected* nor attended it. The magistrates made no serious attempts to quell the riot, but rather promoted it. Of the amount of my losses on that occasion, I have nothing to add to what will be found in my Appeal to the People of England on the subject. In a pecuniary computation it was more than two thousand pounds less than the real value.

This gross abuse comes from a man with whom I never had any intercourse, whom I never offended or irritated by any reply to his invectives, which have never ceased since I have been in the country; nor should I have noticed them now, but that I find his publications have increasing acceptance and celebrity with the friends of those who have the chief power in this country; so that since the riot in Birmingham. is openly approved and praised by him and his supporters, a similar one may be apprehended here, especially if what Mr. Cobbett says be true (and I see no reason to question it), that " he has lived to see the truth of his statements, and the justice of his opinions respecting me fully and universally acknowledged;" and since a spirit of party runs as high in this country as I ever knew it to do in England. If you believe one half of what Mr. Cobbett says of me, you would be justified and applauded for destroying me, as you would for killing a serpent or a wild beast.

Having advanced thus much in my vindication, I shall probably bear in silence (as I have hitherto done with respect to what is past) whatever farther abuse I may be exposed to. What other terms of reproach the English language can furnish I am ignorant of, but I shall expect very soon to find; if not, that more curious changes will be rung on those that have been so often used already, and especially his three favourite words, rascal, villain, and scoundrel. These have

See its origin, supra, p. 108, note.

I have been very credibly informed that Lady Aylesford, wife of the Lord Lieutenant of the county, conversing on the subject of the riots, said, "They went farther than we intended." (P.)

See Vol. XIX.

been so much used by him, that I imagine his printer must provide fresh types for the letters of which they consist.

If any fresh accusations be advanced, it must be that I was sent hither as a convict, for theft or robbery on the highway; but that, being favoured, I was permitted to export myself to America, rather than be sent to my friends and old companions at Botany Bay; it being thought that there were already dangerous persons enow in that one place. And there will be just as much truth in this as in any thing that has thing that has yet been advanced against me by Mr. Cobbett.*

As a part of the general plan of that providence which overrules all things, I am far from complaining of the treatment I have met with in England, or in this country; especially as such has almost always attended the greatest merit, and we cannot expect to have any commodity, without the tax that is laid upon it by the laws of nature. In a system in which infinite wisdom and infinite goodness are equally apparent, nothing can eventually be wrong. Toads and vipers are as necessary in the system as horses and sheep; and noxious plants as much as wholesome herbs.

I shall conclude this letter with observing, that whatever I may think of the English government, I have such an opinion of the liberality, the good sense, and the good taste of my countrymen, that I do not believe that any such newspaper as that of Peter Porcupine would meet with any encouragement among the warmest friends of "Church and King" in England.

I am, &c.

Mr. Cobbett's successors have a full portion of his spirit, but without his ability. I preserve some specimens of their writings, especially the Prospectus of the Gazette of the United States for the Country, in order to convince my plilosophical friends in Europe, that, contrary to the hypothesis of some of them, European productions, vegetable, animal, or intellectual, do not degenerate in this western world. At least, nothing of equal party violence ever fell under my observation before.

According to this writer, the administration of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Burr will be conducted on the principles of Jacobinism, which, though he does not define, he gives us sufficiently to understand is a complication of all evils, natural and moral, something worse than war, famine, and pestilence united.

But, happily, all things, like most others of a noxious nature, carry their own antidote along with them. It may even be safely predicted of their publications, as it was of Porcupine's Gazette, that they will be eventually among the best friends of the cause of republicanism. (P.)

+ Yet it has appeared (supra, p. 111, note f), that by "the warmest friends of Church and King in England," Peter Porcupine was, in 1801, very effectually patronized. Among his numerous subscribers there would probably have been found, on an accurate survey, not a few of the vulgar," according to the uncourtly, though not unauthorized, classification of Lord Bolingbroke, supra, p. 90, note ‡.

LETTER VII.

Of my Religion.

MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS,

Mr. COBBETT calls me sometimes an Unitarian, sometimes a Deist, sometimes an Atheist, and always a hypocrite. And a great hypocrite I must, indeed, be, if, in reality, I do not believe in the being of a God, or in the truth of Christianity, when I have written more in defence of those articles of faith than any other man now living, or almost that ever did live, and have officiated as a Christian minister more than forty years.

I must also have a greater want of common sense than he ascribes to me, to maintain opinions so inconsistent with one another as those above-mentioned. An Atheist acknowledges no God, and no future state; Deists acknowledge the former, but few of them the latter, and they believe in no revelation; whereas Unitarians deny, indeed, a trinity in God, but they believe in one God, the Father, and in the divine mission of Christ. They believe that he worked miracles by the power of God, that God raised him from the dead, and that he will come again to raise all the dead, and judge all the world. The same man cannot, therefore, be at the same time an Atheist, a Deist, and an Unitarian. If I be a hypocrite, in pretending only to be no Atheist or Deist, while, in reality, I am either the one or the other, what have I got by my hypocrisy? when, though I have been a preacher, as I have observed, more than forty years, my profession has never yielded me half a maintenance; and here I get nothing at all by it. Men are not at the trouble of acting the hypocrite, and especially for so long a time, for nothing.

It is true that I do not join in the public worship of this place; but it is because I cannot join in your devotions, which are altogether Trinitarian, as they ought to be while you are Trinitarians. For it would be absurd to acknowledge Christ, to be God, and not to render him the honours of divinity by praying to him as an omnipresent and omnipotent Being, the maker and constant preserver of all things. But though I do not worship with you, I have divine service every Lord's-day in

I can only recollect one person who has written more in defence of Christianity than myself, and that was an Unitarian. I mean Dr. Lardner, with whom I had the happiness to be acquainted, and who, in conjunction with Dr. Flemming, was the publisher of the first of my theological writings. (P.) See Vol. I. Mem. 48.

me pray,

my own house, which is then open to every body, and where several of you occasionally attend. Now did any of you ever hear me preach any thing like Atheism or Deism, or indeed any thing contrary to your own opinions? And when you have heard could not you join me in every word I said? If you be Christians at all, I am confident you always might. It never was my custom to preach on the controverted subjects of religion, or only on particular occasions. These I discuss in my publications, in which you may see what my opinions on those subjects are, and the arguments I have to advance in support of them.

Had I been permitted to officiate in either of your meetinghouses (which I should have done gratis, thankful for such an opportunity of being useful among you), you would never have heard from me any thing but the principles of our common Christianity. And this will furnish topics of discourse in great abundance, and such as are of far greater importance than all the things about which we differ. The substantial duties of the Christian life, to inculcate which is, or ought to be, the great end of all our preaching, are the same on all our principles; and do I in my preaching (and I hope I may add in my practice) contradict any of these?

We all agree in acknowledging the same books of scripture, and we profess to derive our faith from them, though we interpret them differently. This, surely, is not Atheism or Deism. If I do not believe the divinity of Christ, it is because I do not believe it to be the doctrine of the Scriptures, and because I cannot help thinking, that if Christ, and also the Holy Spirit, be possessed of all the attributes of divinity, equally with God the Father, there must be three Gods, and not one only, which the Scriptures assert, and on which they lay the greatest stress. In this you will not agree with me; being of opinion that, in some sense or other, three may be one, and one three. But you will not say that, because I am not a Trinitarian, I am an Atheist or a Deist.

You do not call the Jews Atheists or Deists, because they do not believe the divinity of Moses, or of the Messiah whom they expect. They believe that. Moses delivered to them the laws and commands of God; and therefore they respect them as much as if they had all come from the mouth of God himself. I do the same with respect to all that Christ, speaking in the name of God, has delivered to us. He has repeatedly said, (John vii. 16, xiv. 24,) that the words which he spake

* I have, since this was written, performed divine service in a school-room, not far from my house. (P.)

were not his own, but the Father's who sent him; that the Father who was in him, or with him, worked the miracles which proved his divine mission, (John xiv. 10,) for that of himself he could "do nothing." (John v. 30.) The Apostle Peter calls Christ "a mau approved of God by signs and wonders which God did by him." (Acts ii. 22.) And the Apostle Paul says, (1 Cor. viii. 6, 1 Tim. ii. 5,) "To us there is one God, the Father; and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

But though I think the clear sense of scripture, such as is intelligible to the meanest capacity, is on my side, I can easily suppose that you see things in a very different light, and that you are as conscientious in differing from me as I am in differing from you. I, no doubt, wish that you could come to think as I do, on these subjects, as you do with respect to me. This is unavoidable in us both, if we lay any stress on our opinions, and have any good-will for one another. But I do not obtrude my opinions upon you, or offend you with disputation. Few of you have ever heard me mention the subject of our differences with respect to religion, and then the occasion has never been sought by me. I do not condemn those who act otherwise, but my habits are different; and though I have no less zeal, I take a different method of propagating my principles. I have seldom seen any good produced by disputing, in conversation. It too often tends to irritate; and though men are often silenced in this way, they are seldom

* I have before me a very gratifying presumption that this "method" had, at length, been happily successful. The following account of a "Unitarian Society in Northumberland" appeared in 1822:

"The Rev. Mr. Kay, an Unitarian clergyman from England, has lately been preaching, we understand, with some success, in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Much opposition was, as usual, manifested, at first, by the orthodox, and the customary means of exciting the popular voice, and predisposing the public mind, against Unitarians, were resorted to. But, instead of suppressing, they rather tended to awaken inquiry, and the subject has attracted more attention than even its most sanguine friends could have anticipated.

Among other testimonies of the interest which the people of that place and vicinity take in the cause, has been the establishment of a Unitarian Book Society, called The Northumberland Tract Society, for promoting Christian Knowledge and the Practice of Virtue, by the Distribution of Books and Tracts, founded on the great Principle of the Unity of God, and the subordinate, though divine Commission and Authority of the Lord Jesus.' We have seen the articles of the Society, and think them exceedingly well calculated to promote the desired object of union and concert among its members, and the diffusion of religious knowledge." See "The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor," Baltimore (U. S.), II. 328, 329. "We cannot but feel a strong interest that the principles of unadulterated Christianity should be kept alive in the place which Dr. Priestley chose as his refuge from persecution, and which was the scene of his last labours, and of his death. We have every reason to believe that they did not die there with him." Ibid. (1823), IV. 198, 199.

L