tain a legal toleration, I am very thankful for a connivance.

You fay, p. 168, that "confcientious scruples "are no excufe at all for doing what the law "allows not to be done." In this you totally mistake the ground of my conduct. I do not pretend that it is authorized by the laws of this, or of any country, It is enough for me if I think myself justified by the laws of God; and whether I ought to obey God, or man, in this cafe, do you yourself judge.

What would you yourself advise us unitarians in this country to do? We have heard again and again all that you have to fay in defence of your trinitarian notions, and trinitarian worship, without any approach towards conviction, and yet we think it our duty to make a public profeffion of our unitarian principles, and to adopt an unitarian form of worship. Would you ferioufly fay we ought, with the views of things that we really have, to keep our opinions to ourselves, and have no public worship at all? And yet between this conduct and our acting more or less openly in oppofition to you, and incurring the penalties of the laws now in force against us, there is no medium.

If you really be a friend to any thing that deferves the name of toleration, you must feel for

the

the difgrace of your country, on account of the unjust and impolitic reftraints the laws of it lay upon us, and you will ufe your endeavours to promote the repeal of all penal laws in matters of religion, and likewife to lay open all civil offices to all perfons who are qualified to fill them; which indeed, is no more than is already done in feveral countries in Europe. That thofe who prefer the mode of religion now established, fhould bear the whole expence of it, without compelling us to affift them in it, while they do nothing for ours in return, though a thing perfectly reasonable, is more than I expect the archdeacon of St. Albans to countenance. I, however, live in the firm belief that even this will take place fome time or other; and my belief is grounded on this general and glorious truth, that there is a wife and good being at the head of all affairs, bringing good out of all evil. I therefore believe that good will finally take place of all evil, and confequently, equity of injuftice.

You Sir, as Archdeacon of St. Albans, may believe that the church of England will continue to the end of the world, and that all nations (at leaft all that speak the English language, and can read the book of Common Prayer in the original) will flow into it. On the other hand, it is my firm perfuafion, that when Babylon the great, the mother of barlots, fhall fall, all her daughters, all the little Babylons, all the leffer establishments, of what I deem

to be corrupt chriftianity, will fall with her, or, foon after her; and therefore I apply to them, as well as to the church of Rome, that awful warning, Rev. xviii. 4. Come out of her my people, that ye partake not of her fins, and that ye receive nat of ber plagues.

While we unitarians behave as good fubjects (and I do not know that we are worse thought of than other diffenters in this refpect) I have fuch confidence in the good fenfe of my countrymen, though without any particular obligation to yourself on this account, and in the spirit of the times (which throughout all Europe is daily more favourable to freedom of enquiry and toleration, and lefs favourable to old and corrupt, though venerable establishments) that I have little doubt but that I fhall be fuffered to proceed as I have hitherto done, unmolefted, promoting by every means in my power, what I deem to be important truth, though our legiflators in the laft century voted it to be herefy and blafphemy. What our prefent legislative body, if the queftion was brought before them, would decree, is unknown; but I am pretty confident that when the fubject fhall come properly before them (and this may be pretty foon) they will be difpofed to hear reafon, and to do justice.

From what you fay of your own freedom of enquiry, one would think that you might have treated us diffenters with a little more refpect. For after obferving that you are much at home in the Greek

language,

language, and that you have read the ecclefiaftical hiftorians, you add, p. 163. "I had been many years in the habits of thinking for myself upon a "variety of fubjects, before I opened Dr. Clarke's "book. There is in moft men a culpable timidity;

you and I perhaps have overcome that general "infirmity, but there is in moft men a culpable "timidity, which inclines them to be eafily over"awed by the authority of great names."

It will

make some perfons fmile to fee you, Sir, group yourself with me upon this occafion, and they may afk for fimilar evidence of your having overcome this culpable timidity, and of your having really thought for yourself, when they see you profeffing to believe, and complying with every thing that those who do not think for themfelves at all, profess to believe and comply with. Your profound admiration of Bishop Bull's writings is no proof of your thinking for yourfelf. All that can be inferred from it is, that you have made a wife choice of mafters. The writer for whom I always profefs the greatest admiration is Dr. Hartley, but I differ from him in many things, and things alfo of great confequence.

If however, you still retain the habit of thinking for yourself, allow me to return your civility to me, when you joined my name, p. 161. to those of Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and Gibbon, by adding yours alfo to this lift of free enquirers, and your fentence will then close thus, a Gibbon, a Prieflley, or a Horsley.

For

For my own part, I cannot fay that I much diflike my fituation, in the light in which I view the different characters; fince I find myself placed between an unbeliever on the one hand, and a bigh churchman on the other. Medio tutiffimus ibis.

Of the Charge of wilful Mifreprefentation, &c.

REV. SIR,

AS both yourfelf, and your great and good ally,

Mr. Badcock, have employed fo much of your respective publications on the fubject of perverfions, wilful mifreprefentations, artifice, management, &c. &c. &c. (for you are at no lofs for words or phrafes of this import) it may not be improper to give you one fhort letter on that fubject.

I was willing to hope, that, in this fecond publication, you would have obferved the rules of decency, and of probability, in your charges against me, and that you might have expreffed fome little concern for your former violations of

them.