any future editions of it, and make it more perfect than it is poffible for me to make it at prefent. I hope alfo that the controverfy will be continued by men of learning, though I may now think myself excufed from taking any part in it. But with refpect to this, I do not pretend to have any fixed determination. Every writer who wishes not to mislead the public, is answerable for what he lays before them. At their bar he is always ftanding, and should hold himself ready to answer any important question, when it is properly put to him.

This I shall have a good opportunity of doing in the Theological Repofitory, which I have revived, and which is published occafionally; and, to repeat what I faid on a former occafion, "If any perfon will give

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his name, and propofe any difficulty "whatever relating to the subject of this "work, fo that I fhall fee reason to think "that it proceeds from a love of truth, I "here promise that I will fpeak fully to "it, and I fhall be as explicit as I poffibly

"can."

"can." Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken to exhibit me to the public as an unfair and difingenuous writer, I trust that with many, at leaft, I have fome character to lofe; or if fo much has been taken away that I have but little left, it may be prefumed that I fhall be the more careful of it on that account.

It was my earnest wish to have had the advantage of a public difcuffion of the fubject of this work by a learned Arian before I had proceeded to the compofition of it. I folicited for fuch an opponent both publicly and privately, but without fuccefs; which I think is much to be regretted. In lieu of this, I have collected the ideas of the Arians in a more private way, and have myfelf endeavoured to fuggeft all that I poffibly could in support of their opinion. It will be feen that I have given particular attention to their doctrine through the whole course of the work; and I must fay that, I find no evidence of its existence before the time of Arius. If I have proved

this, the hypothefis must be abandoned. For no perfon can long fatisfy himself with faying, it is fufficient for him, if he find his opinion in the fcriptures, and that he will not trouble himself about that of others, however near to the time of the apoftles. For it will be an unanswerable argument, a priori, priori, against any particular doctrine being contained in the fcriptures, that it was never understood to be so by those perfons for whofe immediate use the scriptures were written, and who must have been much better qualified to understand them, in that refpect at leaft, than we can pretend to be at this day.

My Arian friends, I am well aware, will think that, in this, as well as in a great part of the work, I bear peculiarly hard upon them; and I frankly acknowledge it. I think theirs to be an hypothefis equally deftitute of fupport in the fcriptures, in reafon, and in hiftory. There is, I even think, less colour for it than for the trinitarian doctrine as it ftood before the coun

cil

cil of Nice. For afterwards it became a perfect contradiction, undeferving of any

difcuffion.

It would give me much pain to offend my Arian friends, as I fear I fhall do in this work; because for many of them I have a great esteem, for some of them as great as I have for any living characters whatever. But I flatter myself that, as they know me well, they will be fatisfied, that all I have advanced arifes from the fulness of my perfuafion with respect to the fallaciousness of their principles, and my earnest desire to recommend to them a fyftem better founded than their own.

They will be more particularly offended at my not allowing them the title of unitarians. But for this I have given my reafons; and I refpect them as good men, and good chriftians, which is of infinitely more value. Befides, the title of unitarians is that which had always been given to those who have of late been called Socinians in

this country, till Arianifm was introduced by Mr. Whifton, Dr. Clarke, and Mr. Pierce, at a time when the old unitarians, fuch as were Mr. Biddle, and Mr. Firmin (those most respectable of men) were almost extinct. We therefore only reclaim an old poffeffion, and by this means get quit of a denomination from a particular perfon, which is never a pleafing circumstance. But let my reasons be confidered, and by them I am willing to stand or fall.

There is one particular fubject on which I have much enlarged in this treatise, and about which I had no intention to write at all, when I began to collect materials for it. It is the miraculous conception of Jefus, concerning which I had not at that time entertained any doubt; though I well knew that feveral very eminent and learned chriftians, of ancient and modern times, had difbelieved it. The cafe was that, in perufing the early chriftian writers, with a view to collect all opinions concerning Christ, I found fo much on this fubject, that I could

b