LETTERS

TO THE

LORD BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S.

LETTER I.

Of his Lordship's avowed Object to depretiate his Antagonist.

MY LORD,

AFTER waiting, I believe, nearly twice eighteen months, the interval between your two preceding publications in this controversy, I am happy to see you make your appearance in it once more. Your Lordship's greatest admirers have not wished for this event so ardently as myself and my unitarian friends; because we consider your publications in this controversy as contributing in an eminent manner to the propagation of that great truth for which we think it glorious to contend, and which you oppose. The fact unquestionably is, that, since the commencement of this controversy, the progress of unitarianism has been rapid, compared to what it ever was before; and more within the church of England than among the Dissenters, though among them the number of con

verts has been considerable.

Truth will never fail to recommend and establish itself, notwithstanding, and even by means of, all

opposition; but your Lordship's mode of opposing it is so singularly efficacious in promoting it, that of all my antagonists I have always had the greatest satisfaction in replying to you. Besides, slow as your motions are, (owing to the natural indolence of which you complain,) your Lordship seems to be the most alert of all the members of your church who are engaged on the same side of the question with you. Mr. Howes, whose expedition was the greatest at one time, has, I fear, wholly declined the contest; and Dr. Horne's great work, so long promised, and so eagerly expected, I now almost despair of ever seeing. As to Dr. White, he seemed to promise, or rather threaten, much; but, alas! he has performed nothing at all. He may want the aid of my quondam admirer, Mr. Badcock.

On the whole, had I been permitted to choose my own antagonist, by exposing of whose arguments and manner of conducting the controversy I might avail myself the most, I should certainly have made choice of your Lordship. After seeing your first set of Letters to me, I said to several of my friends, that if I could have dictated the whole of your performance myself, it should have been just what I found it to be; your arguments were so extremely futile, and your manner of urging them giving me even more advantage than I wanted or wished for.

The principle of your Lordship's attack upon me, and the object of it, avowed in your first publication, and repeated in the preface of this, is indeed most absurd. "It seemed," you say, "that the most effectual preservative against the intended mischief would be to destroy the writer's credit, and the authority of

his name; which the fame of certain lucky discoveries in the prosecution of physical experiments had set high in popular esteem, by proof of his incompetency in every branch of literature connected with his present subject. For this declared purpose a review of the imperfections of his work in the first part, relating to our Lord's divinity, was made the subject of a Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of St. Alban's."

This curious plan of your Lordship's to destroy my reputation will probably bring to the minds of many of our readers the story of Croesus. When he formed the design of making war upon Cyrus, he sent to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi; and the answer he received was, that, if he engaged in that war, he would overturn a great empire. He did so, and an empire was overturned; but that empire was his own. This, my Lord, would apply to your Lordship, if that could be said to be overturned which was never established.

Had your Lordship reflected ever so little on the history of literature, you must have perceived that no such plan as this ever has succeeded, nor is it possible in the nature of things that it ever should. No work of man, especially one of a historical kind, and of any considerable extent, ever was free from imperfections; and therefore, upon your principle, the credit of no historical work whatever could stand; and yet there are many works of this kind in the highest reputation, with far more acknowledged imperfections than you have pretended to discover in mine; not to say that you have been completely foiled in all your attempts to discover any error of the least consequence to my

main argument, Would it destroy the credit of the late Dr. Johnson with respect to his knowledge of the English language, to point out faults in his style, of which many might be found? Was Newton no philosopher because he made a mistake in one of his expe riments; or no mathematician, because he is said to have committed an error in one of the demonstrations of his Principia?

No writer perhaps, except yourself, ever made greater mistakes in ecclesiastical history than Mr. Whiston; yet no person who is acquainted with them will say that his writings of this class are of no use. The real value of every work comes in time to be justly appretiated. Allowance is made for errors and imperfections, and due credit is given to every man and to every production for what is just, and will bear examination. This is all that I desire, and I am confident that I shall not be disappointed. As to all premature attempts to decry any particular work, or any particular man, such as your Lordship's and those of your allies, as you call them, with respect to me, they always operate in favour of what is thus attempted to be cried down. Because no person will take the trouble to give an alarm where he apprehends no danger.

After the contemptuous manner in which your Lordship affects upon all occasions to treat me, both with respect to knowledge and integrity, you may easily perceive that it has no effect in inspiring others with the same sentiments. It is not even believed that you really entertain them yourself. You make me destitute of the very rudiments of the Latin and Greek languages, and altogether unacquainted with the writers of christian antiquity. You pretend that I purposely

misquoted the common English translation of the Bible in order to impose upon my readers. You now say in a peculiar solemn manner that you would not take my evidence upon oath, and perpetually represent me as acting from the worst principles that can actuate a writer or a man. But all persons for whose good opinion I have the least regard, really consider all this, if it be not affectation, as a kind of insanity; and we cannot help thinking that your mind is affected in the same manner as that of the knight of La Mancha, who mistook a windmill for a giant, and a flock of sheep for an army. Your Lordship's peculiarly haughty and indignant phraseology only serves to amuse your readers by the singular curiosity of it.

The manner in which your Lordship affects to speak of my History of early Opinions concerning Christ cannot mortify any writer. I shall quote it for the entertainment of my readers. "The author is well aware that Dr. Priestley will charge him with one capital omission; that he hath taken no notice of any thing that may be contained relating to the various points of this controversy, in Dr. Priestley's History of early Opinions concerning Christ; that large work in four volumes, the result of a whole two years' study of the writers of antiquity, which, as it hath been published since Dr. Priestley's last Letters, may be supposed to contain better arguments, or at least his old arguments in a better form. The only apology to be made is a simple declaration of the truth. Not conceiving himself obliged to engage in the insipid task of reading so long a book without better hope of information from it than his past experience of the writer's knowledge in the subject gives, Dr. Priestley's adversary is as ig