believes the proper humanity of Jesus Christ, and who regards and honours him as the greatest of all the prophets of God, but not as the object of religious worship. And they plead not only that this is the primary and proper meaning of the word, but, likewise, that to ascribe to a creature the attributes and works of God, is as real an infringement of the divine unity, as addressing religious worship to him. And to this charge they conceive that the Arian doctrine is liable when it ascribes to Christ the formation, support, and government of the world. To this view of the subject I entirely accede: and for this reason I have always used, (and I presume that I am at liberty to use,) the word Unitarian in the sense in which I have observed it to be used by these learned, accurate, and judicious writers*.

On the other hand, the Arians, who since the publications of Dr. Price, seem to have abandoned the worship of Jesus Christ, do upon this ground claim the title of Unitarians, though they still continue to believe that Christ is the maker, preserver, and governor of the world, and all things in it; that is, as I think, to every practical purpose, God. But if they chuse to assume the appellation of Unitarian in this novel sense of the word, I know of no law to prevent them from doing so. The only objec tion is, that using an old word in a new signification, tends to produce confusion in language. At the same time I must observe, that it is with an ill grace that these modern Arians oom- ' plain of the Unitarians for with-holding that title from them, when they themselves by their new-coined definition, are compelled to deny this honourable appellation to Clark, and Whiston, and Chandler, and Benson; and to all the great and learned Arians of the last century.

Before I conclude this long epistle, I will just take occasion to observe, that the last century gave birth to a new denomination of Christians called the low Arians, who believe the simple pre-existence of Christ, but deny that he has any concern in the formation and government of the world, or that he was in former ages the medium of divine dispensations to mankind, or that he is the object of religious worship. Now, however unaccountable or unscriptural this notion may be, it certainly does not infringe the great doctrine of the unity of God: and such persons may with great propriety, assume the name of Unitarians.

After all, it is the public voice, and not the inclination of the parties themselves which must ultimately decide the meaning of

See Theological Repository, Vol. IV. p. 338.

any term in the language and unless I am very much mistaken, the word Unitarian in the English language, taken absolutely, is now almost universally used to express, a believer in the proper humanity of Jesus Christ.

I am, Sir, your humble servant,
T. BELSHAM.

Hackney, April 10, 1807.

COGMAGOG, ON LORD NELSON'S PIETY AND THE ADDRESS

OF CONVOCATION.

"Rien de plus indifférent pour une nation, que la manière dont un homme peut penser sur la Religion-il suffit qu'il se condui e en honnête homme & en bon citoyen." Ainsi les ministres des Dieux ont inventé en tut pays une infinité de vertus imaginaires & de crimes fictifs, qui n'ont rien de commun avec la vraie morale."- -Systeme Social. Tom. I. ch. 3.

SIR,

To the Editor of the Monthly Repository.

WHEN, upon seeing the Prospectus of your work, I offered you my services as a moral and theological Censor, I expected to be a more frequent correspondent than either my occupations and infirmities, or your arrangements with regard to my humble communications, (with which I mean not to quarrel) have in fact permitted. I troubled you with only four letters during the last year how many more I might have contributed, had you favoured all my epistles with the same "prompt insertion" (to use your own expression) with which you honoured my first, I leave you to calculate with regret or satisfaction, according to the light in which you view my productions. This however let me say, that I have begun many and then lighted my pipe with them; for though an old man I am a young writer, and can seldom, very seldom, pen any thing to my own satisfaction: not indeed that I am solicitous about the words in which my ideas are clothed, any more than I am about the garments in which I am dressed, and these, I am not ashamed to own, some of my female acquaintances in this city rally me upon as antiquated and even slovenly; but I should not like that my communications. should be rejected in contempt, which they might be were I to address you, Mr. Editor, as carelessly as I do my private correspondents. A Censor under censure would be truly ridicul

ons.

If Sir, I have not done as much as I intended, what I have done has not, I flatter myself, been useless. I have maintained the cause of truth and freedom. I have laughed at religious

and scorn.

mery

triflers, and have exposed hypocrites and bigots to contempt I entered upon my office with exhibiting the mumof the ceremonies practised at court on Epiphany or Twelfthday, 1806, and I am happy to perceive that our daily prints did not disgrace themselves on the same occasion this year, by giving a detail of the circumstances of this contemptible superstition. I next animadverted on the political sermons preached by our Dissenting Ministers on the day of thanksgiving for the victory of Trafalgar, and I have it now to record that a Fast-day has Jassed over our heads without insulting us (as far as I can learn,) with a single meeting-house philippic against the liberties of the people, or a single harangue in praise of war and blood-shed. I Jastly stood forth, (a shepherd lad against a giant,) in opposition to a high-church prelate, and I expect that the next edition of Bishop Burgess's "Elements," will expunge the passages upon which I have fixed the mark of proscription. I am not vain or credulous. I know that the Monthly Repository finds its way into places where you, Sir, would least expect it to be read. Orthodox Dissenters and Churchmen too, peruse it, as Mr. Wilberforce says Mr. Pitt" did good, by stealth," though when this sentence shall meet their eye, they also (to continue the parallel) may "blush to find it fame." Corruption seldom destroys the sense of shame, and the efforts of the humblest individual, when corruption is the object of attack, are never unavailing. The wry faces of a journeyman-printer, though no more than the workings of St. Vitus's dance, have been known to spread consternation through a court.

There are two subjects on which I mean to address you on this occasion; to neither of which in my apprehension is the public attention sufficiently alive. One is an original letter of Lord Nelson's on the Slave Trade; the other is the address of the members of Convocation to the King, and the King's reply.

I. The friends of the Slave Trade brought forward, during the recent discussion of the measure of Abolition in the two Houses of Parliament, an original letter of the Hero of the Nile and of Trafalgar, which indeed contains internal evidence of its genuineness, being as to sentiment and style precisely what every one who knew his character would have expected from the writer. The letter is dated June 10, 1805, and is addressed to a friend in Jamaica. The Admiral declares himself " a firm friend to our colonial system," and pledges himself to defend it as long as he should have" an arm to fight or a tongue to launch his voice." This was in the way of his profession. Colonies require, and they reward the naval service. But by the "colonial system," the writer means the practice of trafficking in slaves,

and of dooming Negroes, once enslaved, to hopeless bondage; and this "system" he vows his determination to defend to the end of life," against the damnable and cursed doctrine of Wilberforce and his hypocritical allies ;" and he expresses a firm hope that his birth in Heaven would be as exalted as his ;" meaning the gentleman just mentioned.

This is the substance of the letter; and you will not fail to notice its profaneness and malignancy. But on these points it would be painful to dwell, and they should never have been even alluded to by me, had not the author been so publicly and officiously represented, not only as "the greatest of Heroes, (an honour which I readily concede to him,) but also as “THE BEST OF CHRISTIANS." This is the very language of a poetical satyrist whose work is just come wet into my hands; and you cannot have forgotten that it was also the language of most of the divines who published their Thanksgiving Sermons on Dec. 5, 1805; the language particularly of our Dissenting Ministers, whose discourses on that occasion, I shall preserve for my children's children, as a proof of the degeneracy of those times, and (to use the language of Junius) as a salutary negative instruction for them and their posterity. One of these war-loving orators expressed himself unable to reconcile it to the goodness of God that so much piety joined to so much. bravery should be suffered to perish.

I will allow, Sir, the possibility of these divines being in absolute ignorance of the character of the man whose virtues they panegyrised in terms which must have been displeasing to Heaven if those virtues had been real; I will allow that in their abstraction from the world, they might never have heard the history of the Neapolitan Revolution; I will allow that their ears might have been always closed to tales of gallantry, as the world denominates a loose intercourse with the sex: I will allow all this, and what is the amount of the concession, but that we must hold them to have been ignorant, even beyond the common measure of ignorance, in order to admit them to have been honest? To relieve their discourses from the odious charge. of hypocrisy, we are reduced to the sad necessity of branding them with the mortifying reproach of folly.

I feel, Sir, that this is, as I remarked, a painful subject; but who occasions this uneasiness; the authors of these wretched flatteries, or I, who have pointed out their baseness, in order to prevent the repetition of them, and to bring if possible these deluding, and I would hope deluded, teachers to a better

All the Talents."

state of mind? A gross injury has been done to the public-an injury to the Dissenters-and, what is more distressing, an injury to the sacred cause of religion: the injury demands reparation and I, for one, will never cease to reproach the authors of it, until they have given us at least substantial proofs of repentance.

II.-The other subject of animadversion is, the Clergy assembled in Convocation. The Convocation is the clerical Parliament. Gibson (known in his day, and even in my time, as Dr. Codex,) will explain to your readers its legitimate powers, which happily for the interests of truth and virtue are now seen no where but in mouldy volumes on ecclesiastical law. A century back, the two Houses of Convocation, were regularly assembled with the Parliament, sate as long as the Parliament sate, and conducted during their session the business of the church; making inquisition into heresy, preparing causes for the spiritual courts, besieging the sovereign with addresses, harrassing the Lords and Commons with complaints and menaces, and disturbing the country with alarms of the danger of the church. They took cognizance also of the same affairs that are now so ably superintended by the Society for the suppression of Vice. The last act of the Convocation was suitable to its character, and may serve as a specimen of its whole history; it was the persecution of the Bishop of Bangor on account of his Sermon on "The nature of the Kingdom of Christ." This was in the year 1717, when George I. was King, and Mr. Addison minister. Both King and minister were patriots; the Bishop was nobly supported; and the Convocation was prorogued, and has never from that time been suffered to sit to do business. And let me add in two lines, more remarkable for their sense than their poctry, which I think I once heard quoted by Mr. Fox,.

"Great common sense! while thou shalt reign,
"The Convocation ne'er shall meet again."

means

Meet indeed they do, on the assembling of Parliament, to hear a Latin Sermon and to prepare, as occasion requires it, an address to the Throne; and I world by no have their meeting discontinued, for it reminds us of what things have been, and exhibits an instance of the triumph of the mind of a free country over the usurpations of a barbarous superstition, and thereby leads us to expect future and still greater triumphs. I am not ashamed to confess that I have often assembled with the Convocation in