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In this almost universal prevalence of a spirit so extremely hostile to me and my friends, and which would be gratified by my destruction, it cannot be any matter of surprise, that a son of mine should wish to abandon a country in which his father has been used as I have been, especially when it is considered that this son was present at the Riot in Birmingham, exerting himself all the dreadful night of the 14th of July, to save what he could of my most valuable property; that in consequence of this, his life was in imminent danger, and another young man was nearly killed because he was mistaken for him. This would, probably, have been his fate, if a friend had not almost perforce kept him concealed some days, so that neither myself nor his mother knew what was become of him. I had not, however, the ambition to court the honour that has been shewn him by the National Assembly of France, and even declined the proposal of his naturalization. At the most, I supposed it would have been done without any éclat; and I knew nothing of its being done in so very honourable a way till I saw the account in the public newspapers. To whatever country this son of mine shall choose to attach himself, I trust that, from the good principles and the spirit that he has hitherto shewn, he will discharge the duties of a good

citizen.

As to myself, I cannot be supposed to feel much attachment to a country in which I have neither found protection nor redress. But I am too old, and my habits too fixed, to remove, as I own I should otherwise have been disposed to do, to France or America. The little that I am capable of doing must be in England, where I shall therefore continue, as long as it shall please the Supreme Disposer of all things to permit me.

It might have been thought that, having written so much in defence of revelation, and of Christianity in general, more, perhaps, than all the clergy of the Church of England now living; this defence of a common cause would have been received as some atonement for my demerits in writing against civil establishments of Christianity and particular doctrines. But had I been an open enemy of all religion, the animosity against me could not have been greater than

Since this was written, I have myself, without any solicitation on my part, been made a citizen of France, and moreover elected a member of the present Conventional Assembly. These, I scruple not to avow, I consider as the greatest of honours; though, for the reasons which are now made public, I have declined accepting the latter. (P.) See Vol. XV. pp. 525, 526.

it is. Neither Mr. Hume nor Mr. Gibbon was a thousandth part so obnoxious to the clergy as I am; so little respect have my enemies for Christianity itself, compared with what they have for their emoluments from it.

As to my supposed hostility to the principles of the civil constitution of this country, there has been no pretence whatever for charging me with any thing of the kind. Besides that, the very catalogue of my publications will prove that my life has been devoted to literature, and chiefly to natural philosophy and theology, which have not left me any leisure for factious politics; in the few things that I have written of a political nature, I have been an avowed advocate for our mixed government by King, Lords, and Commons; but because I have objected to the ecclesiastical part of it, and to particular religious tenets, I have been industriously represented as openly seditious, and endeavouring the overthrow of every thing that is fixed, the enemy of all order, and of all government.

Every publication which bears my name is in favour of our present form of government. But if I had not thought so highly of it, and had seen reason for preferring a more republican form, and had openly advanced that opinion; I do not know that the proposing to free discussion a system of government different from that of England, even to Englishmen, is any crime, according to the existing laws of this country. It has always been thought, at least, that our constitution authorizes the free proposal and discussion of all theoretical principles whatever, political ones not excepted. And though I might now recommend a very different form of government to a people who had no previous prejudices or habits, the case is very different with respect to one that has; and it is the duty of every good citizen to maintain that government of any country which the majority of its inhabitants approve, whether he himself should otherwise prefer it or not.*

This, however, is all that can in reason be required of any man. To demand more, would be as absurd as to oblige every man, by the law of marriage, to maintain that his particular wife was absolutely the handsomest and best tempered woman in the world; whereas it is surely sufficient if a man behave well to his wife, and discharge the duties of a good husband.

A very great majority of English men, I am well per

* See Vol. IX. p. 4, Note ↑.

suaded, are friends to what are called high maxims of government. They would choose to have the power of the crown rather enlarged than reduced, and would rather see all the Dissenters banished than any reformation made in the Church. A dread of every thing tending to republicanism is manifestly increased of late years, and is likely to increase still more. The very term is become one of the most opprobrious in the English language. The clergy (whose near alliance with the court, and the present royal family, after having been almost a century hostile to them, is a remarkable event in the present reign) have contributed not a little to that leaning to arbitrary power in the crown which has lately been growing upon us. They preach up the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance with as little disguise as their ancestors did in the reigns of the Stuarts, and their adulation of the king and of the minister is abject in the extreme. Both Mr. Madan's Sermon, and Mr. Burn's Reply to my Appeal, discover the same spirit; and any sentiment in favour of liberty that is at all bold and manly, such as, till of late, was deemed becoming Englishmen, and the disciples of Mr. Locke, is now reprobated as seditious.

In these circumstances, it would be nothing less than madness seriously to attempt a change in the constitution, and I hope I am not absolutely insane. I sincerely wish my countrymen, as part of the human race, (though, I own, I now feel no particular attachment to them on any other ground,) the undisturbed enjoyment of that form of government which they so evidently approve; and as I have no favour to ask of them, or of their governors, besides mere protection, as to a stranger, while I violate no known law, and have not this to ask for any long term, I hope it will be granted me. If not, I must, like many others, in all ages and all nations, submit to whatever the Supreme Being, whose eye is upon us all, and who, I believe, intends, aud will in his own time bring about, the good of all, shall appoint, and by their means execute.*

Thus, as another "genius of superior order" (see supra, p. 443) sings of "Priestley, patriot, saint and sage," after suffering unmerited injuries, from "statesmen bloodstain'd and priests idolatrous,

calm, pitying, he retir'd

And mus'd, expectant of those promised years."

See Coleridge's Religious Musings.

APPENDIX.

No. I.

LETTERS TO THE BISHOPS* UPON THE SUBJECT OF THE CONTROVERSY WITH DR. HORSLEY.

(See supra, p. 8.)

LETTER I.

Of the Nature and Importance of the late Controvercy concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity.

MY LORDS,

You have all been spectators of, and I must presume not unconcerned ones, and one of your body has been a principal actor in, one of the most important controversies that has been agitated in this or in any age of the Christian Church, as it relates to the great object of our common worship. It is no less than whether that God who in the Scriptures is emphatically styled The Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, the only true God, and also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, be the sole object of our religious addresses; or whether he is to share these divine honours with two other persons, one of them Jesus Christ, called his Son, and the other his Holy Spirit. I have had the honour, as I certainly deem it, to maintain the former; and many of the members of your church, as by law established in this country, together with several who, like myself, dissent from it, have held the latter.

This controversy has now proceeded several years; † so that, there being no probability of any thing very considerable being further advanced on either side of the question, our readers will now be able to form a competent judgment of the merits of the case. Openly or silently, all who have given due attention to the publications on both sides will soon arrange themselves under the Unitarian or Trinitarian standard, not to contend by arms, but, being fully

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Being four of the six Letters which Dr. Priestley, when he emigrated in 1794, had left with Mr. Belsham, "to be published or suppressed at his discretion.-The two unpublished Letters," Mr. Belsham adds, "were written at an early period of the French Revolution, and refer to a state of things which is long since past, and the revival of which would by no means tend to promote that spirit of conciliation which it is now the wish of every good man to cherish and encourage. Dr. Priestley particularly expostulates with the Bishops of that day upon the subject of a clause which was understood to be proposed by them to be introduced into the Catholic bill, to exclude the impugners of the doctrine of the Trinity from the benefit of the Toleration." Preface to "Tracts in Controversy with Bishop Horsley," 1815, pp. vi. vii.

+ From 1783 to 1790.

persuaded in their own minds, to adhere firmly to what they think to be the truth. And it may reasonably be expected that, in due time, the practice of all Unitarians will correspond to their professions, and that they will not content themselves with holding a silent opinion, but will confess the truth before men, giving countenance to no other mode of worship than that which they deem to be authorized by scripture and reason, in obedience to God and to conscience, and disregarding all that men may say of them, or do to them.

There are, we all acknowledge, such crimes as blasphemy and idolatry. The former is of an indefinite description, but it is generally ascribed to those who derogate from the honour of the true God. With this you may charge me if I do not pay divine honours to Jesus Christ, provided he be truly God; and with the same I charge you, if, by giving divine honours to a creature, you detract from the honour that belongs to God only. With idolatry, which is paying divine worship to that which is not God, you cannot charge me, because the Being that I worship is also the object of worship with you; and the far greater part of your public devotions are addressed to no other. But the charge will fall with all its weight upon you, if the Father only be God, and you worship two other persons besides him.

You cannot therefore say that this is a matter of no great consequence in Christianity. It affects the most fundamental principle of all religion, the first and the greatest of all the commandments, which says, "Thou shalt have no other God besides me." And such is the nature of this great doctrine of the Unity of God, that there never was a departure from it which did not draw after it very alarming practical consequences. The horrors of Gentile idolatry I need not enumerate; and those of Popish idolatry, which began with the worship of Jesus Christ, soon proceeded to that of the Virgin Mary, and terminated in as many objects of worship as the Heathens ever adored, and sufficiently similar to them.

Different persons will always have different characters and offices, and be entitled to different kinds and degrees of respect; and it is not possible that, if two others persons, besides the God and Father of all, be considered as divine, and the proper objects of worship, he should not be deprived of some attribute that belongs to him; so that those that make any practical use of the system will, in their own minds, whether they openly declare it or not, divest him of some of those attributes which would render him the object of their greater reverence and love.

This, my Lords, you know, has been not only the tendency but also the actual consequence of the belief of the doctrine of the Trinity, at least with the vulgar. With them mercy is the exclusive attribute of the Son, and a constant invigorating influence the sole province of the Spirit; and nothing but power, and that not of a benevolent and engaging nature, but something unknown and terrific only, is left to the Father. He is not even supposed to be the immediate maker of the world, and he is believed to have been implacable to his offending creatures till satisfaction was made to his justice by the death of his own Son; whereas no mention is ever made of such unrelenting severity in the character of Christ, though

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