If there be any purifying power in religion, this ought to appear in its public teachers. Will you cast your eye through the ranks of those, who are commonly called the orthodox clergy, during the period of eight or ten years past? You may begin at Albany and go to Savannah. I need not mention names to bring to your recollection many facts of the most disgusting and disgraceful nature. They are too notorious to be soon forgotten. Debauchery, intemperance, forgery, are the dark and dreadful vices among others, which have been proved against several of the orthodox ministers within a few years, and ministers, too, who have held the highest ranks in their respective churches, and shown the warmest zeal in defending what they represented to be the purifying doctrines of their faith, and in denouncing the dangerous heresies of other sects. But these, you will say, are individual examples, and ought not to be mentioned in disparagement of any class of christians. I allow it. I know they are individual examples, and therefore I will not introduce them to prove the depravity of other persons, any farther than such depravity appears. I call them to your recollection, because they seem to have escaped from your mind, while you were writing your sermon. You seem to have forgotten, that experience shows orthodox principles to have little power to secure the morals, much less the piety, even of those who have solemnly dedicated themselves to the ministry of divine truth. This reflection ought to have made you pause before you accused unitarians of immorality.

When you have taken this view of the orthodox side of the question, you may be still more enlightened by contrasting it with the history of American unitarianism, with which you profess to be familiar. I challenge you.

or any other man, to detect, in the annals of this history, a single instance, in which a unitarian clergyman has been publicly convicted of immorality, or even charged with vices injurious to his character. In the lives and in the affections of their people, you will find many evidences of their purifying example, and their ardour in the cause of gospel truth and practical religion; but you will look in vain for a memorial of those vices, which have disgraced and ruined many of their orthodox brethren. These are facts, which you will not pretend to deny; and the wonder is, that, with a full knowledge of them, an orthodox man should have the assurance to publish the asseverations contained in your dis

course.

In regard to unitarians generally, I do not doubt there are some among them, whose lives and conduct are not so much influenced by religious principles, as every good man and pious christian could wish. But I would gladly be informed, if it is your opinion, that there are no such among the Presbyterians, and other denominations? Are all sects immaculate, in your estimation, but unitarians? Unless such be your opinion, upon what principles of justice have you singled these out, as worthy of your special denunciation? Unitarians are not in the habit of proclaiming their virtues, and their religious acts, from the housetop. Pii orant taciti. They consider religion a thing in which a man is intimately concerned with his Maker. Where it does not exist in the heart, speak to the conscience in the still small voice of heavenly truth, and exercise a controlling influence over the mind, the affections, and the will, they look upon pretensions, show, and clamour, as proving little else, than hypocrisy or delusion. Perhaps they do not make so much parade and noise about their religion

as some others; but even allowing this, it still remains to be proved, that they have less of the humble spirit of fervent piety, less of earnestness in their devotions and of ardour in their love and pursuit of truth, less indeed of any of those qualities, which our Saviour has declared to be requisite in his sincere and faithful followers. Now these are things, which I am well convinced you will never undertake to prove.

Your charges have an application more extensive than you may be at first aware. They extend to some of the greatest, the wisest, and best men, who have adorned the world. Your sweeping denunciation embraces all unitarians of every age and country. If your authority is to be relied on, Newton, Locke, and Chillingworth, were "no christians in any correct sense of the word, nor any more in the way of salvation, than Mohammedans or Jews." And even Lardner, whom all parties honour as the best of men, and unanimously quote as the most learned and able advocate of the christian cause, must come under the same censure. Those ornaments of the Episcopal Church, Dr. Samuel Clarke, Hoadley, Law, and Blackburne, must be ranked with those, among whom "we look in vain for the monuments of the reforming and purifying power" of their faith. The charge of immorality, of preaching to please and win the "licentious,” and of “not being in the smallest degree sanctified" by their religion, must rest against such men as Emlyn, Whiston, Priestley, Lindsey, Price, Jebb, Wakefield, Chandler, Taylor, Benson, Cappe, Kippis, and a host of others among the English unitarians, against whose moral character the tongue of slander has never ventured to raise a whisper. Do not think it an impertinent question, if I ask you, whether you have ever attended to the biography of these men, and

studied their characters? Nor think me presumptuous in answering this question in the negative. I have too high an opinion of your probity and candour to believe, that with any adequate knowledge of this subject, you would have made the statements contained in your sermon. How do you excuse yourself, therefore, in the aspersions you have cast on their names, and the injustice you have done them, by asserting the immoral effects of those principles, which they believed the foundation of all true religion, and to the illustration and diffusion of which, many of them devoted their lives, at the expense of the greatest sacrifices? It is not much in accordance with the veracity of your statement, that the persons, whose names have just been mentioned, were remarkable for nothing more than their purity of manners and morals. I do not pretend there are no exceptions; but I am confident you cannot select an equal number of names of eminence from any sect, whose biographies and whose works bear such uniform and unequivocal testimony to their reverence for divine truth, their amiable and excellent virtues, their christian meekness, charity, benevolence, and fortitude, and a faithful discharge of their social and religious duties in every walk of life. Nothing can be more diametrically opposite to the entire spirit of your charges, than the facts, which may be collected by recurring to the lives and professions of distinguished unitarians. These facts you ought to have known and respected, before you engaged in the work of defaming them, blackening their moral character, and bringing an odium upon their faith. Do you believe Watts and Whitby became bad men, when they abandoned their trinitarian sentiments? Or have you any evidence, that they were not as virtuous, as pious, and as sincere practical christians, as

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they had always previously been? It is possible, after all, that you accord in opinion with that paragon of meekness, candour, and charity, Bishop Horsley, who declared "the moral good of unitarians to be sin." If such be your opinion; if you really think it your duty to reprobate their virtues as vices, and to condemn in them what is worthy of the highest praise in others; then indeed your conduct towards them may admit of a plausible defence, but upon no other grounds.

These remarks have run to a greater length, than was intended. If they indicate warmth and feeling, you must remember the provocation. Your attack was rude, and wanton, and unprovoked. It was made without any justifiable grounds, and in defiance of truth. It goes, as far as your authority can make it go, to inflict a deep injury on a class of Christians to which I belong. His selfrespect must be very feeble, his sense of propriety very dull, and his religious feelings very obtuse, who could be indifferent to such a slander. And more especially, a unitarian of Baltimore, where your charges were intended to produce their strongest effect, would be justly censurable for want of interest in his religious faith, if he could look with complacency on the singular aberrations into which you deviated to assert not only the evil tendency, but the immoral effects of his

belief.

And after all, what good did you expect to accomplish, by taking that occasion to anathematize unitarians? I am not aware, that any one among them had lifted his voice against you, or any of your friends in this city. Did you think it befitting in a minister of peace, and of the gospel of the Saviour, thus to apply the torch and kindle the flame? Could you do nothing for harmony, and christian love, and mutual kindness?