Isles and in France, and that the oldest Episcopal church in New England (King's Chapel, Boston) had followed his example and revised its Prayer Book after the pattern of Dr. Clarke. Lindsey was not a popular preacher who drew great crowds, but his sincerity and earnestness, his rare strength of character, and his unselfishness deeply impressed those that knew him. Though he lived at a period when they were uppermost in most minds, he would not discuss political questions in his pulpit; but outside it he took an active part in working for broader civil and religious liberty, and against slavery. Like his friends, Dr. Priestley and Dr. Price,1 he was very liberal in politics, and warmly sympathized with the American colonies (as did the Dissenters almost universally), and with the French Revolution in its early days as an uprising against despotic tyranny. His influence on the development of the Unitarian movement, though much more quiet than Priestley's, was very great. As we have seen, it did not much affect the Church of England, and in this his hopes were disappointed; for those who should have followed his example preferred, when the pinch came, to stay where they were, whatever it might cost them in twinges of conscience. But to some of the liberal Dissenters, who had gradually drifted into Unitarian views without ever having confessed the Unitarian name, and who thus occupied an equivocal position, his bold, uncompromising, and successful example gave the courage of their convictions. Encouraged also by the advice of their acknowledged leader, Priestley, they now began openly to adopt 1 Dr. Richard Price was, after Priestley, the most famous of the liberal Dissenters. He was a noted mathematician, and wrote important works on finance, politics, and philosophy, and on the war with America. His view of Christ was Arian and was strongly opposed by Dr. Priestley, but their friendship was of the warmest. the Unitarian name, until not long after Lindsey's death nearly a score of these churches could be numbered, and their organization into one body went steadily on. We must now turn to see how these churches were led in this definite direction by Priestley. CHAPTER XXXII THE LIBERAL DISSENTING CHURCHES BE- PRIESTLEY, 1750-1804 We have seen in a previous chapter how the Presbyterian churches rapidly became liberal after the division at Salters' Hall. The movement among them might be described as a "liberal drift," for it was not a concerted movement with either program or leaders. No one was particularly trying or wishing to form a new denomination, or to re-form an old one. There were many able men among their ministers, but only two or three stand out above the rest for the influence they had in bringing about a change of beliefs. One of the earliest of these was Dr. John Taylor of Norwich, who in 1740 published a work on Original Sin which powerfully attacked the orthodox doctrine on that subject, and not only had great influence in England, but also did much to root out this doctrine in New England. Another was Dr. Richard Price1 one of the leading Dissenting ministers in the London district, and a strong friend of the American colonies at the time of their Revolution, who helped undermine the orthodox beliefs by his printed sermons on the nature of Christ (1786), in which he strongly defended the Arian view. But by far the most influential of 1 See note, page 355. those that led the Presbyterians to acknowledge Unitarian beliefs was Joseph Priestley. Priestley was in many ways the polar opposite of Lindsey. He was an extreme Dissenter, while Lindsey was by temper a devoted Churchman. He was a clear-thinking rationalist, while Lindsey was a man of fervent spiritual religion. Priestley welcomed religious controversy as a way of clearing up the truth, while Lindsey shrank from it. Priestley devoted his spare time and thought to science, Lindsey gave his spare time and money to charity and work among the poor. Yet they were united in close bonds of rare friendship for over a generation. Joseph Priestley was born at a little village near Leeds in 1133 1773, the eldest son of a cloth-maker. When he was six years old his mother died, and he was brought up by an aunt. She was a deeply religious woman, and having brought him up in the strictest religious habits in the Independent Church she encouraged him to become a minister. Being never very robust he was the more serious-minded and diligent in his studies, and early in his teens had learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and he eventually became master of half a score of foreign languages. Although brought up a strict Calvinist, he early showed an independent mind, and when he sought to join the church he was refused admission because he could not say he believed he shared the guilt of Adam's sin. Nor would he enter the academy in London where it was proposed to send him, for he had now become an Arminian in belief, and could not sign the creed which was set before the students twice a year to keep them straight in the faith. So he went to a new academy at Daventry, where he was enrolled as its first student, and there began his studies for the ministry. Very free discussion of both sides of all questions was encouraged here, and as he found himself taking the liberal side of almost every question he soon had become an Arian. His studies finished, Priestley accepted the first call that came to him, and became minister of a Presbyterian congregation at a little village in Suffolk, with a salary of but £30 a year, refusing an extra stipend which he might have had had he been willing to subscribe a creed, and trying to eke out this scanty salary by teaching. He set to work with great industry in his church and in the prosecution of further studies; for he was an incessant worker, methodical in his use of time, and never allowing a moment to go to waste, and throughout his long life he seldom lost an hour of work through illness. Results were not encouraging. He was hindered by an inherited tendency to stammer, which made him a poor public speaker; but worse than that, he was steadily moving further and further from orthodoxy, dropping one belief after another; and as they discovered this, members of his congregation gradually fell away from his services and withdrew their support until he was often in want, and was hardly able to keep out of debt. He was glad therefore after three years to accept a call to a more liberal congregation at Nantwich in Cheshire. The congregation was small but sympathetic; and as it made no great demands on him, he was able to supplement his meager salary again by teaching from seven to seven, with no holidays. Hard as this labor was, he much enjoyed it, and was able to buy some books and scientific apparatus; and he found time to write a book on theology, and an English grammar on an original plan. The reputation he made by his teaching at Nantwich led to his appointment, after three years, as teacher of languages at Warrington, in a new Dissenting academy where all three of the teachers were Arians, Here he spent six |