maintenance of your religious superiority. What is meant by our equality at the bar of final judgment, as citizens, but not as religionists, we do not know; or, if we can detect a meaning in it, it is one which we should have supposed belonged to our faith rather than to yours.

In reference to your repugnance to enter our chapels we say no more, reserving our right of future appeal in this matter to those members of your church who may be unable to see the force of your distinction between religious and social equality. But we are surprised that you should conceive it so easy a thing for us to enter your churches: and should suppose it "no sacrifice of principle and compromise of feeling in us to unite in a worship which you assure us, must constitute in our eyes the most heinous of all sins-Idolatry." Either you must have known that we did not consider your worship to be idolatry, or have regarded our resort to it as a most guilty "compromise of feeling;" to which nevertheless, you gave us a solemn invitation; adding now, on our compliance, a congratulation no less singular.

We thought you had been aware, that, while our services must be, in a religious view, painfully deficient to you, those of your church are positively revolting to us. Still as our presence, on such passing occasions as the present, does not, in our opinion, involve any "sacrifice of principle," we shall set the example to our friends of attending; not making our desire that they should be just dependant on the willingness of others to be so too. And we shall have this satisfaction, that, whether you “win” them, or whether we retain them, the result will be a faith held, not on the precarious tenure of ignorance or submission, but in the security of intelligent conviction, and the peace of a just and enlightened conscience.

We remain, reverend Sir,
Yours, with Christian regard,

Liverpool, January 31st 1839.

JAMES MARTINEAU.
JOHN HAMILTON THOM.
HENRY GILES.

To the Trinitarians of this Town and Neighbourhood who may feel interested in the approaching Unitarian Controversy.

Christian Brethren,-A letter of public invitation has been addressed to the Unitarians of this town and neighbourhood, by the Rev. Fielding Ould, on behalf of himself and twelve other clergymen associated with him, urging us, with the earnestness of Christian anxiety, to bend our minds to their expositions of our errors and our dangers. We naturally interpreted this to be an invitation to discuss the most momentous questions as equal with equal. We thought, indeed, that we saw an assumption of superiority, if not of infallibility, perhaps inseparable from minds so trained still we supposed, that this superiority was to be maintained by argument and fair discussion: and this was all that we desired. It never occurred to us, that the reverend gentleman might possibly expect us to accept him as a divinely appointed judge of truth, whose teachings

were to be received in submission and silence; or that he could suppose that convictions like ours, convictions that have resisted all the persuasions of worldly ease and interest, that have removed from us the charities and sympathies of men like him, and held in simple fidelity to truth and God, could be so lightly shaken that nothing more was required to blow them away than a course of ex parte lectures without answer or discussion. If the object had been to confirm Trinitarians in their views, this kind of proceeding we should have understood; but surely some thing more was required when Unitarians were publicly invited to the controversy. Much less could we anticipate that the reverend gentleman, holding himself to be upon a "religious level" far above us, to belong to a different order of spirits, could yet be so far removed from the Christian and Apostolical spirit as to refuse to bring his "light" into direct conflict with our "darkness." With these expectations of controversy, and having no bonds with anything but truth, we unfeignedly rejoiced, that, for the first time in this community, both sides of the great question were about to appear together before the solemn tribunal of public attention.

"

We

In all these things we have been quickly undeceived. In our simplicity, we believed that discussion was really invited and desired. now find that we were invited to hear, but not to argue; that to lecture us is of the nature of "dearest affection ;" but that to hear what we may have to urge in reply would be to “recognize us" as Christians," to admit that we stood on the terms of a religious equality, which is, in limine, denied. We now find that all reciprocity is refused to us; that it never was intended to treat us as equals; that the method of discussing the Unitarian controversy, about to be adopted, is to hear only the Trinitarian advocates-to call us around the Christ Church pulpit to be taught to listen and believe. Clergymen may be so blinded by ecclesiastical feelings as not to perceive the extreme offensiveness of all that is assumed in this mode of treating their fellow men; but we turn to you, the freer laity of the Church, in generous confidence, that such conduct will not be found to accord with your spirit of justice-with the nobler ideas which you have gathered, from the intercourse of life, of equitable dealing between man and man.

We proposed to the clergymen about to lecture at Christ Church, that since they had appealed to public opinion, through a popular advocacy, the pleadings should be on both sides, and, as far as possible, before the same parties. This is refused to us, because we are not Christians. Is this in the spirit of the Saviour? It is also refused to us, because it is asserted, that Trinitarians cannot enter cur places of worship without a sacrifice of principle, whilst we may enter their's without pain or compromise. Now the very opposite of this, though not the truth, would have been nearer to it. In our worship there would be the inoffensive absence of some views dear to you: in your worship there would be the actual presence of some views most painful to us. In our worship, you would hear addressed that Great Spirit whom you, too, adore to seek in your worship, we should hear addressed, as God, him whom we revere and follow, as the image of God, the man Christ Jesus. In

our worship, you would find deficiencies only; in yours, we should find what, to us, is positively objectionable, religion materialized and the Deity distributed into persons. The Rev. Fielding Ould, in one of his letters, represents us as looking upon you to be Polytheists, which we do not; and, in another of his letters, tells us, that we may enter your temples without pain or compromise of feeling. It will be evident to you, Trinitarian laymen, that the Lecturers at Christ Church cannot retire, upon such reasoning as this, from the full, public, and impartial discussion which we propose to them, without making it manifest to the public, that they are determined upon doing so.

We proposed to them discussion through the press, as well as from the pulpit and this also is denied to us, on the ground, that newspapers are read by the sceptical, the scoffing, and the profane. Now not in newspapers alone, but in any journal whatever, was the controversy offered by us; yet we could not but have anticipated the objection, when we recollect the use made of the newspapers by the religious party to which the reverend gentlemen belong. Again have we tendered discussion, through the press, in any form whatever, with the single condition, that the views of both parties shall be presented to the same readers—in the hope, not as yet gratified, of an answer in a juster spirit.

Nothing now remains for us but to appeal from ecclesiastics to minds more generally influenced, to minds that, taught in the great schools of humanity, have learned mutual respect, and that have dropt, in the free and noble intercourses of man with man, the monkish and cloistered sentiment of spiritual as of civil superiority. To you, then, the Trinitarian laity, we make our appeal; from the exclusiveness and assumed infallibility of clergymen, to men who, from familiarity with wider influences, have formed different conceptions of Christian brotherhood and of Christian justice. We should not have held ourselves authorized in thus addressing you had we supposed, that your cause or yourselves, your ideas of justice had been worthily supported by your ecclesiastical representatives, who, we firmly believe you will agree with us in feeling, have openly betrayed both you and it.

We appeal to you, not without confidence, to give us that equal audience which your clergymen have refused; that those of you who, through interest in the great question, are led to hear the Trinitarian statements, will, in the love of the truth, and in the spirit of equitable inquiry, hear also the Unitarian replies. We seek not to make you Unitarians: that, at least, is not our chief desire and aim. But would to God that we could do something to spread that true Christianity which holds the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, and deems charity dearer and more heavenly than doctrinal faith! Would to God that this controversy might have some effect, not in building up any one creed, or swelling any one sect, but in destroying the delusive and separating ideas that lie at the roots of creeds, and are the nourishers of bigotry, uncharitableness, and heresies! We should deserve well of this great community, if we could remove from it this cause of strife and bitterness,—if we could exhibit the God of Jesus requiring from us, not speculative opinions, but the heart, the temper, and the life of Christ!-if we could expose the unchristian idea of men preparing themselves for a moral heaven by a

metaphysical creed, and unite those who now consume their energies, their temper, and their time, in contending for abstruse and uncertain dogmas in the deeds of mercy and of brotherhood which flow out of our common Christianity, and which, in the wide wastes of sin, of ignorance, and of misery that surround us, are the moral debts of man to man, and consitute the religion which, before God, even our Father, is pure and undefiled.

Respectfully directing your attention to our advertisement of a syllabus of Lectures on the Unitarian Controversy, presenting both sides of the question-our portion of which will be delivered in Paradise Street Chapel, on successive Tuesdays,

We are, Christian brethren,

Yours, in the spirit of Christian brotherhood,

To the (so-called) Unitarians of Liverpool.

Men and Brethren,-Before the commencement of the lectures, on which I have taken the liberty of inviting your attendance, I am anxious respectfully to address to you a few observations in reference to the letters which have appeared in the public journals under the signature of your ministers.

It would appear that these gentlemen have been desirous to produce upon the public mind an unfavourable impression, à priori, of my reverend brethren, and of myself in particular, because of our having declined, on their proposal, to enter upon a course different from that which we had originally contemplated. "You will not, we trust," say Messrs. Martineau, Thom, and Giles, "incur the reproach of inviting a discussion with us, and then changing it into an indictment against us." Now, we never invited any discussion with these gentlemen; if we had, we should have addressed ourselves to them personally. But, while we would not, and do not, shrink from any discussion with them into which we can consistently enter, we cannot allow ourselves to be diverted from the pursuit of our original purpose, viz., to deliver a course of lectures upon the various points of Unitarian doctrine, which we believe, and think we can prove, to be not only unscriptural, but fatal to the souls of those who embrace them, and which cannot be maintained (as appears from the published works of the most learned Unitarians) without a virtual surrender of the inspiration of the Bible. Believing, as I do, that your best interests for time and for eternity are involved in the momentous questions at issue-questions affecting the very vitality of true religion-I inserted a letter in the daily prints, expressed, as I had hoped, in terms of courtesy and affection, inviting your presence and soliciting your attention. I also caused a notice to be published of our intention to print the lectures, separately and in a collective form, for extensive and immediate circulation, so that the amplest opportunity might be afforded for replying to our arguments on the part of any who