undue resentments stifled, and we shall rejoice in nothing so much as the pursuit of truth, and the uniform practice of virtue. If your religious principles, Sir, can do more for you than this, shew it by your conduct. As yet, it does not appear from your Letters, that you have learned even so much. The reason of it is, that there are tares mixed with your wheat; there is in your system of Christianity something that debases the pure spirit of it, and does not consist with either the perfect veneration of the Divine character, which is the foundation of true devotion to God, or with perfect candour and benevolence to man. I mean those corruptions of Christianity which your Church retains, and which it is my great object to explode, from the full persuasion I have of their bad tendency, though I am far from considering them in so frightful a light as that in which you have represented my opinions. I am, &c. As I have as much apprehension of your being embarrassed, and reduced to silence by what I have urged in these Letters, as you had from what you addressed to me; and as you seem to have wanted the advice of some judicious friend in the conduct of this business, and it is possible that in lieu of it, that of an adversary may be of some use to you, I shall freely give you mine. If you be disposed to reply in the same spirit and on the same principles with which you wrote your Letters, say boldly, (for strong assertions, you must have found by the reception your Letters have met with, will have some weight,) that, sinking under your charge of despising the Scriptures, I was reduced to the necessity of utterly renouncing, as you plainly foretold that I should do, the authority of Scripture; and that, not being able to produce any more efficacious and explicit ground of moral obligation, I first did, as your predecessor Mr. Venn (to whose performance this of yours, Sir, bears a very striking resemblance) declared that he would do, if his opinion should be confuted, viz. * Letters, p. 25. (P.) that I formally burned my Bible, and that then, agreeably to the maxims which he ascribes to all new schemers, I went and hanged myself; and this will give you a fine opportunity of exerting all your powers of pathos in warning other Unitarians and the world in general, by my example. If you should even proceed to publish my last dying-speech and confession, together with a commentary upon it, it will only be of a piece with the strange and groundless assertions in your Letters; and as few of your readers will question any thing that you think proper to publish, you may, before the truth be discovered, have the credit of having totally demolished me, of having happily rid the world of so pestilent and restless a heretic as I am, and may consequently rise in preferment even above the haughty Bishop of St. David's. This, Sir, would be writing as you actually have written, that is, without the least regard to truth or probability. But, if you have any remains of Christian principle within you, ask pardon of God, of the public, and of myself, for your gross and ill-founded calumnies, and then I shall be happy to shew my Christianity by forgiving you. By such tests as these try me as much as you please. To conclude with perfect seriousness, I call upon you, Sir, in the face of this town, and of your country, before whom you have published your accusations of me, 1. To produce, if you can, (for as yet you have not even attempted to do it,) any passage of my numerous writings from which it can, by any fair construction, be inferred, that I reject the apostolical testimony concerning the person of Christ; which is the principal object of your Letters. 2. Make it appear by something else than your own confident assertions, that my object in inquiring into early opinions concerning the person of Christ was an injurious attempt, as you scruple not to call it, to bring the only deci sive mode of proof into discredit. And, 3. Shew where I have, in the most distant manner, insinuated that the reason of the individual is, in your sense of the phrase, the sole umpire in matters of faith, so that the decalogue itself shall be in danger of being no more respected by me than you say the apostolic testimony is. If, unsuspected by me, there be any such passage in my writings, I promise to expunge it with indignation, though it must be abundantly refuted by the general tenor of them. To a charge of this serious nature, you must not, Sir, be I demand a distinct and explicit answer. Your silent. Letters would suggest many more questions, but as you are a young writer, and our correspondence may continue some time, I shall not proceed farther in this catechism at present. It will be a matter of some curiosity, if you should find some difficulty in your reply, to see in what manner your brethren of the clergy will consider your conduct. There are some circumstances of this kind already before the public, which give no favourable idea of the spirit of some of your corps in this respect. Mr. Howes has been shewn to be guilty of a manifest falsehood in his account of my conduct in this controversy, and he has been repeatedly called upon to vindicate himself, or to ask pardon ; but though he has been reduced to absolute silence, none of his brethren have expressed the least disapprobation of his conduct. It looks as if all sins of a brother were venial ones with you. Other clergymen have published pieces of scurrility against me of the lowest kind, consisting of nothing but the most absurd and intemperate railing, such as I have been ashamed in any manner to notice, and yet I have never heard that they were the worse received by their acquaintance, superiors, or equals on that account. Like Balthazar, who shot the Prince of Orange, † I doubt not, they have received absolution on account of their good intentions. Others of the clergy, however, I well know, are ashamed of their conduct. With many of the clergy, both in the Church of England and the Church of Rome, I have long been in habits of intimacy, and I esteem their acquaintance and friendship an honour. So I do that of the liberal and intelligent of all persuasions; and I am far from confining all good sense to those who think as I do. See Vol. XVIII. pp. 310, 311, 469, 56S, 564. + In 1584. “The assassin had communicated his desigu to a Jesuit of Triers, who imparted it to three other persons of his order. Those four Jesuits assured him, that if he died in the attempt, he would be placed among the martyrs." De la Roche's "Abridgment of Brandt's History," 1725, I. p. 217. This prince had narrowly escaped "the bloody attempt of one Javregny, a Spaniard," in 1582. "The fellow was persuaded by his confessor to undertake the murder; he waited not long before an opportunity presented, the festivals, on the duke [of Anjou] his accession to the sovereignty, (of Brabant,] making the prince more secure, and easier of access than at other times. Javregny was admitted into the hall of his palace to see him at dinner, and heard him talk of the cruelty of the Spaniards in the Netherlands. After dinner he removed to an anti-chamber, accompanied by several French and Flemish Lords, to shew them some tapestry hangings, where the Spaniards were drawn executing their barbarities. The villain in the moment that he pointed to the picture, fired a pistol at him, the bullet pierced him under the right car, and came out at his left cheeck, breaking his jaw and his teeth. The lords that were about him drew their swords, and cut the assassin to pieces.." Lives, English and Foreign, 1704, p. 466. Wishing your future conduct may entitle you to class with such men as these, of whom your Church is not worthy, I remain, Reverend Sir, Your very humble Servant, Birmingham, Feb. 17, 1790. J. PRIESTLEY. P. S. Recollecting a general similarity between your account of my religious principles and that of Mr. Venn, I have, since the preceding Letters were sent to the press, looked into my reply to him, and I find the likeness more striking than I had imagined it to be. He says, that I am not a whit better than a rank Deist at the bottom, that my notions in religion are Pagan, that according to the new schemers in general, (but evidently meaning myself in particular,)"the faculty of man is of itself sufficient to determine what it becomes Jehovah to reveal of himself, his counsels, and his way of saving his rebellious creatures," that we believe no divine teachings, that we " disclaim the divine authority of the Scriptures, that we insist upon a right to reject what we think to be unreasonable in them, be the words that affirm it ever so plain." This was advanced twenty-one years ago, [1769,] when I had published nothing in theology except my first small Catechism, and the Tract on the Lord's Supper. However, as, according to Mr. Venn, I was at that time advanced as far in irreligion as you represent me to be at present, I should think you might conclude, that notwithstanding your distressing apprehensions, the evil, whatever it be, will not proceed much farther. After calling upon Mr. Venn, as I do upon you, to prove the several charges advanced against me, which I distinctly pointed out to him, (though it was to no purpose; for like the man without the wedding garment, he remained speechless on the subject from that day to this,) I said to him, as I do to you, "I desire you, as a man and a Christian, to lay your hand upon your heart, and question yourself concerning the real temper of mind in which you wrote to me, the true motive of your conduct, and the end you had in view in endeavouring, as you have done, to expose me to the odium and indignation of mankind."* The "Considerations on Differences of Opinion among Christians," annexed to these Letters in 1790, are now reserved to be prefixed to the "Reply to Mr. Venn as published in 1769." See Vol. I. Memoirs, 97. |