Unitarianism Defended / A Series of Lectures by Three Protestant Dissenting Ministers of Liverpool

by John Hamilton Thom; Henry Giles; James Martineau

Reverend Sirs,—A paper has been put into our hands, and an advertisement has appeared in the public journals, containing a “Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the Controversy between the Protestant Churches and the (so called) Unitarians,” &c. As individual inquirers after truth, and disciples of Jesus, we deliberately hold the characteristic doctrines of Unitarian Christianity; and, as ministers among a class of Protestants, who, binding themselves and their pastors by no human creed or interpretation, encourage us to seek for ourselves and expound for them the uncorrupted Gospel, we publicly preach the faith which we privately hold. We feel, therefore, a natural interest in the determination of yourself and brother clergymen to call attention to the Unitarian Controversy, and a desire that the occasion may be made conducive to the promotion of candid research, the diminution of sectarian prejudice, and the diffusion of the true faith, and the spirit of our great Master.

We are not of opinion that a miscellaneous audience, assembled in a place of worship, constitutes the best tribunal to which to submit abstruse theological questions, respecting the canon, the text, the translation of Scripture—questions which cannot be answered by any “defective scholarship.” You however, who hold that mistakes upon these points may forfeit salvation, have consistently appealed to such tribunal; and nothing is left to us but to hope that its decision may be formed after just attention to the evidence. This end can be attained only by popular advocacy on neither side, or popular advocacy on both; and, as you have preferred the latter, we shall esteem it a duty to co-operate with you, and contribute our portion of truth and argument towards the correction of public sentiment on the great questions at issue between us. Deeply aware of our human liability to form and to convey false impressions of views and systems from which we dissent, we shall be anxious to pay a calm and respectful attention to your defence of the doctrines of your church. We will give notice of your lectures, as they succeed each other, to our congregations, and exhort them to hear you in the spirit of Christian justice and affection; presuming that, in a like spirit, you will recommend your hearers to listen to such reply as we may think it right to offer. We are not conscious of any fear, any interest, any attachment to system, which should interfere with the sincere fulfilment of our part in such an understanding; and, for the performance of yours, we rely on your avowed zeal for that Protestantism which boldly confides the interpretation of Scripture to individual judgment, and to that sense of justice which, in Christian minds, is the fruit of cultivation and sound knowledge. As you think it the duty of Unitarians to judge of your doctrines, not from our objections, but from your vindication, you cannot question the duty of Trinitarians to take their impressions of our faith from us, rather than from you.

We rejoice to hear that the Christ Church lectures will be published. Should they issue from the press within a week after delivery, we should desire to postpone our reply till we had enjoyed the opportunity of reading them, persuaded that thus we shall best preserve that calmness and precision of statement, without which, controversial discussions tend rather to the increase of prejudice than the ascertainment of truth. Should the publication be deferred for a longer time, the necessity of treating each subject, while its interest is fresh, will oblige us to forego this advantage; and we shall, in such case, deliver, each week, an evening lecture in answer to that preached in Christ Church on the preceding Wednesday. Permit us to ask, how early an appearance of your printed lectures may be expected; and whether you will recommend your congregations to attend with candour to our replies.

We fear, however, that neither from the pulpit nor the press will your statements and ours obtain access extensively to the same persons; your discourses will, perhaps, obtain readers, too exclusively, among Trinitarians; ours, certainly, among Unitarians. In order to place your views and ours fairly side by side, allow us to propose the following arrangements; that an epitome of each lecture, and another of the reply, furnished by the respective authors, shall appear weekly in the columns of one and the same newspaper; the newspaper being selected, and the length of the communications prescribed, by previous agreement. Or should you be willing, we should prefer making some public journal the vehicle of a discussion altogether independent of the lectures, conducted in the form of a weekly correspondence, and having for its matter such topics as the first letter of the series may open for consideration. In this case you will perceive the propriety of conceding to us the commencement of the correspondence, as you have pre-occupied the pulpit controversy; have selected the points of comparison between your idea of Christianity and ours; and introduced among them some subjects to which we do not attach the greatest interest and importance. On this priority, however, we do not insist. You will oblige us by stating whether you assent to this proposal.

While we are willing to hope for a prevailing spirit of equity in this controversy, we are grieved to have to complain of injustice, and of a disregard to the true meaning of words, at its very opening. We must protest against the exclusive usurpation of the title “Protestant Churches,” by a class of religionists who practically disown the principle of Protestantism: who only make the Church (or themselves), instead of the Pope, the arbiter of truth; who hold error (that is, an opinion different from their own,) to be fatal to salvation: and who allow the right of individual judgment only with the penalty of everlasting condemnation upon all whose individual judgment is not the judgment of their Church. We take objection also to the spirit that creeps out in the expression, “(so called) Unitarians,” maintaining that the word does not “impute to others ‘a polytheistic creed;’” but that as “Trinitarian” denotes one who worships the Godhead in three “persons,” Unitarian fitly describes one who worships the Godhead in one person. And, above all, we protest against the resolution of our case into “dishonest or uncandid criticism;” that is the wilful maintenance of error, knowing it to be such, the Charybdis which one of your lecturers proposes for us, if we should be fortunate enough to escape the Scylla of “defective scholarship.” We are deeply concerned that so much of the “acetum theologicum” has mixed thus early in an invitation, characterized by the chief inviter as “a sweet and pleasant thing;” and this, too, after a public announcement of having purged the mind of every feeling but the pure love of the pure truth.

And to you, reverend sir, in whose letter to the Unitarians of this town and neighbourhood the announcement in question occurs, it is incumbent on us to address a few remarks, with a special view to acquaint you with the feelings awakened by your earnest invitation.

The anxiety which that letter manifests to convince us that, in seeking our conversion, you are actuated by no “base and worldly motive,” is, we can assure you, altogether superfluous. Of the purity and disinterestedness of your intention we entertain no doubt; and we regard it with such unaffected respect, as may be due to every suggestion of conscience, however unwise and fanatical. If, with the ecclesiastics and philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, you esteemed the denial of witchcraft as perilous a heresy as Atheism itself, we should feel neither wonder nor anger at the zeal with which you might become apostles of the doctrine of sorcery. Any one who can convince himself that his faith, his hope, his idea of the meaning of Scripture, afford the only cure for the sins and sorrows and dangers of the world, is certainly right in spending his resources and himself in diffusing his own private views. But we are astonished that he can feel himself so lifted up in superiority above other men, as to imagine that Heaven depends on their assimilation to himself,—that, in self-multiplication, in the universal reproduction of his own state of mind, lies the solitary hope of human salvation. We think that, if we were possessed by such a belief, our affections towards men would lose all Christian meekness, our sympathies cease to be those of equal with equal, the respectful mercy of a kindred sufferer; and that, however much we might indulge a Pharisaic compassion for the heretic, we should feel no more the Christian “honour” unto “all men.”

You ask us, reverend sir, whether it is not “a sweet and pleasant thing,” “to tell and hear together of the great things which God has done for our souls.” Doubtless, there are conditions under which such communion may be most “sweet and pleasant.” When they who hold it agree in mind on the high subjects of their conference, it is “sweet and pleasant” to speak mutually of “joys with which no stranger intermeddleth,” and to knit together the human affections, with the bands of that heavenly “charity,” which, springing from one faith and one hope, is yet greater than them both. Nay, when good men differ from each other, it is still “sweet and pleasant” to reason together, and prove all things, and whatsoever things are pure, and true and lovely, to think on these things, provided that both parties are conscious of their liability to error, and are anxious to learn as well as to teach: that each confides in the integrity, ingenuousness, and ability of the other; that each applies himself with reasons to the understanding, not with terrors to the will. But such conference is not “sweet and pleasant” where, fallibility being confessed on one side, infallibility is assumed on the other; where one has nothing to learn and everything to teach; where the arguments of an equal are propounded as a message of inspiration; where presumed error is treated as unpardonable guilt, and on the fruits of laborious and truth-loving inquiry, terms of reprobation and menaces of everlasting perdition are unscrupulously poured.

You announce your intention to set apart, on our behalf, a day of humiliation and prayer. To supplicate the Eternal Father, as you propose, to turn the heart and faith of others into the likeness of your own may appear to you fitting as an act of prayer; it seems to us extraordinary as an act of humiliation. Permit us to say, that we could join you in that day’s prayer, if, instead of assuming before God what doctrines his Spirit should enforce, you would, with us, implore him to have pity on the ignorance of us all: to take us all by the hand and lead us into the truth and love, though it should be by ways most heretical and strange; to wrest us from the dearest reliances and most assured convictions of our hearts, if they hinder our approach to his great realities. A blessed day would that be for the peace, brotherhood, and piety of this Christian community, if the “humiliation” would lead to a recognition of Christian equality, and the “prayer,” to a recognition of that spiritual God whose love is moral in its character, spiritual, not doctrinal in its conditions, and who accepts from all his children the spirit and the truth of worship.

We fear that you will consider it as a mark of great obduracy, that we are not more affected by that “purest love” for “those in the extreme of peril,” which your letter expresses. Let us again assure you that we by no means doubt the sincerity of that affection. However pure in its source, it is ineffectual in its result, simply because no one can feel his heart softened by a commiseration which he is wholly unconscious of requiring. The pity that feels with me is, of all things, the most delicious to the heart; the pity that only feels for me, is, perhaps, of all things, the most insulting.