ARTICLE 3.

1. Letter to the moderator of the New Hampshire Association. By Timothy. Boston, Watson & Bangs. 1812. 12mo. Pp. 15.

2. A Defence of truth and character against ecclesiastical intolerance. Extracts of some letters occasioned by proceedings of the Hopkinton Association, and of the New Hampshire General Association. Concord, N. H. I. & W. R. Hill. 1812. 12mo. pp. 24,

8. The Stranger's Apology for the General Associations, supposed to have been written by Elias Monitor, author of some anonymous publications, &c. Boston, W. Wells. 1812. 12mo. pp. 23.

4. A Parable, occasioned by a late portentous phenomenon. By the Pilgrim Good-Intent. Concord, N. H. I. & W. R.

Hill. 1812. 12mo. pp. 24.

5. A respectful Address to the trinitarian clergy, relating to their manner of treating opponents. By Noah Worcester. Boston, Bradford & Read. 1812. 12mo. pp. 50.

THE work of Mr. Noah Worcester, which we noticed in our last number, his Bible News,* has not produced any direct answer that has come to our knowledge. It is not to be inferred however, that it has not excited any notice or animadversion among the friends of the doctrine which it opposes. There are other modes of attack besides those of reasoning, and other ways of preventing the effect of a book beside that of confuting its arguments. Its author is receiving some share

* Mr. Worcester has published a second edition of his Bible News, (Boston, Bradford & Read,) in which there are some omissions, and some things added. Of the omissions, the principal that we have noticed is the whole of the seventh Letter of the second Part. Among various additions there is a new and interesting letter of twenty pages, 66 on modern trinitarian views of the Son of God, with the general dissonance respecting three persons in one God." John v. 7. was in the first edition explained as a part of scripture; but Mr. Worcester has in the present shortened the letter relating to it, having seen evidence which fully satisfies him that it is a forgery.

of that censure, and obloquy, and persecution, which have in a greater or less degree always been the lot of those who have opposed any religious doctrine, whether true or false, whatever may have been their motives, or the integrity of their character, or the force of the arguments they have used. It is to this, that the pamphlets relate, which are the subject of our

review.

We do not think however that in our age, and especially in our country, there is much danger that the progress of rational inquiry in regard to religious doctrines can be very essentially impeded, or its effects prevented, though they may be hindered. There are among us no religious establishments of any considerable importance, to give support to error; to bribe men by their honors and emoluments into the defence of any theological propositions as articles of belief, or into silence concerning them as articles of peace. 'The civil powér does not intrude itself to become the arbiter of theological disputes, and to inflict on the one party or the other its disabilities and punishments. Nor even if these mischiefs did exist, should we in our age fear for the cause of rational religion. The gradual progress of intellectual improvement, and of correct modes of reasoning will have its efect upon religion as well as upon every other subject. While philosophy and good sense are extending their bloodless victories in every direction, and are continually confirming the eviden ́ces, and establishing the authority of Christianity; they will not leave us under the dominion of those absurdities and errors which have so long been connected with it. Since the great effort to free Christianity from its corruptions made at the reformation, and upon the principles then established, they have in truth been gradually, and are now, we think, more rapidly progressing. The light that has risen upon the world, cannot be driven backward in its course; and the portentous absurdities, the forms of gloom and terror that have haunted the darkness will disappear before it.

But though we think that the time will arrive, when our religion shall be far better understood by the great body of

Christians, and shall far more effectually produce its benefieial effects, and when a degree of virtue and happiness of which the world has yet afforded no example will be the consequence; yet this will be perhaps long after we shall have passed away. The prospect is as yet distant and dim. There are various causes even in our own country which will impede the progress of knowledge and of moral improvement. There are various causes which will make men eling strongly to their religious opinions, beside the truth and importance of these opinions. When a man has long valued himself, not upon his learning, his fairness, or his habits of investigation, but upon his having received certain popular doctrines in the most orthodox sense, it can hardly be expected, that he will readily give up the sources of his pride and self-complacency, descend from his elevation, and humble himself, to become a learner, to become the disciple, and to share the disgrace of one whom it is so much easier, and so much more in accordance with his former habits of mind for him to look down upon as an heretic. It is still less to be hoped that he will do this, if it should appear to him that the sacrifice to be made is not merely of his reputation, but of his worldly interests, and that his comfortable subsistence depends upon his own reception, or upon the general prevalence of the opin ions which he has heretofore maintained. But the case may

be even more hopeless. The man of whom we speak may have so long disused his reasoning powers, that they are without vigor. He may have so little the habit of investigation, that he shrinks away from its labor on subjects the most important; he may have relied so much on the argument from authority, that he is incapable of feeling the force of any other; and what in an active and healthy mind would produce unhesitating conviction, may affect him no more than he is capable of affecting such a mind in return. There are many men in whom some or all of these causes powerfully operate; and there are other men of fairer and of stronger minds, who yet seem to have a general dread of examination and inquiry upon religious subjects, who are disposed at least to confine

them within certain limits, who seem to think that if they are suffered to transgress these limits, there is no knowing what mischief they may effect, or what destruction they may perpetrate. There are men, who, before trusting themselves to the guidance of their reason in matters of religion, are disposed to stipulate that they shall not be led beyond a certain distance from prevailing opinions. All they can, for the most part, bring themselves to, is to receive the popular doctrines in their least offensive form. They must use the language of orthodoxy, though they are willing to explain it as consistently as they can with what, if there were no bias upon their minds, they would believe to be the truth. They have that dread of innovation and departure from authority, which to a certain degree is so useful, but which makes them regard with more uneasiness and dislike such as maintain new truths, however important, than such as remain content with established error.

But there are other causes, beside what we have mentioned, that may produce an improper though an excusable prejudice in favor of certain doctrines. In the minds of many they acquire an importance and a sanctity of which they are entirely unworthy, by connecting themselves in strong association with all their religious habits, sentiments, and feelings. It has from this cause been too common for the best of men to identify their opinions with religion itself, and to consider as her enemies all who have opposed their belief. Even such a man as Watts was obliged to invoke the aid of charity to find Locke* in heaven, and only ventured to place him there, and not to assign to the regions of eternal wretchedness, because he concluded from some passages in one of his commentaries, "that he was no Socinian." Similar instances might easily be produced; and humiliating as they are to us as men and as Christians, they teach a lesson of no small importance to be learnt, and to be remembered; they teach us that bigotry may exist in unnatural union with an amiable temper and an enlightened understanding. From men in whose minds this * See the poem of Watts on his death, with the note.

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union exists we may meet with a kind of opposition, which, though in itself unwarrantable, ought not to make us forget that they are still entitled, to something more than charity, to respect.

Whether those who are engaged in maintaining what we consider the cause of uncorrupted Christianity do for the most remember what is due to their opponents, whether they continue to merit the high praise which a hundred years ago was given to their predecessors by Tillotson, who said "that generally they were a pattern of the fair way of disputing, and of debating matters of religion without heat, and unseemly reflections upon their adversaries," it may not become us to determine. We do not think however that the writings of Mr. Noah Worcester, or of his brother, will detract from this praise, or that any one will find much to censure in the temper which they have manifested in the sort of controversy, if we may give it that name, in which they are engaged. this controversy all the pamphlets before us, as we have mentioned, directly or indirectly relate. It appears from them, that the opposers of these gentlemen have manifested an aversion to their opinions, "not only in an individual but in an associate capacity." In August 1811 the Hopkinton Association, a body, of which, however respectable, most of our readers probably never heard before, and will never hear again, met at Dunbarton; and taking into consideration the dangers of the church, and the importance of their authority in favor of the truth, passed the following vote:

"Copy of a vote passed at Dunbarton, August 1811.

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"The Hopkinton Association having seen and read a publication entitled 'Bible News,' another entitled 'An Impartial Review of Testimonies," &c. by Rev. Noah Worcester, and several other publications by Rev. Thomas Worcester all going to disprove the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, as held by the great Reformers, by our pious forefathers, by the orthodox churches of the Christian world at the present day, and in the opinion of this Association fully supported by the scriptures of

• In the second of his sermons from John i. 14. "concerning the divinity of our blessed Saviour.”