ally urged forward, without the power of discovering any other resting place, first, to a Latitudinarian conviction that no single definite belief respecting the object of religious faith was better or more pleasing to God than any other; and finally, to a full adoption, which, however, he still holds to be a matter of indifference, of the Socinian creed. And what makes them particularly interesting is, on the one hand, the known ability and character of the writer; and on the other, the length and painful nature of the struggle, in which he endeavoured, however ineffectually, to hold fast against what appeared to him the suggestions of reason, the faith which habit had taught him to revere.

Mr. Blanco White's present opinions have not been embraced by him hastily, or carelessly. He has not arrived at them by the off-hand, heedless process which leads the modern indifferentist to disencumber himself of what he thinks superfluous articles of belief, or wilfully to take up such as are most congenial to his feelings. His Latitudinarian views are the result, not, as is generally the case, of a haughty negligence, which will not stoop to examine the foundations of different creeds, but of a minute and pains-taking enquiry into the foundation of each; and the particular notion of the Christian system which he has adopted for his own, far from having been taken up wilfully, or in compliance with the bent of his disposition, seems, on the contrary, to have been forced on him against his will, to the overthrow of early mental habits,

and of strong devotional sentiments, by what appeared to him the overwhelming demands of reason.

The following is his own brief account of his state of mind during the interval between his throwing off Roman Catholicism and finally adopting his present creed, from which it will be seen, that, fatal as is the error into which he has fallen, he at least may be considered, so far as it is possible for us on such subjects to judge of one another, to have fallen into it sincerely.

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My doubts of the truth of the Established views began with the systematic and devout study of the Scriptures, which I undertook in 1814, when, free from the engagements which, in the service of England, as well as of my native country, had occupied me during the four preceding years, I removed to Oxford, for the exclusive purpose of devoting myself to theology.

"In the year 1818,...I arrived at the Unitarian view of Christianity................

"Having, till about 1824, continued in that state,...a revival of my early mental habits, and of those devotional sentiments which are inseparably connected with the idea of intellectual surrender to some Church, induced me again to acquiesce in the Established doctrines,-not from conviction-not by the discovery of sounder proofs than those which I had found insufficient, but chiefly by the power of that sympathy which tends to assimilation with those we love and respect......

"But to proceed. Not long after my strong

attachment to many orthodox and highly religious persons had given full sway to my deeply seated habits of attachment to a church, (habits which, when it is remembered that from the age of fourteen I belonged to the most compact and best organized body of clergy which ever existed, must be found quite natural,) my reason resumed its operations against the system that I had thus wilfully re-embraced......I had not yet at that time settled, to my entire satisfaction, the important point which forms the subject of the following letters. I had long been convinced that most of the questions which so hopelessly divide the Church of Christ, are not essential to Christianity. I knew that the distinction between essential and non-essential articles of faith must be arbitrary, since there is no certain rule to distinguish them. But I had not fully made the application of that fact, the absence of a rule not subject to rational doubt; nor found, as I did soon after, that the absence of every rule of dogmatic faith is in perfect conformity with the tenor and spirit of the New Testament. As I had not yet obtained this conviction, and was not indifferent about my duty to God, I could not but feel distressed, when, still under a remnant of those early impressions of identity between saving faith and right opinions, I found my orthodoxy crumbling to dust, day by day......

"The last fact I shall state is, that in my anxiety to avoid a separation from the Church, by a deliberate surrender of my mind to my old Uni

tarian convictions, I took refuge in a modification of the Sabellian theory, and availed myself of the moral unity which I believe to exist between God the Father and Christ, joined to the consideration, that Christ is called in the New Testament the Image of God, and addressed my prayers to God, as appearing in that image. I left nothing untried, to cultivate and encourage this feeling by devotional means; but such efforts of mere feeling... were always vain and fruitless...... The devout contrivance would not bear examination. Sabellianism is only Unitarianism disguised in words......In this state, however, I passed five or six years; but the return to clear and definite Unitarianism, in which I had formerly been, was as easy as it was natural." Such is the melancholy history Mr. Blanco White has given us of the state of his mind, "during the greatest part of more than twenty years," and he concludes it with the following reflection :

"I do not absolutely reproach myself for having so long indulged the sympathies which made me linger in connexion with the Church, when my understanding had fully rejected her principal doctrines; at all events, I derive from that fact, the satisfaction of being assured, that far from having embraced Unitarianism in haste, the only fault of which I cannot clear myself, is that of reluctance and dilatoriness to follow my convictions in its favour."

Now every one who reads this account, unless, indeed, he supposes Mr. Blanco White to have

altogether deceived himself as to the state of his feelings and inclinations, will admit at once, that his errors, great and perilous as they are, ought not to be confounded with common-place laxity of religious opinion. The train of thought which has operated so powerfully with a person of his intellectual acuteness, may be expected beforehand to be free from the vulgar fallacies which are the stumbling-blocks of inferior and less serious minds. Absolute novelty of course cannot be looked for, on a subject which has for centuries engaged the speculations of first-rate intellects, of an Episcopius, a Hales, a Chillingworth, a Locke; but ancient and often-refuted arguments may be exhibited by an original thinker, in guises so novel as apparently to elude the force of all that has been urged against them, and to require for all practical purposes a new refutation. And this is just what has been effected by Mr. Blanco White. Doubtless, to persons of habitually settled views, the conclusions at which he arrives will appear so extravagantly rash, as themselves to furnish a refutation of the steps which led to them.

Such persons will, perhaps, feel impatient at seeing arguments, which to their own matured judgments are self-destructive, opposed on any ground except that of their terminating in absurdity; and certainly, if all persons were of mature judgment in religious matters, and of habitually settled views, a critical examination of Mr. Blanco White's reasonings might justly merit their impatience, being,