ple) to sweep the dust from his grave." Sir Henry then refers to the pious uses of his will, and the struggles for his honours and offices, adding, "a few days will determine these ambitions." Relig. Wotton, 1685, 4th Ed. pp. 434-436. According to Lord Orford, the Earl "died at the palace he had built at Charing Cross, now Northumberland House, supposed to be raised with Spanish gold." He had founded "three some notices in your second Vol. p. 535. The letter, which is undated, was most probably written in 1695, when, as appears by a Parliamentary Register, Viscount Cheyne was chosen one of the members for Newport, Cornwall, which borough he had waved at the election in 1690, and sat for Harwich. J. T. RUTT. hospitals," and was described by Lady The Earl of Northampton to the Earl Bacon, mother of the Chancellor, as "a dangerous intelligencing man, and, no doubt, a subtle Papist inwardly, a very instrument of the Spanish Papists." R. and N. Authors. Such was the various fortune and the undecided character of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, concerning whom I have been tempted to exceed the reasonable bounds of an introductory letter, from perceiving that his life had been omitted in most, if not all of the General Biographies. The second letter has the signature of Henry Compton, Bishop of London, the youngest son of Spencer, Earl of Northampton, on whose father, the title, extinct by the death of Lord Howard, had been bestowed by King James. This Prelate is sufficiently described in biographies and accounts of the Revolution. He is here employed, with no great propriety, as a Peer, interfering with a Peeress, respecting an election for the House of Commons. The letter is endorsed, "To the Right Hon. Her Grace the Dutchess of Älbemarle, at New Hall, in Essex." Bibl. Sloan. 4052. This Lady was the widow of the second Duke of Albemarle, whose rank and riches, his father, General Monk had earned by his successful political profligacy. This marriage of the son, the Biographer of Monk, Dr. Skinner, describes as "the last of" the father's "human cares," dying four days after, careless, probably of what uncourtly history might say of him, since he had "united the glories of the ancient houses of Newcastle and Dorchester, Cavendish and Pierpoint, with his own ducal coronet." Of the Duchess and her eccentricities, Mr. Granger has given an entertaining account, in his Biographical History, 2d Ed. IV. pp. 157, 158. Of New Hall, there are of Somerset. [June, 1614.] HON. AND WORTHY LORD, IF the plain dealing both of my physicians and surgeon did not assure me of the few days I have to live, I should yet have deferred the putting of these poor suits into your hands, since I might be thought still rather to value your greatness, than your goodness. But, noble Lord, let me be beholding at my last for ever, for such poor toys as do rather ease my mind than pinch any man. 1 humbly beseech your Lordship to stay, with all the power you can, the conferring the office of the Cinque Ports, either upon Pembroke or Lisle, for as they hated me, so will they plague my people and those whom I loved. Sir Robert Brette, at his coming to the place of Lieutenant, was content to depart with a platt of ground for enlargement of my garden, which could have been bought of him, setting aside his love for me, for no money. My very conscience is pressed in this point, and therefore cannot satisfy myself, till I have put my earnest suit into the hands of my dearest Lord, to take care that his Majesty admit no warden before he have given his word to him, not to remove this poor distressed gentleman out of his Lieutenancy. If I die before Midsummer, the farms of the Irish Customs are not to pay me, though it be but one day before, which were a great wound to my fortune. No man can help this inconvenience better than your Lordship, by obtaining a privy seal, that my executors may be paid, if it come to that hard straight of a day or two. Assurance from your Lordship that you will effect these final requests, shall send my spirit out of this transitory tabernacle, with as much comfort and content as the bird flies to the mountain. Dear Lord, my spirits spend and my strength decays. All that remains is with my dying hand to witness what my living heart did vow when it gave itself to your Lordship, as to the choice friend whom I did love for his virtues, and not court for his fortune.' Farewell, Noble Lord, and the last farewell in the last letter that ever I look to write to any man. I presume confidently of your favour in these poor suits, and will be both living and dying, Your affectionate friend and servant, H. NORTHAMPTON. Tuesday at 2. Sept. 25, [1695.] I am an humble petitioner to you, that when the election of Harwich is decided, you would give my Lord Cheyne leave to take the Burrow, in Cornwall, for his option, and that you would give me leave to recommend another person to your favour. Were it upon my own account, I should be ashamed to ask this: but it is for the government and churche's sake that I beg it. For the person I would have in, will be of very great and important use to serve both, and therefore I am sure you will pardon the importunity. Madam, your Grace's most obe- MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. I Mr. Howe on the Opinions on the Trinity. SIR, Bridport, August 8, 1817. is often asserted by the advocates for the Trinity, that this doctrine has been professed in the Christian church, from its first formation to the present time. In proof of this position, an appeal is confidently made to the writings of the primitive Fathers. If indeed their decisions be deemed sacred to establish articles of faith, and the religious sentiments they maintained be taken as the standard of Christian truth, the advocates for the deity of Christ must be allowed to have the advantage over the Unitarian. To their authority, however, the latter will not submit. He makes his appeal to the New Testament, especially to the first planting of a Christian church recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and challenges his opponents to produce in them such language as "the ever-blessed Trinity, the Trinity in Unity, Three Persons in One God, the God-man Christ Jesus, the same in substance with his Father, equal in power and glory." These, Sir, are the inventions of after ages, for the support of metaphysical systems of human device. Though the Unitarian admits that the generality of the ancient fathers did not entertain those opinions respecting the person of Christ, which he conceives to be contained in the sacred Scriptures, yet he can bring strong presumptive proofs of the truth of his sentiments, even from the writings of the former. Christianity, indeed, was corrupted as early as the time of the apostles. Some of its professors called Gnostics entertained the fanciful notion respecting the person of Jesus Christ, that he was a man in appearance only, not in reality, and was incapable of suffering and dying. This sentiment, originating in a phantastic species of oriental philosophy, is often referred to, and censured by the apostles in their epistolary writings. Errors of somewhat a different kind from the reveries of these Phantomists respecting the person of Christ, gained some ground among Christians in the second century. Most of the celebrated fathers had been philosophers, who, when converted to Christianity, corrupted the pure religion of the gospel, by intermixing with it some of their own philosophical or metaphysical notions. Among these, Justin usually called Martyr (because he nobly yielded up his life in the Christian cause, rather than renounce it), a native of Samaria, a learned man and a pious philosopher, makes a distinguised figure. He embraced Christianity about a hundred years after the death of our Lord. It appears probable that he very much contributed to establish the subsequent doctrine of the Trinity among Christians, by applying the Platonic notion of the Logos to Jesus Christ. Plato maintained, that “there is only One Supreme, Spiritual and Invisible God, whom he calls the Being, the very Being, the Father and Cause of all beings. He placed under this Supreme God, an inferior Being whom he called Reason, (Asyog) the Director of things present and future, the Creator of the Universe. In fine, he acknowledged a third Being, whom he calls the Spirit or Soul of the world. He added, that the first was the Father of the second, and that the second had produced the third."-Le Clerc's Lives of the Primitive Fathers, p. 68. English Ed. The application of the Logos of Plato to Jesus Christ, Justin deemed a wonderful discovery, which he thought himself inspired by heaven to make; and whenever a person feels an impression of his being taught any peculiar tenet by immediate Divine communication, (though in reality it be the offspring of his warm imagination) the voice of sober reason and the plainest declarations of Scripture are disregarded by the pious enthusiast. As one false step generally leads to another, so this error of Justin, from the pure doctrine of Christ and his apostles, not only by degrees spread in the Christian world, but also gained great additions to it, till at length it led the human mind into the labyrinth of incomprehensible mysteries, as they afterwards appeared in established creeds. The sentiment respecting the person of our Lord, advanced by Justin, does not seem to have extended very rapidly, or to have gained ground without opposition. "All the learned Christians of that time (says a late venerable divine, who made a noble sacrifice of his worldly interest to his integrity), were far from favouring Justin's new doctrine of Christ being a second God, spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures. Many, whose names are recorded, with numberless others unknown, continued to hold him to be a human being, with extraordinary powers from God. And it has been VOL. XII. amply proved, that whilst Justin and the philosophic Christians after him, indulged themselves in their unscriptural speculations concerning the Logos, the Word, as the Son of God before all time, and his eternal generation, ordinary Christians of plain understanding kept close to the doctrine of the apostles concerning Christ, as being a man of the Jewish nation, and the Son of God in no other sense, than that of having received his being, and extraordinary favours and communications from God."-Lindsey's Second Address to the Students of Oxford and Cambridge. Note to p. 213. Dr. Priestley has thrown much light on ecclesiastical history, by proving from the writings of the primitive fathers themselves of the second and third centuries, that their opinions respecting the person of Christ are uo criterion of the sentiments of the Christian church within that period, if thereby be meant the general body With reof professing Christians. ference to these, Tertullian, the first of the Latin fathers, who flourished about the beginning of the third century, sadly complains that "the simple, the ignorant and unlearned, who are always the greater part of the body of Christians," cannot enter into his sublime speculations respecting the economy." They therefore will have it, that we are worshipers of two, and even of three Gods, but that they are the worshipers of one God only."Priestley's History of the Christian Church. I. p. 285. This evinces the difficulty which the speculative and philosophic teachers among professing Christians had, to induce the general body to renounce the plain intelligible doctrine taught by our Lord and his apostles, of the supremacy of the Father, and that Jesus Christ was a man possessed indeed of extraordinary divine communications, "the spirit being given him without measure," whereby he was qualified to reveal the will of God, and to be an all-sufficient Saviour. Greatly as they revered, and ardently as they loved their professed Master, their minds revolted at the representation of his deity, as interfering with the prerogative of the only true God. They were unable to enter into those metaphysical distinctions and subtle ties, by which it was attempted to evade this conclusion. For it is to be observed, that these philosophic teachers maintained both the supremacy of the Father and the deity of Christ, yet denied that there was more than one God. The strict equality of Christ with his God and Father, is not I believe to be found in any of the writings of the three first centuries. The doctrine of the Athanasian Creed, as it is called, was unknown to the Saint whose name it bears, an irrefragable proof of its being a forgery of a subsequent age. This appears by the writings of St. Athanasius, as quoted by Dr. Clarke, in his “ Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity." P. 4. 2nd Ed. Let these quotations be compared with the Athanasian Creed, and instead of a similarity, a contrast and contradiction to it will be found. Though a belief in the Trinity is often represented by its advocates as essential to salvation, various are the sentiments which the professors themselves of this doctrine, of both ancient and modern times, have entertained concerning it. If it be said of a person that he is a Trinitarian, you are still at a loss to determine (unless he himself explain his own views) what are his precise ideas respecting his tenet. I am led to these reflections, Sir, by the recent perusal of a pamphlet, which I read in the early part of my ministry with much satisfaction, and a sincere wish to imbibe that spirit of candour towards my Christian brethren of every denomination, which it tends to generate. I refer to "Candid Reflections on the Doctrine of the Trinity," by the late Rev. Benjamin Fawcett, of Kidderminster. In proof of the position above advanced, of the differences respecting the person of Christ, subsisting among reputed Trinitarians themselves, I take the liberty of extracting part of the account he gives of some of the modern writers on the doctrine, chiefly taken, as the pious and liberal author states, from Dr. Doddridge's Lectures. "Dr. Waterland, Dr. A. Taylor, and many other modern Athanasians, carried their notion of the distinct personality and supreme divinity of the Father, Son and Spirit to a very great height, and seemed to have imagined that they sufficiently supported the Unity of the Godhead by asserting, that the Father, Son and Spirit had each of them the same divine nature, as three or more men have each of them the same human nature. They allowed many things to be inexplicable in their scheme, which they charged to the weakness of our understandings, and not to the doctrine itself. "Bishop Pearson, Bishop Bull and Dr. Owen agree in opinion, that though God the Father is the Fountain of Deity, the whole Divine nature is communicated from the Father to the Son, and from both to the Spirit, yet so as that the Father and the Son are not separate, nor separable, from the divinity, but do still exist in it, and are most intimately united to it. "Mr. Howe seemed to suppose, that there are three distinct eternal Spirits, or distinct intelligent hypos tases, each having his own distinct, singular, intelligent nature, united in such an inexplicable manner, as that (upon account of their perfect harmony, consent and affection, to which he adds their mutual self-consciousness) they may be called the One God, as properly as the different corporeal, sensitive and intelligent natures may be called one man.' "Dr. Clarke's scheme is, that there is one Supreme Being, who is the Father, and two derived, subordinate, and dependent Beings. But he waves calling Christ a creature, as Arius did, and principally on that foundation disclaims the charge of Arianism. "Mr. Baxter seems to have thought the Three Divine Persons to be one and the same God, Understanding, Willing and Beloved by himself, or Wisdom, Power and Love, which he thinks illustrated by the three essential formalities (as he calls them) in the soul of man; viz. vital, active power, intellect and will; and in the sun, motion, light and heat. 66 Archbishop Tillotson, Dr. Wallis, and many others thought, the distinction between the Three Persons was only Modal, coinciding with the leading sentiment of Sabellius. "Dr. Thomas Burnet maintained one self-existent and independent, and two dependent Beings, but asserted, that the two latter are so united to and inhabited by the former, that by virtue of such union, divine perfections may be ascribed, and divine worship paid to them. "Dr. Watts maintained one Supreme God dwelling in the human nature of Christ, which he supposes to have existed the first of all creatures. He speaks of the Logos or divine Word, as the Wisdom of God, and the Holy Spirit as the divine Power, or the influence and effect of it, which he says is a scriptural person, that is, spoken of figuratively in Scripture under personal characters." Fawcett's Candid Reflections, p. 10. From the account here given of the last of these eminent men, it may be said of him, he was not far from being an Unitarian Christian; and that before he died, he was led by his inquiries to be completely one of that description, is rendered very probable, by recent publications respecting him, especially by the testimony of a man so cautious and of so respectable a character as Dr. Lardner. The observation of the liberal author of the pamphlet from which I have made the above quotation, is so just and appropriate, that I cannot refrain from inserting it. "All the explications of this doctrine, under the ancient and modern names now mentioned, have in this one respect an equality, that they are all of them the sentiments of mere fallible men." P. 14. To this I beg leave to add also, that the more I reflect on the difficulties attending every species of the doctrine of the Trinity, the more grateful I feel to the kind Disposer of my lot, by whose gracious dispensations I have been led to the knowledge and profession of the plain and intelligible, yet sublime and animating doctrine of Unitarianism. That all who embrace, may adorn and recommend it by their tempers and conduct, is the ardent wish, in which I am sure, Sir, you will heartily unite, of your occasional Correspondent, SIR, T. HOWE. Hackney, Aug. 3, 1817. of the events which occurred at Exeter about a century ago, in connexion with the Trinitarian controversy there. So much delayed, my purpose would have been quite forgotten, but for a hint in one of your late Numbers (p. 386), which has awakened my atten subject. Allow me first to correct an error The chapel in which the exemplary in your Correspondent's statement. and high-minded Mr. Peirce taught the Supremacy of the Father, is not now in the possession of the Unitarians. The congregation had declined attached to it were lately sold to the so much, that the building and ground fice which was dedicated, in England, Wesleyan Methodists. The first edito the worship of the “One God, the Father," is no longer employed in His peculiar service. † rian controversy, Exeter had been the For some years before the Trinitatheatre of warm disputes between the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians, which were first kindled by the intemperance of a Mr. Agate, who, as a contemporary says, "with a fluent harder than his very name," took tongue, a fiery zeal and a forehead senters from the pulpit, calling their every opportunity of abusing the Dis ministers "a pack of villains," and adding, that "they took as much pains to damn men's souls, as Jesus Christ did to save them." He challenged the Dissenters to a public controversy, which was accepted by Mr. conversation, the preliminaries to the Hallett. They met, but after some discussion proposed and insisted on by Mr. Agate, were so illiberal and unfair, being apparently intended to force such answers from Mr. Hallett, as would make him amenable to the civil law, that nothing came of the conference; but the spirit of resent and throughout the Mon. Repos. as else* This name is almost constantly mispelt, where, I find it generally Pierce. †This chapel was opened on the 15th March, 1719, and Mr. Peirce preached in it from 1 Cor. i. 13, the first time after his expulsion. He asserts, (and indeed he is 66 an honest and true witness,") that he had the congregation proposed to invite Mr. On the death of Mr. Peirce in 1726, |