which then, and indeed long afterwards, offered great facilities for such labours as his,-being open spaces of considerable size, on the edges of dense populations. It was computed that he commonly addressed in these places twenty or thirty thousand auditors, and sometimes even double the latter number. When these prodigious auditories sang, their notes were sometimes carried by the gale to a distance, it was thought, of nearly two miles; even the preacher's voice, to that of nearly one. The immediate inciting cause of these extraordinary proceedings was his desire to raise funds for the building and endowment of an orphan school and college in Georgia. These views led him gradually to such a degree of prominence in the religious world, as went utterly beyond the bare fulfilment of his original intention. As years rolled on, he travelled over nearly all parts of the British isles, and a very considerable portion of British North America, establishing an immense influence in all quarters. He thus became, like Wesley, the parent of a mighty sect, allied to the church of England; but one that had, in fact, much more the character of early puritanism. Whitefield's excessive labours wore him out, at a period of life greatly short of that attained by Wesley: he died at Newbury Port, near Boston, in New England, on the 30th of September, 1770. His piety, zeal, and popular eloquence are unquestionable: nor can it be doubted that he rendered very considerable service in arousing a general attention to religious subjects; but he suffered himself to be betrayed by natural impetuosity into a dogmatism, and an uncandid estimate of opponents, that a strong sense of religion, like his, would have avoided, if it had been acted upon by greater constitutional equanimity'.

§ 17. Neither Wesley nor Whitefield appears to have attained eminence with the previous recommendation of much

7 Whitefield wrote of Dr. Stebbing, who had attacked some of his doctrine; "To me he seems to know no more of the true nature of regeneration, than Nicodemus did, when he came to Jesus by night." To bishop Gibson, who had recommended the preaching of justification by faith, but not exactly as Whitefield preached it, he wrote; This, my lord, is truly a new gospel.

It is as contrary to the doctrine of the church of England, as light is contrary to darkness." Dissenting congregations he denounced as "companies of banded formalists," and dissenting ministers he talked of as "feeding the flock with husks instead of wholesome food." Philip's Life and Times of Whitefield. Lond. 1838. pp. 87. 89. 91.

theological knowledge. Both, perhaps, were too young: the latter certainly was altogether so. The result of their common deficiency gradually showed itself: they long laboured against the prevailing tide of immorality, and indolent formalism in religion, often driving people, by the fervour of their eloquence, into the opposite extreme of a delusive and offensive enthusiasm; but upon some of the points which had caused great religious excitement in earlier times, they seem to have set out with no very definite opinions. Wesley, indeed, was too much occupied with his favourite theory of man's capacity for moral perfection, to think long upon the spirit-stirring topics of predestination and election. Whitefield, however, during his absence in America, between the years 1739 and 1741, put forth two letters, which denounced archbishop Tillotson's Sermons, and The Whole Duty of Man, as written in as much ignorance of christianity, as ever was in Mahomet. He afterwards admitted, that, in penning these letters, he had suffered zeal to outrun discretion; but no acknowledgment of reprehensible incaution would stop the ferment occasioned by such an attack upon two writers in great favour with England. Among the parties disgusted was Wesley, who published soon after a sermon against absolute predestination, esteeming that doctrine, and others of the Calvinistic school, as very likely to produce Antinomianism. Whitefield had now become thoroughly imbued with doctrines of that class; and a controversy ensued between him and his former friend, which, besides giving a temporary shock to his own popularity, engendered angry feelings on both sides, and estranged the two parties from each other, during several years. In 1750, however, they were reconciled; but this was merely a personal satisfaction: their followers remained at variance with each other; those of Wesley taking the Arminian side, those of Whitefield the Calvinistic. In this divided state the Methodistic body still continues. It is agreed as to the importance of estimating religious impressions by their operation on the feelings, and as to the general excellence of the church of England; but it is altogether divided upon questions relating to predestination and election.

8 Philip, 195. Watson, 129.

§ 18. While one class of minds, attentive to religion, was extolling and propagating enthusiastic fervours, another would have completely lowered even conceptions of the Deity down to the level of human reason. The first clergyman of any note, who came forward with such views, was Francis Blackburne, archdeacon of Cleveland, and rector of Richmond, in Yorkshire, the place of his nativity. He had rendered himself rather conspicuous, while a student at Cambridge, for adopting those notions of Locke, Hoadley, and the like, which their admirers talk of as enlightened and liberal, but which pass with many, well worthy of attention, for latitudinarian and unsound. These opinions he took into the country, and found them strengthen daily by his habits of reading and reflection. After some previous publications, advocating his peculiar sentiments, that attracted no great notice, he published anonymously, in 1766, The Confessional; or a Full and Free Inquiry into the Right, Utility, and Success of establishing Confessions of Faith and Doctrine, in Protestant Churches. This work, which attacked existing theological tests, made a powerful impression on the public, and gave rise to a long controversy. The author, whose moral character, and whose industry as a parochial minister, and as a studious man, are unquestionable, had adopted opinions akin to the Socinian, but admitting the previous existence of Christ, with some sort of divinity; and he refused farther preferment, because he would not again subscribe to the articles. But he never gave up what he had already in the church; a blemish in his character, which those who think with him vindicate from the charge of interestedness, by the mention of an offer that he declined, of undertaking the pastorship of a congregation in London, agreeing with him in sentiment, and which would have been to his pecuniary advantage '. Two of his immediate connexions, however, Theophilus Lindsey, who married his daughter-in-law, and Dr. Disney, who married

Blackburne, however, did not resemble later holders of his opinions in tenderness for popery. On the contrary, he wished to restrain it within narrower bounds than the government of that time approved ; a wish which modern claimants of superior liberality

VOL. IV.

deem hardly worthy of him.

1 Rees's Cyclopædia, art. Blackburne. This compilation, having been conducted by an editor of similar opinions, is full upon questions connected with Socinianism.

Ff

his daughter, acted with greater consistency. Both surrendered church preferments, because they had imbibed notions adverse to a belief in the Trinity. The former opened a large room for public worship, according to his opinions, in Essex Street, London, in 1774. As his theology had been excepted in the Toleration Act, some difficulties were, at first, made by the magistrates upon the registration of this room; but the age was adverse to any strict interpretation of such statutes, and he not only then carried his point, but also, in 1778, he was enabled to supersede his licensed room by a commodious chapel. His followers have repudiated the appellation of Socinians, by which most other Christians have distinguished people of their opinions, and call themselves Unitarians,—a name which seems to insinuate a charge of polytheism upon the Christian world generally. The Essex Street congregation, which proved the parent of a numerous progeny, adopted a liturgy professedly altered from that of the national Church, according to a plan of Dr. Samuel Clarke, rector of St. James's, Westminster. The party has also published a New Testament, claiming freedom from interpolation, and greater accuracy of interpretation, than is to be found in the authorized version; but the great mass of scholars has neither admitted its charges of interpolation, nor considered its claims to superior fidelity, as worthy of any reliance. The most distinguished Englishman of this school was Dr. Joseph Priestley, son of a Leeds manufacturer, and born near that place in 1733. His parents were Calvinistic dissenters, and they meant him for a minister among that class of Christians. He became, however, an Arian, when quite a young man, but soon changed that belief for one in the simple humanity of Christ. In the defence and propagation of this doctrine, his industry was unwearied, though his scholarship appeared highly questionable; and he had the honour of no less a scholar than Samuel Horsley (successively bishop of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph ',) for an antagonist. By the world in

2 Rees's Cyclopædia, art. Lindsey. 3" In the year 1782, an open and vehement attack was made by Dr. Priestley upon the creeds and established discipline of every church in

Christendom, in a work in two mos 8vo. entitled, A History of the Corrup tions of Christianity. At the heat of these the author placed both the cathe lic doctrine of our Lord's divinity, and

general, however, he has been more noticed as a chemist; important discoveries in the nature and properties of gases having been made by him. Unhappily for his repose, he could not content himself with science and theology, but became an ardent politician of the French revolutionary school. This rendered him obnoxious to a large portion of the people in Birmingham, where he was fixed as minister of a dissenting congregation. A celebration, accordingly, of the capture of the Bastile, fixed for the anniversary of that event, in 1791, caused a great ferment among those inhabitants of Birmingham