J UNITARIANISM INCAPABLE OF VINDICATION: A REPLY TO THE REV. JAMES YATES'S VINDICATION OF UNITARIANISM. BY RALPH WARDLAW, AUTHOR OF THE DISCOURSES ON THE SOCINIAN CONTROVERSY," - Admoneri nos decet, ut DOCILITATE, magis quam acumine, in istam quæstionem incumbere, curæ sit."-CALVIN. "The MEEK He will guide in judgment, the MEEK will He teach his way." LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, Hurst, rees, orme, & BROWN; I FEEL peculiar satisfaction in inscribing this Volume to you, without your privacy, as a slight acknowledgment of obligations, which, I am fully sensible, can never be discharged. To you, under Divine Providence, I am indebted, for all that a son can owe to an affectionate and pious father: -especially, for the inestimable blessing of early religious instruction, imparted with tender solicitude, sanctified by fervent prayer, and recommended by the force of consistent example. During a long and chequered pilgrimage, you have oft experienced the cheering influence of those blessed truths, which, in this and a former Volume, I have endeavoured to defend;-and have been enabled, "without rebuke," to exemplify their practical efficacy, in the faithful discharge of all the personal and relative duties of public and private life. necessity for its refutation. But the ground on which I would chiefly rest, in vindicating this amplitude of discussion, is, the paramount importance of the questions themselves, and the infinite magnitude of the consequences dependent upon their just decision; a consideration, surely, which ought to be sufficient to secure an attentive examination to arguments even much more extended. Not that I consider the perusal and examination of complicated critical disquisitions as necessary to enable any reader to resolve these questions for himself, in an enlightened and satisfactory manner, from the word of God. To use: an expression of my opponent, in his Sermon on the duty and manner of deciding religious controversies," On quest ❝tions so important and fundamental, the language of revela❝tion cannot be ambiguous:" and neither, on the same principle, can it be dark, and difficult to be understood.co“ To the poor the gospel is preached:"--and the holy Scriptures, like the preaching of our Lord and his apostles, are adapted, in their phraseology, not to the learned few, but to the une learned many; not to the wise and prudent," but to “babes.” The way of salvation, as might, a priori, have been presumed, is made known there with so much plainness, that "the way-faring man, though a fool, shall not err there "in."-But, when attempts are made, by the pride of philosophy, misnamed theology, to pervert these Scriptures from their obvious and simple meaning, and to make the |