we should daily pray for an "increase of faith." There is enough of iniquity abounding to make our love in danger of waxing cold; it is well said therefore," Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." By which I understand that it is not so much general notions of Providence which are our best support, but a sense of the personal interest, if I may so speak, taken in our welfare by Him who died for us and rose again. May His Spirit strengthen us to do His will, and to bear it, in power, in love, and in wisdom. God bless you.

XLIV. TO THE REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, March 5, 1833.

[After speaking of a parcel sent to him.] I will not conceal, however, that my motive in writing to you immediately is to notice what you say of my pamphlet on Church Reform. I did not send it you for two reasons; first, because I feared that you would not like it; secondly, because a pamphlet in general is not worth the carriage. And I should be ashamed of myself if I were annoyed by your expressing your total disagreement with its principles or with its conclusions. But I do protest most strongly against your charge of writing "with haste and without consideration;" of writing " on subjects which I have not studied and do not understand," and " which are not within my proper province." You cannot possibly know that I wrote in haste, or that I have not studied the question; and I think, however much I might differ from any opinion of yours, I should scarcely venture to say that you had written on what you did not understand. I regret exceedingly the use of this kind of language in Oxford; it seems to me to indicate a temper, not the best suited either to the state of knowledge or of feeling in other parts of the kingdom. It so happens that the subject of conformity, of communion, of the relations of Church and State, of Church Government, &c., is one which I have

.....

because

I have studied more than any other which I could name. read very largely about it, and thought about it habitually for several years, and I must say, that, sixteen or seventeen years ago, I had read enough of what were called orthodox books upon such matters, to be satisfied of their shallowness and confusion. I do not quarrel with you for coming to a different conclusion, but I do utterly deny that you are entitled to tax me with not being just as qualified as yourself to form a conclusion. I do not know that it gives me much pain, when my friends write what I do not like; for so long as I believe them to be honest, I do not think that they will be the worse for it; but assuredly my convictions of the utter falsehood and mischievous tendency of their opinions are quite as strong as theirs can be of mine; though I do not expect to convert them to my own views for many reasons. As to the pamphlet, I am now writing a Postscript for the fourth edition of it, with some quotations in justification of some of my positions.

If any respectable man of my own age chooses to attack my principles, I am perfectly ready to meet him, and he shall see at any rate whether I have studied the question or no. I wish that I knew as much about Thucydides, which you think that I do understand.

I hope that I have expressed myself clearly. I complain merely of the charge of writing hastily on a subject which I have not studied. As a matter of fact, it is most opposite to the truth. But if you say that you think I have studied it to very bad purpose, and am all wrong about it, I have only to say, that I think differently; but I should not in the least complain of your giving me your own opinion in the plainest terms that you chose.

XLV. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, March 10, 1833.

I thank you entirely for your last letter; it is at once kind and manly, and I much value your notice of parti

cular points in the Pamphlet which you think wrong. It is very true that it was written hastily, i. e. penned, for the time was short; but it is no less true that the matter of it, as far as its general principles are concerned, had been thought over in my mind again and again. In fact, my difficulty was how to write sufficiently briefly, for I have matter enough to fill a volume; and some of the propositions, which I have heard objected to, as thrown out at random, are to my own mind the results of a very full consideration of the case; although I have contented myself with putting down the conclusion, and omitting the premises. [After answering a question of history.] I fear, indeed, that our differences of opinion on many points of which I have written must be exceedingly wide. I am conscious that I have a great deal to learn; and, if I live ten years more, I hope I shall be wiser than I am now. Still I am not a boy, nor do I believe that any one of my friends has arrived at his opinions with more deliberation and deeper thought than I have at mine. And you should remember, that if many of my notions indicate in your judgment an imperfect acquaintance with the subject, this is exactly the impression which the opposite notions leave on my mind; and, as I know it to be quite possible that a conclusion, which seems to me mere folly and ignorance, may really rest on some proof, of which I am wholly ignorant, and which to the writer's mind may have been so familiar from long habit as to seem quite superfluous to be stated-so it is equally possible, that what appears folly or ignorance to you, may also be justified by a view of the question which has escaped your notice, and which I may happen to have hit upon.

Undoubtedly I should think it wrong to write on any subject, and much more such a subject as the Church, without having considered it. It can hardly be an honest opinion, if it be expressed confidently, without a consciousness of having sufficient reason for it. And though on subjects within the reach of our faculties, sufficient

consideration, in the strict sense, must preclude error, (for all error must arise either from some premises being unknown, or from some faulty conclusion being derived from those which we do know,) yet of course for our moral justification, it is sufficient that we have considered it as well as we could, and so, that we seem to have a competent understanding of it compared with other men-to be able to communicate some truth to others, while we receive truths from them in return.

But my main object in writing was to thank you for your letter, and to assure you that my feeling of anger is quite subsided, if anger it could be called. Yet I think I had a right to complain of the tone of decided condemnation which ran through your first letter, assuming that I had written without reflection and without study, because my notions were different from yours; and I think that, had I applied similar expressions to any work of yours, you would have been annoyed as much as I was, and have thought that I had judged you rather unfairly. But enough of this: and I will only hope that my next work, if ever I live to write another, may please you better.

XLVI. TO WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ., FORMERLY M.P. FOR NORWICH.

[In answer to a letter on the subject of his pamphlet, particularly objecting to his making it essential to those included in his scheme of comprehension, that they should address Christ as an object of worship.]

Rugby, March 9, 1833.

I trust you will not ascribe it to neglect, that I have not returned an earlier answer to your letter. My time has been very much occupied, and I did not wish to write, till I could command leisure to write as fully as the purport and tone of your letter required.

I cannot be mistaken, I think, in concluding that I have the honour of addressing Mr. Smith, who was so long the Member for Norwich, and whose name must be perfectly

familiar to any one who has been accustomed to follow the proceedings of Parliament.

The passage in my Pamphlet to which you allude is expressly limited to the case of "the Unitarians preserving exactly their present character;" that is, as appears by a comparison with what follows, (p. 36,) their including many who “call themselves Unitarians, because the name of unbeliever is not yet thought creditable." And these persons are expressly distinguished from those other Unitarians whom I speak of " as really Christians." In giving or withholding the title of Christian, I was much more influenced by the spirit and temper of the parties alluded to than by their doctrinal opinions. For instance, my dislike to the works of the late Mr. Belsham arises more from what appears to me their totally unchristian tone, meaning particularly their want of that devotion, reverence, love of holiness, and dread of sin, which breathes through the Apostolical writings, than from the mere opinions contained in them, utterly erroneous as I believe them to be. And this was my reason for laying particular stress on the worship of Christ; because it appears to me that the feelings with which we regard Him are of much greater importance, than such metaphysical questions as those between Homoousians and Homoiousians, or even than the question of His humanity or proper divinity.

My great objection to Unitarianism in its present form in England, where it is professed sincerely, is that it makes Christ virtually dead. Our relation to Him is past instead of present; and the result is notorious, that instead of doing every thing in the name of the Lord Jesus, the language of Unitarians loses this peculiarly Christian character, and assimilates to that of mere Deists; "Providence," "the Supreme Being," and other such expressions taking the place of "God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," "the Lord," &c., which other Christians, like the Apostles, have found at once most natural to them, and most delightful. For my own part, consider