402 ADOPTION OF UNITARIAN VIEWS 



the officiating clergyman and a majority of his hearers 

 which a man of talent and management will readily 

 contrive to secure to his own slowly altering and 

 advancing opinions is all that is necessary to change a 

 Trinitarian into a Unitarian congregation. There is no 

 church assembly to which pastor and people are amen 

 able, by which discipline could be enforced and a unity 

 and permanence of doctrine maintained. To the want 

 of such a controlling power is ascribed the abandonment 

 of Trinitarian principles by many of the old Presbyterian 

 congregations of England, and the same cause has doubt 

 less been influential in leading to the same result in 

 America. 



Whenever a man of powerful talent, or persuasive 

 eloquence, arises in a congregation or among a sect 

 which has no recognised articles of belief, and no central 

 power to see that those articles are taught and adhered 

 to, he naturally, almost necessarily, leads great numbers 

 into his own views ; and if these incline to a change of 

 doctrinal opinion, many will change with him. This 

 has been the case in past days in Massachusetts, is the 

 case at the present moment, and will continue to be the 

 case in all sects organised like that of the Independents. 

 At the present moment a preacher of much talent, (Dr 

 Bushnell) at Hartford, in Connecticut, and a professor 

 (Park,) in the Theological Seminary at Andover, in 

 Massachusetts, are praised by the Unitarians for their 

 exceeding liberality of opinion, and my friend the Uni- 

 versalist spoke of the former with a kind of satisfactory 

 anticipation. By the more orthodox of their own body, 

 however, these men are accused of deviations from the 

 professed doctrines of the Independents, while they are 

 eagerly followed, and pronounced to be right, by their per 

 sonal followers and admirers. It is right to allow perfect 

 liberty to every man to change his own religious senti 

 ments as often as he chooses, but it is a breach of faith 



