THE NAME " UNITARIAN, 



155 



considered. In "The Inquirer'' containing (as advertisements) 

 the memorial, with the names and his brief response, he 

 appended a note in which he referred to the signatures. 



In the reply, which he withheld, he protested that his 

 opponents should not lay an exclusive claim to the designation 

 Unitarian : " That name, though I disclaim it as my own, and 

 oppose it with all my might when used to designate the opinions 

 which some of you hold, and which (in common with the great 

 bulk of Christendom) I regard as subversive of some of the 

 plainest principles of the Gospel — that name, next to the name 

 in heaven by which alone we can be saved, I reverence more 

 than any other name on earth. It is consecrated for ever by 

 him whom you quote in part, and whose one voice was 

 sufficient for many years to arrest a mighty nation in their 

 deeds of oppression against the slave [see Channing's Letter 

 against the Annexation of Texas] ; by Tuckerman, the founder 

 of the Domestic Missions \ by H. Ware, the earnest pleader for 

 temperance; by Noah Worcester, the founder of the Peace 

 Societies ; by Thrush, first among English officers whom Chris- 

 tianity taught to renounce his bloody calling [see p. 87] ; and, 

 most of all to me, by those who gave me birth, and whose lives 

 of Christian holiness and service are for ever before me as a price- 

 less benediction. It is the name under which I was trained in 

 the principles of the Gospel ; which those most dear to me love ; 

 which many of my flock cling to, as representing the doctrines 

 of the Unity and Free Mercy of the Father, happily no longer 

 confined to that name alone." 



The Unity of God is the first article of the creed of every 

 Christian Church : if the name of Unitarian is usually confined 

 to those who deny that there is a Trinity in this Unity, it does 

 not involve any doctrinal system. Unitarians differ among 

 themselves, as Trinitarians do, on matters that relate to the 

 very foundations of belief ; and many of Philip's brethren felt 

 it important that Unitarians should not be tied down to any 

 creed as to human nature.* 



* During this controversy, I sent to Warrington two verses from a 

 hymn-book then used at Halifax, compiled by the late Rev. R. Aspland 



