dictator into prison, where he died in 1662. The posthumous work of Milton, first published in 1825, shows him to have adopted their sentiments. An act of the long parliament, in 1648, making the profession of Unitarianism a felony, was so far mitigated, after the revolution, by statutes of the eighth and ninth of William III, as to make the offence punishable, in the first instance, by certain civil disabilities, and, in the second, by three years' imprisonment, and virtual outlawry. These statutes were not repealed till 1813. In the latter part of the seventeenth, and the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, besides other names of the first distinction, their claim to which is disputed, we find, among avowed English Unitarians, those of Firmin, Emlyn, Whis ton, Samuel Clarke, and Lardner; and, to go higher, of Locke and Newton. Towards the close of the last century, several clergymen of the established church (Lindsey, Jebb, Wakefield, Disney, and others) resigned their benefices, in consequence of having adopted Unitarian views, while, at the same time, among numerous converts from the dissenting sects, appeared the names of doctors Priestley, Price, Aikin, Rees, and others of scientific and literary note. The English body of the three denominations, as it is called, is composed of the Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists. Of that portion of the latter class called General Baptists, a majority are acknowledged Unitarians. Such was, towards the close of his life, Robert Robinson, the author of the Village Sermons, and doctor Toulmin, the learned editor of Neal's History of the Puritans; and the Presbyterian churches, throughout England, are understood to be, with scarcely an exception, occupied by congregations of this sort. Their number was reckoned, ten years ago, at more than two hundred. (Unit. in Ang. Fid. Hist. Stat. Præsent. Brev. Expos.) In the Presbyterian churches in the north of Ireland, a vehement controversy has been carried on within the two or three last years, the event of which is understood to have been to detach about forty churches from the body of that communion, and unite them, as professed Unitarians, into a society of their own, consisting of several presbyteries. There are also congregations of this character in Dublin, and in other southern eities of the kingdom. In Scotland, there are Unitarian chapels in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other principal places. Among the leading periodical

publications devoted to this cause in Great Britain, are the Monthly Repository, printed in London; the Christian Reformer and Reflector, at Liverpool; and the Christian Pioneer, in Glasgow. There is a Scottish Unitarian Association lately formed; and the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, meeting annually at London, serves for a bond of union for professors of the belief throughout the three kingdoms. The principal supply of ministers is from Manchester college, at York; others come from the Scotch universities, and from that of Dublin.-As early as 1690, some English ministers complained to a synod, convened at Amsterdam, of the growing heterodoxy of the Genevan church. The first public measure of importance in the connexion, was a decree of the Company of Pastors, in 1725, dispensing candidates for ordination from subscription to the Helvetic confession, and substituting for this a profession of holding "the true doctrine of the holy prophets and apostles, as comprised in the books of the Old and New Testaments, and summarily set forth in the catechism." Vernet, theological professor in the academy, published, not long after, his disbelief in the consubstantiality of the Son. In 1757, the article Geneva, in the French Encyclopædia, announced, that "many of the ministers disbelieved the divinity of Jesus Christ, of which Calvin, their leader, was the zealous defender." In 1788, the catechism of Calvin was superseded by another, of a character to indicate the justness of this statement. In 1807, a liturgy, expurgated upon Unitarian principles, was substituted for that anciently in use; and, two years earlier, a professedly amended version of the Scriptures, which had been in preparation upwards of a century, was published under the authority of the Venerable Company of Pastors. At the present time, the twenty-seven pastors of the established church of the canton are understood, with two or three exceptions, to hold to Unitarian opinions. A controversy on the subject broke out in 1816, which, though much discouraged by the magistrates, continues to the present time. M. Chenevière, rector of the academy, the most distinguished writer of the dominant party, published, in 1831, an Essai du Systéme Théologique de la Trinité, and an Essai du Péché original, in which are argued, at length, Unitarian views upon these points.-In America, Unitarian opinions appear (president Adams's letter to doctor Morse) to have been extensively

adopted in Massachusetts as early as the middle of the last century. In 1756, Emlyn's Humble Inquiry into the Scripture Account of Jesus Christ, was published in Boston, chiefly, it is said, by the agency of doctor Mayhew, of the West church, and came into wide circulation. One of the three Episcopal churches of that city adopted, in 1785, a liturgy excluding the recognition of the Trinitarian doctrine. In 1805, attention was extensively drawn to the subject by several publications, occasioned by the appointment of a distinguished Unitarian to the divinity chair of the university of Cambridge. In 1816, the controversy was revived by a republication, in this country, of a chapter from Mr. Belsham's Life of Lindsey, with the title American Unitarianism. Up to this time, the doctrine had been hardly discussed out of New England, though a small society, dating from the visit of doctor Priestley, in 1794, existed in Philadelphia. In 1819, a congregation was gathered in Baltimore; and others now exist in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Charleston, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and other principal cities of the Union. The number of churches organized according to the Congregational form is reckoned at from 170 to 200. Their ministers are chiefly furnished from the divinity college of the university of Cambridge, in Massachusetts. Among the periodical publications which announce their views are the Christian Examiner, the Scriptural Interpreter, and the Unitarian Advocate, printed in Boston; the Unitarian Monitor, at Dover, N. H.; the Christian Monitor, at Brooklyn, Conn.; and the Unitarian Essayist, at Meadville, Penn. The annual reports of the American Unitarian Association, the government of which is established in Boston, circulate information respecting the progress of the doctrine. Besides the Congregational Unitarians, the denomination called Christians, which is numerous, particularly in the Western States, reckoning, in 1827, from 700 to 1000 churches (letter of General Christian Conference, in Christian Examiner, vol. iv), maintains Unitarian opinions; and they are understood also to prevail in the large sect of the Reformed Baptists, in the same region of the country.-In France, many of the Protestant clergy reject the Trinitarian scheme of Christian doctrine. The tone of their principal publication, the Revue Protestante, is hostile to it; and the principal sources of supply for the ministry of the French churches, are the

schools of Geneva and Montauban, where the Unitarian system has ascendency. A society was forined last year, at Paris, called the Unitarian Association of France.

In British Asia, a native society of Unitarian Christians has existed, for several years, at Madras, under the care of William Roberts, a native; but a much more remarkable developement of opinion of this kind occurred in the case of the distinguished Bramin, Rammohun Roy, of Calcutta, who, in his publications in English, called the Precepts of Jesus, and First, Second and Final Appeal to the Christian Public, has directed the thoughts of numbers of his countrymen to the subjects therein proposed, and, since 1827, has been associated with conspicuous individuals of the native and European population, in the support of Christian worship according to the Unitarian faith.-Unitarians profess to derive their views from Scripture, and to make it the ultimate arbiter in all religious questions,thus distinguishing themselves from the Rationalists (otherwise called the Anti-supernaturalists) of Germany. They undertake to show that, interpreted according to the settled laws of language, the uniform testimony of the sacred writings is, that the Holy Spirit has no personal existence distinct from the Father, and that the Son is a derived and dependent being, whether, as some believe, created in some remote period of time, or, as others, beginning to live when he appeared on earth. Three of the passages of the New Testament, which have been relied on to prove the contrary (1 John v, 7; 1 Tim. iii, 16; and Acts xx, 28), they hold, with other critics, to be spurious. Others (as John i, 1, &c.; Romans ix, 5) they maintain to have received an erroneous interpretation. They insist that ecclesiastical history enables them to trace to obsolete systems of heathen philosophy the introduction of the received doctrine into the church, in which, once received, it has been sustained on grounds independent of its merits; and they go so far as to aver that it is satisfactorily refuted by the biblical passages, when rightly understood, which are customarily adduced in its support. According as their distinguishing doctrine has been professed in different times and places, it has been found in connexion with various others, which have been prominent subjects of controversy in the church, as those which respect the manner of baptism, philosophical liberty and necessity, the methods of Christ's mediation, &c. The Unitarians (sometimes

called Socinians) of Poland held to the obligation of invoking Christ-a view which no Unitarians of the present day, out of Transylvania, are believed to entertain. In America, Unitarian opinions are much divided upon the point of Christ's preexistence; while, on the other hand, the rejection of the tenet of his vicarious suffering (or suffering as men's substitute), along with that of his supreme Deity, appears to be universally characteristic of the sect. (See Bock, Historia Antitrinitari

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orum; Lubieniecius, Historia Reformationis Polonica; Lampe, Historia Ecclesia Hungarica; Benkő, Transylvania; Maimbourg, History of Arianism; L'Amy, History of Socinianism; Rees, Racovian Catechism.)

Unitarians is also sometimes used, in politics, to designate a party in favor of a central government, in contradistinction to one in favor of a federal government. Thus we hear of the Unitarians in Buenos Ayres.