For now our Saviour's deity must be tried by a kind of school-divinity, and the most fundamental doctrine, maintained as such by the Catholic church, must be examined, censured, and condemned by ů, , Tù. BISHOP PEARSON ON THE CREED.

London:

PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL' CHURCH YARD.

MDCCCIII.

By T. Gillet, Salisbury Square.

Since these Letters were written, I find, from the British Critic for July, 1802, that the author of the first,Six anonymous LETTERS is a Mr. C. Wordsworth, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, as those critics inform me, is not anxious to be concealed. This intelligence, however, coming so late, I have suffered all mention of this gentleman, in the following correspondence, to stand just as it did before the discovery was made.

PREFACE.

HE "Remarks" of Mr. Granville Sharp "on

THER on

"text of the New Testament, containing many new proofs of the divinity of Christ," have been recently republished; and "a plain argument from the "gospel history," in favour of the same design, has been superadded by the friendly hand of the editor, the rev. Thomas Burgess, prebendary of Durham. Another writer has also very lately given to the world, in a separate publication, some further supplementary observations respecting the subject of the "Remarks," in "Six Letters," addressed to the worthy author.

The general rule laid down, and the proposition maintained by Mr. Sharp is the following:-" When "the copulative naι connects two nouns of the same ❝ case, [viz. nouns (either substantive, or adjective, "or participles) of personal description respecting

office, dignity, affinity, or connection, and attri"butes, properties or qualities good or ill] if the "article, or any of its cases, precedes the first of "the said nouns or participles, and is not repeated "before the second noun or participle, the latter always relates to the same person that is expressed

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"or described by the first noun or participle: i. e. " it denotes a further description of the first named person."And this rule, with such subsequent qualifications as the stress of the occasion calls for, he proceeds to illustrate by examples.

The doctrine of the trinity is pretty generally admitted to be in its wane by critical scholars and rational christians, whose opinions are not specially retained, and whose judgment is not infected by the accommodating fever of a temporary orthodoxy. Indeed, it should seem, from the apparent anxiety and distress of Mr. Sharp and his associates, that these gentlemen considered themselves as physicians, whose assistance and skill were invited to a consultation in articulo mortis. Desperate cases will invite, and sometimes excuse and even justify, desperate applications: but we must, at the same time, confess, without any reproach to the faculty, that it not seldom happens under these circumstances that the patient is passed to "that undis"cover'd country, from whose bourn no traveller "returns ;" and it only remains for his friends to prepare for the funeral.

This is conceived to be the present case, with respect to this theological invention; and the following "Six more Letters" are now published to demonstrate the fact. The author was invited to enter the lists; and the editor, who affects not, like Falstaff, "to be witty in himself," is satisfied with the remaining part of his pretensions, and highly gratified with having " been the cause of wit in another