AC. IMP. PETROP. R. PARIS. HOLM. TAURIN, ITAL, HARLEM, AUREL. WITH NOTES BY THE EDITOR. TO WHICH IS ANNEXED, AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING A REVIEW OF THE CONTROVERSY, IN FOUR LETTERS TO THE BISHOPS, BY THE SAME Author, PRINTED BY RICHARD AND ARTHUR TAYLOR, SHOE LANE, FOR THE LONDON UNITARIAN SOCIETY; AND SOLD BY J. JOHNSON AND CO., ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, BT214 1815 Lately published, The CLAIMS of Dr. PRIESTLEY in the CONTROVERSY with Bishop HORSLEY RESTATED and VINDICATED, in Reply to the Animadversions of the Rev. Heneage Horsley, Prebendary of St. Asaph, annexed to the late Republication of his Father's Tracts. By THOMAS BELSHAM. The PROGRESS of INTELLECTUAL, MORAL, and RELIGIOUS IMPROVEMENT during the present Reign, represented in a DISCOURSE delivered before the Unitarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, at Essex-Street Chapel, on Thursday, March 31, 1814, in Commemoration of the Repeal of the Penal Laws against the Impugners of the Doctrine of the Trinity. To which is annexed AN APPENDIX, containing a SUMMARY REVIEW of a Publication of the Lord BISHOP of ST. DAVID'S, entitled "A Brief Memorial, on the Repeal of the 9 and 10 William III. &c." BY THOMAS BelSHAM, Minister of the Chapel, 275358 PREFACE. It was the expressed intention of Dr. Priestley in his preface to the Defences of Unitarianism for the years 1788 and 1789, in imitation of his learned opponent Bishop Horsley, to "reprint his Tracts in controversy with that prelate, and to notice any thing which he might think deserving of it, concluding the whole with a serious address to the bishops and to the legislature." This intention, however, not having been fulfilled while Dr. Priestley was living, the publication would probably never have taken place, had it not been for the unfounded and indecent exultation of Dr. Horsley's partisans, who, evidently without knowing any thing of the state of the controversy, kept continually claiming the victory for their chief, and representing Dr. Priestley as a baffled and vanquished adversary. This circumstance in duced the Editor of this publication to annex in an Appendix to the first part of his Calm Inquiry into the Scripture Doctrine concerning the Person of Christ, a brief review of the controversy between Dr. Priestley and Dr. Horsley, in order to show how little foundation there was for the bishop's partisans to boast of their chieftain's triumph, and how manifestly and decidedly in all material points. victory had declared herself on the side of Dr. Priestley. The reverend Heneage Horsley, Prebendary of St. Asaph, and son of the late bishop, piously solicitous for his father's reputation, with more zeal than discretion stepped forward to resist the attempt of the Calm Inquirer to rectify the judgement of the public, and republished his Father's Tracts, with an adulatory Dedication to the Prince Regent, an acrimonious Introduction bitterly inveighing against the Unitarians, and a laboured Appendix, in which, to the best of his ability, he endeavours to falsify the representation and to invalidate the arguments of the Calm Inquirer. The reverend Prebendary, though not deficient in parts and learning, was totally unacquainted with the subject upon which he professed to write: and the principal advantage resulting from this publication was, that it gave occasion to the Calm Inquirer to restate the claims of Dr. Priestley to victory in his controversy with Bishop Horsley, and to place them in a light which it is presumed cannot fail to satisfy every impartial judge. As this defence of Dr. Priestley in some degree revived the attention of the public to the subject, it was thought desirable by many of the friends of freedom of inquiry, and particularly by the admirers of Dr. Priestley, that this learned and able champion of the primitive faith should be allowed an opportunity of pleading his own cause by the republication of his Tracts in controversy with Dr. Horsley, that so, those readers who interested themselves in the question, might be supplied with the means of judging for themselves, to which of |