in p. 16, on the introductory chapters of Matthew and Luke. As Your Honour, to the best of my remembrance, did not make those remarks, and certainly did not lay any stress upon them, I shall not attempt any reply to them. In all other particulars the differences between the authorized report, if I may so term it, and my own, are only verbal, and I retain my own account, because I wish to keep as exactly as possible to the very words which Your Honour spoke.

Such, then, were the reasons which Your Honour assigned for removing from the management of Lady Hewley's charities not only Mr. Wellbeloved, Mr. Kenrick, and Mr. Shore, but all their co-trustees. On these grounds, unless the Judgment be reversed, are the streams of her liberality to be turned into a new channel; and instead of being applied, as was her intention, in aiding and encouraging Christian ministers of sincere piety, though perhaps of various opinions on disputed points of doctrine, the income of her estates is to be made the instrument of a narrow-minded and exclusive bigotry, such as was abhorrent to her nature, to the views of her friends and religious associates, to the principles of the Denomination to which she confessedly belonged, and to the temper and conduct of her trustees up to the present day.

It is not, however, my design to enter upon any of those various topics which occupied the attention of the Vice-Chancellor's Court during four successive-days; I shall confine myself to the charges which directly and specifically affect the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, of which I have been a member from its commencement, and on behalf of which I have for nearly three years officiated as Secretary. It appeared to me that it was impossible to pass over Your Honour's charges without notice. If we are accomplices in a scheme for "misleading the ignorant," and circulate, as a version of the New Testament, a book which its authors have contrived with a view to impose their own doctrines as a creed upon the unlearned reader in the guise of a new and improved translation, we are indeed unworthy of any degree of respect or confidence. A man who could knowingly contribute to such an object would be unfit to be a trustee, not because he is a Unitarian, but because he is a liar and a hypocrite. Far from being worthy to be a ma

nager of a trust instituted for important religious purposes, he would be undeserving of admittance into any society which professes the least regard to truth, or has any principles of honour or propriety.

Impressed with these sentiments, I had no sooner heard Your Honour's Judgment pronounced, and reviewed my short-hand notes, which have enabled me to exhibit the portion of it above introduced, than I determined, after consulting with others, to convene a special meeting of the Committee of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, to consider the propriety of publishing a reply to Your Honour's accusations. They accordingly held their usual monthly meeting on the 6th instant by a special summons, and I was happy to find that they all agreed with me as to the necessity of vindicating themselves and the Society, which has entrusted to them the management of its affairs, from the charges directed against them by Your Honour.

Your Honour is probably not aware of the extensive circulation which has been given to these charges, though you must have reflected that in advancing them you made yourself responsible for them, however widely they might be circulated. Besides the repetition of them in the London daily papers, as a matter of course, and in the pamphlet above referred to, they have been triumphantly exhibited in many of the provincial newspapers; and, as Your Honour extended the guilt from the authors of the "Improved Version" to all the supporters of the Unitarian Association, and from Mr. Wellbeloved, Mr. Kenrick, and Mr. Shore to all their co-trustees, so our opponents have, by the same method of reasoning, extended it from our body of subscribers to the entire mass of professed Unitarians throughout the kingdom, i. e. from less than 800 to perhaps 50,000 persons. As a specimen, beg to quote the introduction of a long article in the 'Liverpool Standard" of December 31, 1833 :

"The decision of the Vice-Chancellor, which we briefly no"ticed in our last, with respect to trust property held by Uni"tarians, involves considerations of the highest importance to "all who have any regard for the preservation, without the pale of the Church, of pure and unadulterated Christianity in England. But for that decision public opinion on this vital “question might have remained dormant for the next, as it has

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"done for the last, fifty years. The spoiler has slowly stolen in-he has almost imperceptibly laid his sacrilegious hands "upon one endowment after another-he has pilfered the holy "relics of the pious and the benevolent-he has marred and mangled the sacred volume, and he has turned the clearest precepts and doctrines of the Scriptures against the humble "and sincere worshiper, not only profaning the divine oracles, "but making a fanciful infidelity a cover for fraud and aggran"dizement. The fraud, however, has at length been discovered "the decision of the learned judge has unmasked the jugglers-the light is no longer hid under a bushel-the imposi"tion is made as clear as day, and the hour of justice and retri"bution is all but come.

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These, we admit, are serious charges to make against the "Unitarians, or any other sect of professing Christians, especially that sect whose ambition is so lofty-who have pompously led the van in the march of reform-who clamour so vehemently against exclusive privileges, and who make war "alike upon the church and all the venerable institutions of the country."

Considering the lamentable extremes to which party violence is so often carried in religious disputes, I am quite ready to admit that Your Honour had, on the late occasion, a difficult and delicate task to perform; and if it appeared to me, as well as to all with whom I conversed on the subject, that from the commencement to the close of the hearing Your Honour manifested not the even impartiality of a judge, but the warmth and keenness of a partisan, I attribute this entirely to orthodox zeal, and even to sincere, though misdirected and misinformed piety, and not to any desire of perverting justice, or any inclination to indulge malignity. At the same time I must say for myself, and for the Officers and Committee of the Unitarian Association, who have requested me to answer Your Honour's animadversions, that we feel ourselves to be deeply injured, and that we trust Your Honour will have the candour to admit that we are right in giving a true account of the purposes for which the "Improved Version" was made, and for which it is now continued in our Catalogue of Books, as well as of the relation in which the subscribers stand to us as their Committee.

Besides the offensive remarks made in commenting on the first chapter of Hebrews, Your Honour pronounced against the "Improved Version" a general and sweeping

sentence of condemnation, by declaring that you did "not "remember to have seen any translation more unsatisfac

tory, more arbitrary, more fanciful, more silly, and more «false than that thing called an Improved Version." It is a satisfaction to us to recollect, that many readers of the "Improved Version," both in the Church of England and out of it, who were not the partisans of Unitarianism, and whose authority and learning were at least equal to Your Honour's, have come to an opposite conclusion.

Not long after the publication of that work in 1808, when the public attention was considerably excited by it, the press teeming with critiques from some of the most able and aspiring theologians of your Church, (Magee, Nares, Rennel, Lawrence, Moysey, &c.,) a learned, instructive, and diligent examination of its merits appeared in the "Eclectic Review," which is a periodical of high reputation, supported by the orthodox Dissenters. Instead of the charges of dishonesty so freely advanced by some of the clergy of the Church of England, this article pronounces the following judgment:

"V. On the general faithfulness and impartiality of the Improved Version.-We have pointed out some important instances in which the spirit of party has perverted the judg"ment of the Primate and his Improvers, so as to have turned "them from that right course which unbiassed translators "would have held. Except in those instances, and a small "number of minor consequence, we find no reason to with"hold the praise due to integrity and fidelity in the general "execution of the work."-Eclectic Review for 1809, pp. 341, 342.

This valuable critique was written by Dr. John Pye Smith, a gentleman whose learning and talents recommend him to all his friends not more than his integrity, his candour, and his kindness; whose orthodoxy, I believe, has never been questioned; who is one of the most distinguished writers against Unitarianism; who holds a high and very responsible situation in the Independent Denomination, to which he belongs; and who was one of the witnesses on whom the plaintiffs in the present case of the Attorney General v. Shore, placed their chief reliance.

But Your Honour may possibly be disposed to say, that Dr. J. P. Smith's opinion of the merits of the "Improved

Version" is of little worth, because he is a Dissenter: he had not the privilege of being educated at Oxford or Cambridge.

Allow me, then, to lay before you the testimonies of some of the most learned and able theologians of your own Church.

In the "Anecdotes of the life of Richard Watson, writ"ten by himself at different intervals, and revised in 1814," (Vol. II. p. 351, 8vo. Edit.,) we find that he has inserted à letter, the occasion of which he mentions in the following terms:

"Letter to the Duke of Grafton, June 28, 1808, on his "having sent me a very valuable book."

In returning thanks for the "Improved Version of the "New Testament," the writer says, "he has looked into "it with care:" and near the end he observes, "I give "due praise to the Committee for their introduction to "this work; it is written with the sincerity becoming a "Christian, and with the erudition becoming a translator " and a commentator on so important a book." Throughout the letter he speaks of the work in no other terms than those of respect. In the course of the late hearing, Your Honour was several times reminded, that the writer who gives this favourable judgment was a Bishop of the Church of England, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge.

I am happy to add the testimony of another Bishop of your Church, who, though not distinguished as an author, has been always esteemed at least equal to Watson in taste, in judgment, and in erudition. Mr. Williams, of Mansfield, has lately published " Memoirs of the late Rev. "Thomas Belsham," who was the principal, if not the sole author of that revision of Archbishop Newcome which is called the "Improved Version," and to which the present discussion relates. At p. 591, we find the following letter from the Right Rev. William Bennet, D.D., the late Bishop of Cloyne:

“11, Montague Square, March 6, 1809. "To the Rev. T. Belsham.

"I have been prevented from acknowledging before this "time your very obliging present, by not accurately knowing "how to direct to you; but I now beg you to accept my best