was marred by imperfect utterance he attained to considerable influence in public address.  No Unitarian leader hitherto has displayed more activity, and few, if any, have possessed greater controversial ability than he.  His opinions, indeed, were in some respects peculiar to himself; he called himself a Socinian, but it was with a difference, and no Unitarian to-day would endorse some of his main positions.  But his work for the cause was invaluable, and his personal character is held in the highest esteem.  Originally he would have preferred that the Unitarians should remain as a ‘liberal leaven’ in the churches; eventually he became the chief organizer of Unitarian worship and propaganda.

The first ‘Unitarian Church,’ however, was due to a clergyman, Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808).  After long and arduous efforts to secure relaxation from the doctrinal subscription imposed on the clergy, Lindsey resigned his living at Catterick, in 1773, facing poverty and hardship with a courage that elicited warm commendations, though few were found to imitate the example.  In spite of the terrors of the law, now becoming a dead letter, he opened a Unitarian chapel in Essex Street, London, in 1774.  The service was on the episcopal model, but with a liturgy adapted to ‘the worship of the Father only.’  This feature has been claimed to be the distinctive characteristic of modern Unitarianism.  It will be remembered that Socinus inculcated a sort of subordinate worship of Christ, and the Arians of course held to the same practice, Humanitarianism, the view that Jesus Christ was truly a man and in no sense a deity, obviously made it impossible to offer him the adoration due to God alone.  This view had been slowly spreading since the days of Lardner; Priestley, Lindsey, and the active men of the party generally shared it.  There were exceptions still, however. Dr. Richard Price (1723-91), a London Presbyterian divine of great eminence, remembered as one of the founders of actuarial science, held by his Arianism to the last; this did not prevent him from lending a hand in the organization of the Unitarian forces, but there was for a time some difficulty on the subject.  The more ardent professors of the new doctrine of ‘the sole worship of the Father’ were for excluding the Arians from fellowship, and one of the societies then formed actually adhered to a rather offensive formula on the subject till about 1830.

A considerable number of liberal Churchmen of the laity, including some of rank, supported Lindsey’s movement.  An indication of changing moods is given in the fact that in 1770 an Act was passed permitting the Dissenting ministers to preach provided that they made a declaration of belief in the Scriptures as containing the revealed will of God.  This was considered by many a welcome relief from the requirement of the Toleration Act that the minister must subscribe to the doctrinal articles of the established Church,