Again, it must be borne in mind that then, as generally, there were men whose thoughts ran ahead of those of the majority.  Priestley, for example, while adhering to the idea that the Christian revelation had been guaranteed by miracles, had abandoned belief in the Virgin birth as early as 1784, and went so far as to maintain that Jesus was not impeccable and had certainly entertained erroneous ideas about demoniacal possession.  Probably there were very few who had arrived at these conclusions even thirty years later; some Unitarians repudiated them at a much later period.  The miraculous element, however, was formerly accepted by all.  So was the authority of Scripture, though here again men like Priestley were ahead of the rest in bringing to the study of the Bible the principles of historical criticism. Thomas Belsham (1750-1829), a typical Unitarian scholar and divine at this period, was one of several who carried forward the science of Biblical interpretation, and by the use of a vigorous and fearless intellect anticipated views of Genesis and the Pentateuch which did not find general acceptance till much later.

It is customary for Unitarians themselves to-day to look back on these years of early zeal and controversy with but a qualified sympathy, so much was still cherished in the body as a whole that is no longer tenable, and again so much that was undreamed then is indispensable to modern thought.  One of the greatest of Unitarians, Dr. Martineau, whose important share in the development of their ideas and life must be considered farther on, referred in a discourse of about forty years ago to three distinct stages in Unitarian theology.  First, he pointed to the significance of the struggle for the principle of ’Unity in the Divine causation,’ as against a doctrine which, as Unitarians maintain, endeavours in vain by words to prevent a triplicity of ‘Persons’ from sliding into a group of three Divine Beings.  This struggle marks in great part the whole track by which the reader has come thus far in the present story.  The second stage, according to Dr. Martineau, is that in which the Conscience of Man is emphasized, in virtue of the belief in a real responsibility and an actual power to choose the right or the wrong.  This ‘Religion of Conscience’ he sees especially illustrated in the principles enunciated and the work accomplished by Channing; perhaps it would be fair to say that many who had preceded the American leader were imbued with a measure of his wisdom when they insisted, as we have seen, on the adaptability of the pure Gospel message to the needs and understanding of men everywhere, and declared that its aim was ’to make men good and keep them so.’  The third stage, which Dr. Martineau considered to be fully begun at the time of his sermon (1869), is that of the ‘Religion of the Spirit,’ in which the ideas of the Divine Sovereignty and the Human Duty are rounded into vital beauty and completeness by the idea of the actual relation of Man to God as a Son to a Father.