tish and Foreign Unitarian Association
was formed, as has been said, in 1825.

In order to understand fairly the scope and spirit of that earlier
Unitarian period, thus at last organized in full legal recognition,
though still suffering from the prejudice inevitably created by more
than a century of legal condemnation, a few salient points should be
kept in view. First, the heterogeneous elements in the 'body,' if it
could be called such, were a source of weakness in regard to united
action. Instead of belonging, as their American brethren did, to one
ecclesiastical group, and that the dominant one, the English Unitarians
included Dissenters of different tendencies and traditions, with a few
recruits from the State Church. The 'Presbyterian' congregations, as
they were not very strictly called, were the backbone of the 'body';
many of these, however, were very weak, and in the course of a few
decades some were destined to follow those which had died out in the
eighteenth century. Converts not infrequently lent new force in the
pulpit, but at the risk of substituting an eager missionary spirit for
the usual staid decorum of the old families. In these the ideals of
breadth, simplicity, and moral excellence were stronger than the desire,
natural in a convert, to win the world to one's opinion.

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 custom