the purpose of propagating Trinitarian
doctrine was grossly dishonest. One very eminent person (The Bishop
of London.) has gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannot
pretend to any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and he
proves his point thus:--Till the year 1779, he says, no dissenting
teacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless he
subscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirm
the Athanasian doctrine. It is evident that no honest Unitarian can
subscribe those articles. The inference is, that the persons who
preached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have been either
Trinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neither
Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the great
prelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in the
history of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church of
which he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779,
the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers
to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articles
had almost become obsolete. Indeed, that clause had never been rigidly
enforced. From the very first there were some dissenting ministers who
refused to subscribe, and yet continued to preach. Calany was one; and
he was not molested. And if this could be done in the year in which the
Toleration Act passed, we may easily believe that, at a later period,
the law would not have been very strictly observed. New brooms, as
the vulgar proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidly
enforced as a statute just made. But, Sir, so long ago as the year 1711,
the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject were modified. In
that year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord Nottingham, with whom
they had coalesced against Lord Oxford, consented to let the Occasional
Conformity Bill pass; but they insisted on inserting in the bill a
clause which was meant to propitiate the dissenters. By this clause
it was enacted that, if an information were laid against a dissenting
minister for having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendant
might, by subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior to
the judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on the
informer. The House will easily believe that, when such was the state of
the law, informers were not numerous. Indeed, during the discussions of
1773