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