Sozzini’s doctrine brought down upon its teacher the ill-will of a Cracow mob; his house was wrecked, his books and manuscripts destroyed, his life threatened, and he was driven from the city. Two hundred years later the Socinian Priestley went through precisely the same experience. Wrecking the homes, pillaging the property and injuring the persons of heresiarchs might seem an extraordinary way of identifying oneself with the doctrine of the gentle author of the Sermon on the Mount if history had not made us pretty familiar with such spectacles. At Leeds, as already stated, Priestley published the first of the series of controversial pieces on religion and politics which ceased only with his death. By some strange irony of fate this man, who was by nature one of the most peaceable and peace-loving of men, singularly calm and dispassionate, not prone to disputation or given to wrangling, acquired the reputation of being perhaps the most cantankerous man of his time, who delighted in tilting against established usage, and whose hand, Ishmael-like, was against every man’s. By sheer force of circumstances he became an indefatigable pamphleteer, apparently ever ready to vindicate the cause of civil and religious liberty, to champion the principles and conduct of Dissenters, and to attack what he considered the inveterate prejudices of the prevailing religion of his countrymen. As a controversialist his methods were beyond reproach, and the arts of casuistry were wholly foreign to his character. He was so obviously sincere and fair-minded that he frequently overcame prejudice and disarmed criticism by his unconscious unwritten appeal to the finer instincts of his adversaries. He made many enemies but he won far more friends: the enemies were for the most part men whom history willingly lets die; the friends were of every sect, and some of them were among the chief glories of the eighteenth century. The following characteristic letter to his friend, Miss Aiken, is interesting as illustrating the action of the active, eager mind which, as its owner says, found scope for every kind of exertion at this period of his life:— “Leeds, _13th June 1769_.