With this congregation I greatly improved my plan of catechizing and lecturing, and my classes have been well attended. I have also introduced the custom of expounding the scriptures as I read them, which I had never done before, but which I would earnestly recommend to all ministers. My time being much taken up with my philosophical and other studies, I agreed with the congregation to leave the business of baptizing, and visiting the sick, to Mr. Blyth, and to confine my services to the Sundays. I have been minister here between seven and eight years, without any interruption of my happiness; and for this I am sensible I am in a great measure indebted to the friendship of Mr. Russell. Here I have never long intermitted my philosophical pursuits, and I have published two volumes of experiments, besides communications to the Royal Society. In theology I have completed my friendly controversy with the Bishop of Waterford on the duration of Christ’s ministry, I have published a variety of single sermons, which, with the addition of a few others, I have lately collected, and published in one volume, and I am now engaged in a controversy of great extent, and which promises to be of considerable consequence, relating to the person of Christ. This was occasioned by my _History of the Corruptions of Christianity_, which I composed and published presently after my settlement at Birmingham, the first section of which being rudely attacked in the Monthly Review,[19] then by Dr. Horsely, and afterwards by Mr. Howes, and other particular opponents, I undertook to collect from the original writers the state of opinions on the subject in the age succeeding that of the apostles, and I have published the result of my investigation in my _History of early opinions concerning Jesus Christ_, in four volumes octavo. This work has brought me more antagonists, and I now write a pamphlet annually in defence of the unitarian doctrine against all my opponents. [19] Written by Mr. Badcock. Mr. Badcock was originally a dissenting minister. He came to pay his respects to my father at Calne, at which time he agreed with him upon most subjects. He afterwards found reason to change his opinions, or at least his conduct, connecting himself with the Clergy of the Church of England, and became my father’s bitter enemy. My only Arian antagonist is Dr. Price, with whom the discussion of the question has proceeded with perfect amity. But no Arian has as yet appeared upon the ground to which I wish to confine the controversy, viz. the state of opinions in the primitive times, as one means of collecting what was the doctrine of the apostles, and the true sense of scripture on the subject.