The Protestant Reformation has its Principle and its Method. Its Principle is Salvation by Faith, not by Sacraments. Its Method is Private Judgment, not Church Authority. But private judgment generates authority; authority, first legitimate, that of knowledge, grows into the illegitimate authority of prescription, calling itself Orthodoxy. Then Private Judgment comes forth again to criticise and reform. It thus becomes the duty of each individual to judge the Church; and out of innumerable individual judgments the insight of the Church is kept living and progressive. We contribute one such private judgment; not, we trust, in conceit, but in the hope of provoking other minds to further examinations. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. § 1. Object and Character of this Book. The peculiarity of the book now offered to the religious public by the government of the American Unitarian Association, is this—that it is an honest attempt to find and state the truth contained in the doctrines of their opponents. It is, perhaps, something new for an association established to defend certain theological opinions, and baptized with a special theological name, to publish a work intended to do justice to hostile theories. The too usual course of each sect has been, through all its organs, to attack, denounce, undervalue, and vilify the positions taken by its antagonists. This has been considered as only an honest zeal for truth. The consequence has been, that no department of literature has been so unchristian in its tone and temper as that of sectarian controversy. Political journals heap abuse on their opponents, in the interest of their party. But though more noisy than the theological partisans, they are by no means so cold, hard, or unrelenting. Party spirit, compared with sectarian spirit, seems rather mild.(1) It is true that theologians do not now use in controversy the epithets which were formerly universal. We have grown more civil in our language than were our fathers. It is also true that we often meet with theological discussions conducted in a spirit of justice towards one’s opponents.(2) But to say, “Fas est ab hoste _doceri_,” is a step as yet beyond the ability of most controversialists. To admit that your antagonist may have seen some truth not visible to yourself, and to read his work in this sense,—in order to learn, and not merely to confute,—is not yet common.