is between us, let us repair; and since that common ground is the very spot where the living waters first sprang up, there can be no doubt but that a patient search will bring vital refreshment to us all. We know, brethren, that our mode of belief appears to you under the greatest possible disadvantage, as being, even more than Protestant religion generally, divested of the claims and graces of antiquity. You regard our sect as newly formed from the dispersed elements of other sects which have melted away. You find no mention of our heresy in the records of the middle ages, or only such hints of the doctrines now held by Unitarians as might serve as suggestions of our present opinions: and you therefore naturally conclude that the parts of our faith to which you object are but of yesterday, and consequently the impious inventions of men. If it were so, our present address would indeed be indefensible; our challenge to investigation would be an insult; our appeal to the Scriptures would be blasphemy. But to shake your conviction of this assumed fact, to convince you if possible that the reverse is the fact, is the object of the exposition of our opinions which we now present to you, and of every effort to explain and defend our faith. It is because we believe our religion to be primitive Christianity that we are attached to it as other Christians are to theirs. It is because we feel that we can carry back our opinions to a remoter antiquity than other Churches, that we prefer them; and though they were completely hidden under the unauthorized institutions of the middle ages, we find no difficulty in establishing their identity with those which were diffused by the messengers and under the sanction of God. He who sees a stream gushing forth from the cave, and can trace it back no further than the darkness whence it issues, may reasonably conclude that he stands near its source; but there may be a wayfarer who by observation and experience knows and can attest that this is no subsidiary spring, but the reappearance of a hidden stream, whose source is hallowed and whose current is inexhaustible. We only ask you to listen to our evidence of this, and to admit it or not, as you shall be afterwards disposed.