What interest or value can these disputations have for beings whose main business in this world is, in the prospect of a coming world, to conform their souls to the image of the heavenly model, to Jesus the pattern of citizenship in the new Heavens and the new Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness! “Whilst we are wrangling here in the dark,” says Baxter, “_we are dying_, and passing to the world that will decide all our Controversies, and the safest passage thither is by peaceable holiness.” Whilst we are struggling for points, of which we know little or nothing, hearts are dead or perishing. Whilst we are battling for our conceits, we are all of us unsound within, not right with God, and falling away from the true service of our great master. Whilst proclaiming in Sectarian eagerness, “Lo, Christ is here,” and “Lo, Christ is _not_ there,”—none of us are sitting at his feet, and submitting our souls and passions to his yoke. Whilst we are falling out by the way, in vain his heavenly invitation is addressed to our unquiet hearts—“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Footnote 1: See “A Plea for Unitarian Dissenters,” pp. 88-9, published in 1813, by the Rev. Robert Aspland, from whom we take the exposure of this forgery now brought forth again; for in Trinitarian Controversy falsehood seems immortal, and there is no work for us modern advocates, except to “slay the slain.” Footnote 2: “There is internal evidence of its being written in the way of banter. No subscription appears to it, and no person is named as concerned in it, but a Monsieur Verze, a Frenchman, who might be employed as an _agent_, and yet not be a ‘Socinian’ agent.”—ASPLAND. Footnote 3: Plea for Unitarian Dissenters, p. 137. “My Lords, if your Lordships attended to the manner in which that quotation is introduced into Leslie, you might see that it bore internal evidence of being something of the nature of a _jeu d’esprit_.... My Lords, this Leslie was a general maligner.... I really think that this is raking into a dunghill to produce this address to the Ambassador of the Emperor of Morocco.”—_The Attorney-General before_ THE HOUSE OF LORDS _in the Lady Hewley Appeal_, June 28th, 1839. Footnote 4: “He therefore that will be saved, must thus _think_ of the Trinity.”—_Athanasian Creed._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS. GENERAL PREFACE. PUBLIC CORRESPONDENCE. _LECTURE I._ THE PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE UNITARIAN CONTROVERSY. _BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM._