In the same spirit of neither honourable nor yet formidable policy, is the attempt (p. xvii.) to identify Mahometanism and Unitarianism, by the help of a literary forgery, which even if it was authentic, would prove nothing except that the early Unitarians of England, in the reign of Charles the Second, amid the corruptions of Christianity, rejoiced in the testimony borne by Mahometanism to the great doctrine of revealed religion, the Unity of God. It is said that there is, among the MSS. in the Lambeth Library, a “Socinian Epistle (to this effect) to Ameth Ben Ameth, Ambassador from the Emperor of Morocco to Charles II.” Leslie, in the Preface to his “Socinian Controversy Discussed,” was the first who made use of this supposed letter, and not without the suspicion, that he had first forged it himself.[1] “I will here,” says Leslie, “present the reader with a rarity, which I take to be so, because of the difficulty I had to obtain it.” “It is in my mind,” says Mr. Aspland, “decisive of the question, that immediately after Leslie had published the Epistle, Emlyn, who answered the tract to which it was prefixed, stated it as his belief, upon inquiry, that no such epistle had ever been presented by any one ‘deputed’ from the Unitarians, and insinuated that no credit was to be given to a document published by Leslie, unless vouched by some other authority than his own; and that Leslie, in replying to this answer, though he dwells, for pages, upon the passages before and after this, relating to the epistle, says not a syllable about his ‘rarity’ or in defence of his veracity.” “Leslie,” continues Mr. Aspland, “is convicted (by Emlyn) of quoting passages from Archbishop Tillotson’s Sermons, which had been published in the name of their eminent author, as if they were the work of an avowed ‘Socinian.’ And if you will consult his reply, you will find this theological braggart completely humbled, and reduced to the necessity of using the wretched plea, that he had omitted the name of the ‘great Prelate,’ out of _tenderness_.—Is it uncharitable to suspect, under all these circumstances, that he who was proved to have resorted to one trick, might have had recourse to another?” “As to your ‘rarity,’” says Emlyn in his reply to Leslie, “of the address to the _Morocco_ ambassador, I see not what it amounts to, more than a complaint of the corruption of the Christian faith, in the article of one God, which the _Mahometans_ have kept, by consent of all sides. Yet, forasmuch as I can learn nothing from any _Unitarians_ of any such address from them, nor do you produce any subscribers’ names,[2] I conclude no such address was ever made, by any _deputed_ from them, whatever any single person might do. I suppose you conclude from the matter of it, that it must be from some _Unitarian_, and perhaps so; yet you may remember that so you concluded from the matter of Dr. _Tillotson’s_ Sermons, that they were a _Socinian’s_.”[3]