footsteps in whatever direction they appeared to lead.

This refusal to submit to shackles on inquiry, or to impose them on others, is so obviously suggested by a rational and well-founded confidence in the grounds and evidence of our opinions, that we are at a loss to understand how a different procedure can be ascribed to any thing else than a secret misgiving that all is not right. Truth, when fairly and impartially examined, must always have the advantage over error; and those who cannot trust their pupils to think and inquire for themselves, without first demanding pledges, calling for a confession of faith, and subjecting the youthful mind to all the trammels of human authority, can hardly wonder that, notwithstanding the stress they lay on their favourite doctrines, as fundamental principles of religion, and even essential to salvation, we should suspect them of not being so fully assured as they profess to be of the foundation on which they stand. Their conduct seems to indicate a doubt in their own minds as to the conclusion which an enlightened inquirer will be likely to adopt, who has no other motive or principle to guide him but an attachment to the truth, wherever it may be found.

The academical institutions connected with Dissenters of the Presbyterian and General Baptist denominations being chiefly supported by those individuals who are known to be zealously attached to Unitarian sentiments, naturally receive this name from the public, though they have rarely assumed it themselves. Their most judicious friends do not wish to see them avowedly identified with any sect or party; and would

rather not give them a title which might seem to imply a disposition in their conductors to promote the interests of unitarianism in preference to those of truth. We value and pursue the former, only because we believe it to be an important portion of the latter, which we seek for and embrace, whatever form it may appear to assume; satisfied that those who inquire after it with diligence, candour, and impartiality, have the best prospect of being protected from pernicious error, and that nothing which is really erroneous can be permanently beneficial to the best interests of mankind. The Unitarians claim the merit of being the only party who have acted uniformly and consistently on this just and enlightened principle. Some few of the academies established, partially at least, under the auspices of other sects, have, it is true, for awhile, and to a certain extent, followed the same plan. Among these honourable exceptions was that of Doddridge, at Northampton, and its successor at Daventry, under the conduct of Ashworth, Robins, and Belsham. But it is certainly not a little remarkable, that there is scarcely an instance of this kind which has not occasioned a considerable falling away from the rigour of genuine Calvinism, even among those who have remained nominally in the ranks of orthodoxy; while no small portion of the ingenuous youth, encouraged, or at least permitted, to examine both sides, and judge for themselves, have embraced some form of unitarianism. This being the case, we cannot much wonder that the present patrons of such institutions should have deserted the liberal plan of their predecessors, by drawing much closer and

A a

tighter than formerly the bonds of sectarian dis

tinction.

It is partly in consequence of this candid and liberal method, that we find among those who have, from time to time, undertaken the conduct of theological education in our academies, a large proportion of the most eminent and distinguished men, to whose names we point as the brightest ornaments of the body to which they belonged. Being equally free with their pupils from all obligation to maintain, at any rate, the peculiar tenets of a sect, except when recommended by evidence which approved itself to their own minds, they have never given way to the persuasion that their opinions were made up and incapable of further change. While teaching others, they have not abandoned the character of learners; keeping their minds at all times open to conviction, prepared, and at perfect liberty, to alter and modify their views on every subject as God should give light. Some of these worthies are well known to the public by their valuable writings; while others, who are less distinguished in this way, are still deserving of honourable mention, not merely from the credit they have reflected on the opinions they espoused, but from the influence, by no means inconsiderable, which they exercised on the progress of knowledge, as well as on the development and general diffusion of those more just and rational modes of investigation which are most likely to conduct the professed inquirer after truth to what ought to be the only object of his search. The name of Hallet has already been mentioned, as mainly instrumental to the progress of free inquiry and of liberal opinions,

by the just and impartial plan which he adopted in an academical institution at Exeter; and we now propose to introduce under the present title a few particulars of several other excellent men who have laboured, and not altogether without success, in the same good cause.

Of several of the theological tutors in our earlier academies it is not, indeed, easy at this distance of time to ascertain the precise opinions on controverted points, especially when (as is the case in many instances) they did not receive a permanent form, through the intervention of the press, but were confined, for the most part, to the lecture-room or the pulpit. This uncertainty is to be regretted for various reasons; but it is, perhaps, a natural consequence of that liberality in their conduct as teachers which has already been noticed with commendation. Even where their own opinions were most decided, they were naturally averse to assume before their pupils the character of a partizan; and hence they may sometimes have been led even into the opposite extreme, by studiously concealing their own private opinions, while endeavouring to present fairly and impartially the arguments on both sides as advanced by others. When, however, it appears that a large portion of the students educated in any institution, and those the most distinguished for talents and character, agreed in adopting religious opinions of a certain class, it seems reasonable to conclude that this was the prevailing tendency of the instructions they received, influenced, perhaps unconsciously, by the private opinions of the instructor.

Thus we find that Dr. THOMAS DIXON, who in the year 1710, and for several years afterwards conducted an academy at Whitehaven, was the preceptor of Taylor of Norwich, Benson, Rotheram, Winder of Liverpool, and several others well known in the succeeding age as decided Arians, we seem authorized to infer that he had himself a leaning towards the same principles. Little is known (at least we have not been able to meet with any record) of his early history. In 1719 he quitted Whitehaven to settle at Bolton in Lancashire, where he remained till his death, in 1733. It is not known that any production of his found its way before the public. His son, Mr. Thomas Dixon, was educated under the care of Dr. Rotheram, at Kendal, and in 1751 settled at Bolton, on the decease of his father's successor, Mr. Buck. Here he died in 1754, at the early age of thirty-three; non annis, sed laude plenus, according to the inscription on his monument in Bolton Chapel. Some years after his death an excellent piece of Scripture criticism was published from his papers, entitled "The Sovereignty of the Divine Administrations vindicated; or a rational Account (without the intervention of the Devil or of Demons) of our blessed Saviour's Temptation, of the possessed at Capernaum, and of the demoniac at Gadara."

His

view of the temptation nearly coincides with that since proposed by Mr. Cappe, representing it as a figurative account of the train of reflections which naturally suggested themselves to our Saviour's own mind, arising from his peculiar situation.