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    removed from the true spirit of Christian charity ; his pretended liberality as scarcely extending to those who renounce the favourite

    dogmas of his creed . The revised edition , he contends , Ought to have been marked in the title-page as exclusively designed for the use of Unitarians , as if it had been necessary to restrict its circulation to believers of one

    small though highly respectable class ; whose chief ground of dissent is altogether foreign to the question : Mr . Melmoth having taken the Trinitarian hypothesis

    for granted , —the present editor regarding it as decidedly disproved . I was very far from intending to accuse your correspondent of wit , although I certainly did conceive that there was art , or rather arti *

    fice , in his conduct , in holding out to the public as clandestine , what had been most explicitly avowed . He contends , indeed , that pre ^ faces are seldom read , and that

    the present may be omitted in some subsequent edition ^ But , surely , Mr . Urban , the man who neglects the ready means of information has no right to complain of being deceived ; and an editor

    who openly avows his object , ought not to be accused of concealment , because that avowal may be afterwards withdrawn . When the preface is actually omitted in the work before us , plain dealers may more properly complain .

    If , however ., a * in the first edition of Dr . Paley ' s Sermons ^ printed for private circulation among his late parishioners at Bishop Wearmouth , an important passage had been silently withdrawn , when there was little probability of detection , liriighthaye

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    acquiesced in attributing the » t « - naeuvre to stratagem and stealth . Whatever motives might have led to this curious omission of a passage so strikingly characteristic of the author ' s liberality , his-family gave no sanction to the deceit ; as in the third edition , the first actually printed under their auspices , it was duly restored to its place . *

    But as the first edition was re . vised by a clergyman of the Church of England , assisted , it is said , by a strictly orthodox adviser , and was dedicated to a prelate of that establishment , the Plain Dealer may see no reason

    to object ; or may probably regard the omission as nothing to the purpose , like what 1 have al * ready stated about the Mass Rook * and the Bishop of Elphin . Yet I conceive , Mr . Urban , that if

    such omissions in arty ; one c $ , se ate culpable , they must be so in all j more especially where the proceeding is altogether clandestine * I have quoted three precedents from the clergy of the established

    church , whose repeated practice 1 have shewn fully sanctions the measure which my opponent has presumed to arraign . These cas « es , I contend , are strictly to the point ; unless your correspondent can make out , that the leaders of

    one sect alone are entitled to a patent for concealment , stealth and stratagem ; to hold out false lights , and to sail under false colours ; whilst those who , dispu < - ting their tenets , imitate their conduct , may be lawfully assailed

    * Compare the remarks on levity which appear in the , first , with thfc corresponding paragraphs in the third of any subsequent edition .

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    468 MelntotKs Importance of a Religious Life .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1814, page 468, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2443/page/20/