Scotland, when they condemned the doctrines of Mr. M'Lean and Mr. Campbell, and thrust out their promulgators to wander where they listed. As might have been expected, both these individuals have since been preaching at various places, to crowds in the open air. The very means taken for the suppression, have led to the wider dissemination of the condemned doctrines. Mr. Campbell preached his farewell sermon to his parishioners of Row, on Sunday evening, 14th August. The meeting was held in a field near Helensburgh. Between two thousand and three thousand persons assembled. He spoke nearly three hours; the subject the parable of the sower, Luke viii. 4-16. August 21, was appointed for the Sacrament at Greenock. The clergy there, it is said, warned their congregations, that if they went to hear the farewell sermon of Mr. Campbell, they would be deprived of church privileges. The Rev. Cunningham, It as might be expected, distinguished himself on the occasion. is affirmed, that in the course of his service on the 14th August, he said to his congregation, there were many things that would debar from the Sacrament, such as hearing heretical teachers, and more particularly those who inculcated doctrines condemned by the General Assembly. Elders, it is said, were stationed on the Quay, to mark those who, notwithstanding the Bull of the Presbyters of the Protestant Kirk of Scotland, dared to cross the Clyde to listen to the proscribed heretic. Two hundred and fifty persons went from Greenock, but to what denominations belonging, we know not. Were any of that number members of Mr. Cunningham's church, and if so, would he dare to put his threat into execution? If he could, and if this be law according to the Church of Scotland, then wherein does she differ from the Church of Rome? In both cases, tyranny is triumphant, and the people are slaves. And will they continue to hug their chains, and boast of their Protestantism, and scowl at the Catholic, and misrepresent the Unitarian, and advocate British Reformation Societies-nay, and call themselves Reformers, and exult in the prospect of political freedom? It may be so; for such anomalies are not uncommon in this Protestant professing land. But let them remember, that it is consistency alone which merits respect; and that a day is approaching, when Presbyter and Priest, heretic and unbeliever, the people and their ministers, will be summoned before a tribunal, where integrity, piety, and benevolence alone shall be rewarded. WE have great pleasure in stating, that the Rev. B. T. Stannus, late Lecturer on Eloquence in the Belfast Academical Institution, has received a unanimous invitation from the Congregation of Unitarian Christians in Edinburgh, to become their Minister; and that he entered on the duties of his situation on the 14th August. May every blessing attend his labours. CHRISTIAN PIONEER. No. 62. OCTOBER, 1831. Vol. VI. Unitarian Worthies, No. 9.-Sir Isaac Newton. "Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night, THE name of Sir Isaac Newton has, by general consent, been placed at the head of those great men who have been the ornaments of their species. He was born at Woolsthorpe, a hamlet in the parish of Colsterworth in Lincolnshire, about six miles south of Grantham, on the 25th December 1642; exactly one year after Galileo died. He was a posthumous child, and when ushered into the world, was of so diminutive a size, and seemed of so perishable a frame, as to excite the greatest fears for his survival. Providence, however, had destined that the frail tenement should enjoy a vigorous maturity, and survive even the average term of human existence. When he had reached his twelfth year, he was sent to the public school at Grantham, and boarded at the house of Mr. Clark, an apothecary in that town. He was very inattentive to his studies, and consequently low in the school. The boy, however, who was above him, having one day given him a severe kick upon his stomach, Isaac laboured incessantly till he got above him in the school; and from that time he continued to rise till he was the head boy. During the hours of play, his mind was engrossed with mechanical contrivances; either in imitation of something which he had seen, or in execution of some original conception of his own. The principal pieces of mechanism which he thus constructed, were, a wind-mill, a water-clock, and a carriage put in motion by the person who sat in it. His mother designed to make him a farmer; but as he was negligent of business, and intent on his studies, more particularly the mathematics, he was sent to Cambridge University. Here he began that course of study which led, in the exercise of those splendid powers with which he was endowed, to those discoveries by which his name is immortalized. Into a detail of these, it is not our design to enter. They are briefly stated in the epitaph inscribed E on the monument erected to his memory, in Westminster Abbey; of which the following is a literal translation: Here lies SIR ISAAC NEWTON, Knight, Who, by a vigour of mind almost supernatural, The motions and figures of the Planets, The different refrangibilities of the rays of light, That there has existed such and so great An ornament of Human Nature. Born 25th Dec. 1642. Died 20th March, 1727. The theological studies of Sir Isaac Newton will ever be regarded as one of the most interesting features in his life. That he, who among all the individuals of his species, possessed the highest intellectual powers, was not only a learned and profound divine, but a firm believer in the Christian religion, is one of the proudest triumphs of the Christian faith. Nor, when we consider the power of mind with which he was gifted, and the devotedness of attention that he paid to the investigation of the Scriptures, can we fail to make a triumphant reference to Sir Isaac Newton as a believer in the Unity-una subsistentia, one subsistence, as he himself terms it-to the simple Unity of the God and Father of Jesus Christ. We will not, however, allow our admiration to conceal our regret, that he did not openly avow and defend the great and essential doctrine, that God is not three, but one. And, though we can understand how the timidity of his disposition, in connection with the severe penalties to which deniers of the Trinity were in his day liable, prevented his avowing the truth, and how also these circumstances extenuate his fault; yet we cannot hold him blameless, nor acquit those who, in more auspicious times, plead his example as their excuse. The apostles of infidelity on the continent, have spoken in disparaging terms of the theological pursuits of Newton, as they did of those of Priestley; and exaggerating a disaffection of the mind, under which he at one time suffered, have ascribed them to mental alienation, not to say insanity. The logical acuteness, the varied erudition, and the absolute freedom from all prejudice, which shone throughout the theological writings of Newton, might have protected them from the charge of having been written in his old age, and at a time when a failure of mind was supposed to have unfitted him for his mathematical investigations. But it is fortunate for his reputation, as well as for the interests of Christianity and Unitarianism, that all these insinuations have been proved to be groundless; and that there exists the most irrefragable evidence, that all the theological writings of Newton were composed in the vigour of his life, and before the crisis of that bodily disorder which is falsely supposed to have affected his reason. Next to his four letters to Dr. Bentley, which will repay the most attentive perusal by the philosopher as well as the divine, his "Historical account of two notable corruptions of Scripture," recently republished by the British and Foreign Unitarian Association, are perhaps the most valuable of his theological writings. This work seems to have been a very early production of our worthy, and the history of it serves to exemplify what we have hinted about bis timidity. It was written in the form of a letter to Mr. Locke, and at that time Sir Isaac Newton seems to have been desirous of its publication. Afraid, however, of being led into controversy on divinity, as, much to his regret, he had been in scientific questions, and dreading the intolerance to which he might be exposed, he requested Mr. Locke, who meditated a voyage to Holland, to get it translated into French and published on the continent. Having abandoned his design of visiting Holland, Locke transmitted the manuscript, without Newton's name, to his learned friend M. Le Clerc, in Holland. Le Clerc delayed, for a long time, to take any steps regarding its publication; but at length he announced to Locke his intention of publishing the tract in Latin. When this was communicated to Sir Isaac, he became alarmed at the risk of detection, and resolved to stop the publication of his manuscript. It was deposited, accordingly, in the library of the Remonstrants, where it was afterwards found, and published at London in 1754,-twenty-seven years after the writer's decease. This celebrated treatise shows, that the proof of the Trinity, as it is thought, which is found in our common Bibles at 1 John v. 7, is a gross corruption of the Scripture, which had its origin among the Latins, and consisted at first of an explanation set in the margin, and afterwards introduced into the text. While the Latin Church was corrupting the preceding text, the Greek Church was corrupting Paul's 1st Epistle to Timothy iii. 16. "Great is the mystery of godliness-God manifest in the flesh." According to Sir Isaac Newton, this was effected by changing one letter into another and a similar one, which is an abbreviation for God; and after proving this by a learned and ingenious examination of ancient manuscripts, he concludes that the reading should bewho (viz. our Saviour) was manifest in the flesh. This treatise, if there were no other evidence, proves that Newton was no Trinitarian; for would a sincere Trinitarian remove two of what are supposed chief supports of the doctrine of the Trinity, without an express declaration that he meant no harm to the doctrine itself? No such declaration is supplied-no avowal, no intimation of belief in the Trinity is given; on the contrary, language is used which a Trinitarian could not have ventured on. Thus, at page of the treatise, he says, speaking of the baptismal form, "the place from which they tried at first to derive the Trinity." To omit other impartial evidence, we have the distinct testimony of Hopton Haynes, the intimate friend of Newton, and of honest Will. Whiston, to the anti-trinitarianism of Sir Isaac. Newton, then, was a Christian and a Unitarian. Cherishing the doctrines of the Gospel and leaning on its promises, he felt it his duty, as it was his pleasure, to apply to the investigation of religion that intellectual strength which had successfully surmounted the difficulties of the material universe. The fame which that success secured him, he could not but feel to be the breath of popular applause, which administered only to his personal gratification; but the investigation of the Gospel, while it prepared his own mind for its final destiny, was calculated to promote the spiritual interests of thousands. This noble impulse he did not hesitate to obey, and thus uniting philosophy with religion, and divesting religion of an absurdity which has almost sunk it by its oppressive load, he dissolved the league which genius had formed with scepticism, and added to the cloud of witnesses to the primitive faith, the brightest name of ancient or modern times. In the year 1722, when he had reached the 80th year of his age, he was afflicted with a disease which was |