issions to fulfil. He had to warn a degenerate age
against the wickedness of second marriages; he had to impress upon
professing Christians the duty of trine immersion and of anointing the
sick; he had to prepare them for the Millennium, which, according to his
calculations when he wrote his Memoirs, was to take place in twenty
years from that time. But his great mission of all was to propagate
Eusebianism and to explode the erroneous notions about the Trinity which
were then unhappily current in the Church. His favourite theory on this
subject may be found in almost all his works; but he propounded it _in
extenso_ in a work which he entitled 'Primitive Christianity revived.'
Whiston vehemently repudiated the imputation of Arianism. He called
himself an Eusebian, 'not,' he is careful to tell us, 'that he approved
of all the conduct of Eusebius of Nicomedia, from whom that appellation
was derived; but because that most uncorrupt body of the Christian
Church which he so much approved of had this name originally bestowed
upon them, and because 'tis a name much more proper to them than
Arians.' Whiston formed a sort of society which at first numbered among
those who attended its meetings men who afterwards attained to great
eminence in the Church; among others, B. Hoadly, successively Bishop of
Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury and Winchester, Rundle, afterwards Bishop of
Derry, and then of Gloucester, and Dr. Samuel Clarke. But Whiston was a
somewhat inconvenient friend for men who desired to stand well with the
powers that be. They all fell off lamentably from the principles of
primitive Christianity,--Hoadly sealing his defection by the crowning
enormity of marrying a second wife.

Poor Whiston grievously lamented the triumph of interest over truth,
which these defections implied. Neither the censures of Convocation nor
the falling off of his friends had any power to move _him_. He still
continued for some time a member of the Church of England. But his
character was far too honest and clear-sighted to enable him to shut his
eyes to the fact that the Liturgy of the Church was in many points sadly
unsound on the principles of primitive Christianity. To remedy this
defect he put forth a Liturgy which he termed 'The Liturgy of the Church
of England reduced nearer to the Primitive Standard.' It was in most
respects precisely identical with that in use, only it was purged from
all vestiges of the Athanasian heresy. The principal cha