n.

The great antagonist of Dr. Priestley was Dr. Horsley, who, first in a
Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans, and then in a
series of letters addressed to Priestley himself, maintained with
conspicuous ability the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity.

An able modern writer[454] says that the Unitarian met at the hands of
the bishop much the same treatment as Collins had received from Bentley.
But the comparison scarcely does justice either to Horsley or Priestley.
From a purely intellectual point of view it would be a compliment to any
man to compare him with 'Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,' but the brilliant
wit and profound scholarship displayed in Bentley's remarks on Collins
were tarnished by a scurrility and personality which, even artistically
speaking, injured the merits of the work, and were quite unworthy of
being addressed by one gentleman (not to say clergyman) to another.
Horsley's strictures are as keen and caustic as Bentley's; but there is
a dignity and composure about him which, while adding to rather than
detracting from the pungency of his writings, prevent him from
forgetting his position and condescending to offensive invectives.
Priestley, too, was a more formidable opponent than Collins. He was not
only a man who by his scientific researches had made his mark upon his
age, but he had set forth Unitarianism far more fully and powerfully
than Collins had set forth Deism. Still he unquestionably laid himself
open to attack, and his opponent did not fail to take advantage of this
opening.

Horsley distinctly declines to enter into the general controversy as to
the truth or possibility of the Christian Trinity. Everything, he
thinks, that can be said on either side has been said long ago. But he
is ready to join issue with Priestley on the historical question. This
he feels it practically necessary to do, for 'the whole energy and
learning of the Unitarian party is exerted to wrest from us the argument
from tradition.'[455]

He shows, then, that so far from all the Church being originally
Unitarian, there was no Unitarian before the end of the second century,
when Theodotus, 'the learned tanner of Byzantium,' who had been a
renegade from the faith, taught for the first time that His humanity was
the whole of Christ's condition, and that He was only exalted to Heaven
like other good men. He owns that the Cerinthians and Ebionites long
before that had affirmed that Jesus had no existence