the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[38] for conscience' sake was restored to full liberty, which he improved without delay, with a few friends whom his writings and the harsh usage he had received had procured for him in London. These he formed into a small religious society, who met in private every Lord's day for worship and the study of the scriptures. Their association was formed on the principle of the strict and absolute unity of the Divine nature, acknowledging the Father only as the proper object of Christian worship; the Saviour Christ as a man approved of God and sent by him to save mankind from their sins, and recognised to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead; and the Holy Ghost, conformably to the views maintained in Mr. Biddle's ‘Twelve Arguments,’ to be a distinct intelligent spirit, of high dignity and excellence, but not God, nor in any sense the object of worship. It is singular that, though we have good reason to believe that in this small community good seed was sown which did not altogether perish, and in particular that among its members were some of the authors of that remarkable collection of tracts already mentioned, which appeared in this country towards the close of the seventeenth century, and strongly attracted the attention of the religious world at that period to the Unitarian controversy, very few of the names of Mr. Biddle's immediate followers and disciples have been recorded.

For about three years Mr. Biddle and his friends appear to have enjoyed the liberty of meeting for worship and mutual improvement in humble obscurity, but unmolested. During this period his little congregation received a visit from Dr. Gunning, afterwards Regius Professor of Divinity at