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

[19] to theological studies, especially in the latter part of his life, is also with good reason included in the catalogue of Unitarian worthies. The evidence, however, is less direct in his case than in that of Mr. Locke, and may, perhaps, be thought by some to be less decisive; a circumstance which may be accounted for partly by Newton's constitutional reserve and timidity,—his great aversion to personal controversy, in which an open avowal of such opinions would almost inevitably have involved him,—and, perhaps, a not unreasonable apprehension of unpleasant consequences from the same parties who in his own time expelled his successor Whiston from the mathematical chair at Cambridge. But the manner in which he has stated the evidence for the true reading, in his very valuable treatise entitled ‘An historical Account of two remarkable Corruptions in the New Testament, 1 John v. 7, and 1 Tim. III. 16,’ two of the main pillars of the received doctrine of the Trinity, on which, more than on any others, its less learned supporters are accustomed chiefly to rely; and this unaccompanied with any caveat, which a trinitarian critic would almost infallibly have added under such circumstances, but in surrendering a part of the evidence for orthodoxy he should be suspected of giving up the doctrine itself, would alone be sufficient ground for a strong suspicion that he had abandoned both the one and the other. We have, in addition to this, the direct testimony of Mr. Hopton Haynes, one of his most intimate associates during the latter part of his life,—himself a very diligent student of scripture, and a zealous Unitarian,—that Newton was not only an anti-trinitarian, but much lamented that