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

[28] strong censure the infirmity of human nature, which had not, at first, the fortitude to look consequences like these steadily in the face. On this, his first appearance before the civil magistrate to answer for his religious faith, he appears to have availed himself, as many of those who are called his followers afterwards did with less excuse, of the acknowledged ambiguity of the scholastic term person, to screen himself from the penalties of avowed nonconformity by expressing heterodox opinions in orthodox language.

On the other hand, when it is considered that he was at this time extricating himself by his own unassisted researches from the prejudices of his early education, and gradually acquiring fresh light by his own examination of scripture, it is by no means improbable that his views may as yet have partaken of the indistinctness of his language, and that he had not yet arrived at that clear perception of the truth which he afterwards attained, and boldly professed in the midst of still more formidable hazards. Certain it is, that he persevered for more than a year after this time in that course of free and diligent inquiry, the result of which had already brought him into so much peril. Nor did his experience of former dangers inspire him now with so much worldly prudence as to lead him to withhold his more matured and decided opinions from his friends, to whom he now freely opened his mind on the doctrine of the Trinity.

At this time he drew up and communicated to them a piece, which he intended afterwards to publish, entitled, ‘Twelve Arguments drawn out of Scripture, wherein the commonly received Opinion ’