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

[189] point not brought prominently forward by either party, in which consists the real root of bitterness in the whole dispute. Dr. Stebbing's argument does not go to vindicate excommunication for heresy, as practised by the English and other established churches, still less the civil disabilities, and other evils of a secular nature, which have been, and still are, to a certain extent, attached to it; all which, though somewhat inconsistently, he distinctly disclaims, He only contends, that every church, (meaning, we presume, according to the definition in the article, ‘a congregation of faithful men, assembled for the worship of God, and professing faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,’) in order to act up to the spirit of the apostle's injunction, must exclude from its communion those whom it believes to be in pernicious error. As he does not assert for himself or his church the attribute of infallibility, it necessarily follows from hence, and, in fact, he concedes as much of his own accord, that the character of a heretic, as thus determined, is not absolute, but merely relative; ‘a man may be a heretic to one church who is not so to another, and a heretic to both, who is not so to God.’ After this concession, it is difficult to see what there is left between the parties which is worth a debate, unless it arise from considerations purely extraneous, namely, from the political and other worldly inconveniences now attached to the imputation of heresy. If a (so called) Christian church were in reality nothing more than what we have just defined it to be,—if no communities of any kind existed in the Christian world but ‘congregations of faithful men,’ united in such