Note 74 — Chapter XVI · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The result was that, with free Trust Deeds, the Presbyterians openly exhibited a tendency which was latent in all the other churches. In 1719, at a special assembly of Presbyterian ministers at Salters’ Hall, it was decided by a majority of 73 to 69 that subscription to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity should no longer be demanded of candidates for the ministry.74 Of the 73, the majority professed to be themselves orthodox; but there was no question that antitrinitarian opinions had become common, especially in Devonshire, where the heresy case of Mr. Peirce of Exeter had brought the matter to a crisis.75 From this date “Arian” opinions spread more rapidly in the dwindling denomination, shading yet further into Unitarianism, step for step with the deistic movement in the Church. “In less than half a century the doctrines of the great founders of Presbyterianism could scarcely be heard from any Presbyterian pulpit in England.”76 “In the English Presbyterian ministry the process was from Arian opinions to those called Unitarian ... by a gradual sliding,” even as the transition had been made from Calvinism to Arminianism in the previous century.77