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

[150] opposition to the common notion of original sin, which he justly stigmatizes as, in reality, making God the author of sin. ‘What reason is there,’ he justly asks, ‘to apprehend so great an alteration made in the nature and powers of man by Adam's transgression? Let us, then, not be unwilling to consider, whether the consequences of the fall of our first parents be not aggravated by some; and let us be careful not to admit any schemes which are derogatory to God's honour, and which countenance or justify men in their allowed weaknesses or wilful transgressions.’ On the whole, however, this tract is a remarkable instance of the caution and reserve which our author still thought it prudent to use when he had occasion to touch in public on this and other controverted questions. With the exception of the passage just cited, he does not pledge himself to any positive conclusion, though an attentive reader may not find it difficult to trace the opinions to which he was chiefly inclined; and even to this he did not think it advisable to affix his name.

This is the more remarkable, as there is good reason to think that he was less reserved in the expression of his opinions from the pulpit on subjects on which it might be expected that a deviation from popular notions would render him obnoxious. But the fact may have been, that a preacher like Lardner, who had little or nothing of what is vulgarly called popularity to lose, might feel under less restraint than one who was more followed by the crowd, and who might therefore suffer more by offending its prejudices. It was his lot to address a small, but a select, attached,