a picture of—the orthodox doctrine, the sun must be heavenly body, the light heavenly body, the heat heavenly body: and yet, not three heavenly bodies, but one heavenly body. The truth is, that this illustration and many others most strikingly illustrate the Trinity of fundamental doctrine held by the Unitarians, in all its differences from the Trinity of persons held by the Orthodox. Be right which may, the right or wrong of the Unitarians shines out in the comparison. Dr. Sadler confirms me—by which I mean that I wrote the above before I saw what he says—in the following words: 'The sun is one object with two properties, and these properties have a parallel not in the second and third persons of the Trinity, but in the attributes of Deity.'
The letting light alone, as self-evident, and making heat self-demonstrating, because felt—i.e. perceptible now and then—has the character of the Irishman's astronomy:—
Which serves us for lamplight all night in the dark,
While the sun only shines in the day, which, by natur,
Wants no light at all, as ye all may remark.
Sir Richard Phillips (born 1768) was conspicuous in 1793, when he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for selling Paine's 'Rights of Man;' and again when, in 1807, he was knighted as Sheriff of London. As a bookseller, he was able to enforce his astronomical opinions in more ways than others. For instance, in James Mitchell's 'Dictionary of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences,' 1823, 12mo., which, though he was not technically a publisher, was printed for him—a book I should recommend to the collector of works of reference—there is a temperate description of his doctrines, which one may almost swear was one of his conditions previous to undertaking the work. Phillips himself was not only an anti-Newtonian, but carried to a fearful excess the notion that statesmen and Newtonians were in league to deceive the world. He saw this plot in Mrs. Airy's pension, and in Mrs. Somerville's. In 1836, he did me the honour to attempt my conversion. In his first letter he says:—
Sir Richard Phillips has an inveterate abhorrence of all the pretended wisdom of philosophy derived from the monks and doctors of the middle ages, and not less of those of higher name who merely sought to make the monkish philosophy more plausible, or so to disguise it as to mystify the mob of small thinkers.
So little did his writings show any knowledge of antiquity, that I strongly suspect, if required to name one of the monkish
