A HISTORY OF LONDON nature of saving faith. Socinian opinions had long been held by several Presbyterian and General Baptist ministers, but the first society in London formed on an avowed Unitarian basis was that in Essex Street, Strand, founded in 1778 by Theophilus Lindsey, who as the result of honest conviction had resigned the vicarage of Catterick in Yorkshire ; his colleague and successor was Thomas Disney, D.D., another seceding clergyman. James Relly, once a co-worker with Whitefield, began to preach Universalism in Coachmakers' Hall about 1765 ; from 1769 till his death in 1778 he occupied the disused meeting-house in Crosby Square. Later there were Universalist congrega- tions in Parliament Court, Bishopsgate, and in Windmill Street. The first English congregation of Swedenborgians was formed in Great Eastcheap in 1788 ; they afterwards built a chapel in York Street, Westminster, in 1800; and one in Friars Street, Blackfriars, in 1803. Towards the close of the century the hyper-Calvinist William Huntingdon gathered large congrega- tions in Providence Chapel, Titchfield Street. Finally the pretensions of Joanna Southcott excited so much attention that about 1800 there were two congregations of her followers in Southwark. Of the various offshoots from the Wesleyan society the earliest, the Metho- dist New Connexion, first opened a meeting-house in Southwark in 1800. Six years later they removed to Bethnal Green. In due course all, or nearly all the smaller bodies, Primitive Methodists, Bible Christians, Wesleyan Association, and Wesleyan Reformers, established themselves in the metropolis, mostly, however, in its outer circle. The great religious societies, founded between 1798 and 18 I 2, in which Anglicans and Nonconformists united for establish- ing Sunday schools, circulating the Bible and religious tracts, &c., led the way to evangelistic efforts of an undenominational or inter-denominational character, to which a definite shape was given by the institution of the London City Mission in 1835. From 1822 to 1829 the Rev. Edward Irving was minister of the Scottish Church in Hatton Garden, until the crowds attracted by his eloquence necessitated the building of a new church in Regent Square ; here occurred a strange outburst of enthusiasm, combining fervid Millenarianism with belief in the restoration of miraculous powers to the Church, in which Irving shared. Irving having been removed from his ministry in Regent Square in 1833 by the Presbytery of the Church of Scotland in London, his adherents organized in Newman Street a society called the Catholic Apostolic Church, with a complicated sacerdotal and episcopal hierarchy, high sacramentarian doctrine and a richly symbolic ritual. The new church attracted many proselytes of the wealthier classes, who proved the sincerity of their faith by extraordinary liberality. In a short time seven congregations were formed in various parts of London, and early in 1854 a cathedral was dedicated in Gordon Square, of which the architecture is not unworthy of the Middle Ages. As early as 1825, disputes had arisen as to the right of congregations which had become Unitarian to retain the buildings and endowments of their orthodox predecessors. Litigation commenced in 1830, and was only con- cluded by the House of Lords in favour of the orthodox claimants in 1842 " Mrs. Oliphant, Life of Irving. "" T. S. James, Hist, of Litigation respecting Presbyterian Chapels and Charities. 392 100
