Excerpt from A Brief Review of a Historical Sermon, Delivered at Deerfield, Mass., September 22, 1857, by Rev. Samuel Willard, D. D

If this is not so, the reader will consider my recantation as already made; for all that I have to say of him is grounded upon this supposition. That Dr. W'ebber as a Unitarian should wish for the extension of Unitarian ideas in the community is perfectly natural. What honest man would not Wish to extend his own views of truth. That he should be on the look-out for men, best calculated to introduce and recommend Unitarianism to the public, is also perfectly natural and consistent with the strictest honesty between man and man. That his practiced eye should discover in the pupil of the cautious Dr. Apple ton an instrument well adapted to supplant the standard of moderate Orthodoxy with the standard of Unitarian Ism, is nothing wonderful; that, for this purpose, he should have a desire and an ardent desire to introduce him, is neither strange nor worthy of censure. But to abuse the confidence placed in him by the public, as in the case of that Committee. Acting in a public capacity, and fill an or der for a man of moderate Orthodoxy with one whom he knew to be a Unitarian, is altogether a different thing. And how his pupil could relinquish his scruples and con sent to go where he was not called for, - and why the con sideration that he knew little or nothing of the Professor's Orthodoxy, and that Dr. I'vebber had better opportunities for knowing his real sentiments, should contribute to the change in him, - and what the ground was of that confidence in Dr. Webber, when he saw how he was treating the Committee's letter, - all this is strange, passing strange! And let it pass on to the time when many things, which now appear strange because the light is not suffered to fall upon them, will be made plain.

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