[James Martineau, Professor in Manchester New College, Oxford, brother of Harriet Martineau.] Autograph Letter Signed to Rev. G. E. Cheeseman, defending a paper on ‘Unitarian modes of thought’.

See his entry, and that of his sister, in the Oxford DNB. 4pp, 12mo. Fifty-eight lines of text. Signed ‘James Martineau.’ On biofolium. In good condition, lightly aged and folded twice for postage. A very good letter, filled with matter. He begins by conceding that there is ‘ground for displeasure of some of my fellow-believers’ in his ‘paper in the “Christian Reformer”: ‘that the description it gives of the Unitarian modes of thought does not invariably fit to the more recent phases of feeling & conception’. He explains that he had to ‘characterise a type of theological belief well marked through both the early ages & the Church and more than one development of the Reformation’, and in doing so had to employ ‘a language which should hold true of the literature and history as a whole’. In the final two-thirds of the letter he refers to ‘the writings of Channing’, ‘happy deflections’, ‘unhappy defections [...] through the diffusion of a Science that mistakes itself for Omniscience’, ‘evangelical preachers’ and ‘the question of pulpit interchanges’ (‘There are professed Unitarians whom nothing would induce me to invite to my pulpit, if I had one, and with whom I could avow no religious fellowship.’) He concludes by summing up the matter: ‘the healthy rule is to give free play to the real and natural spiritual affinities, and pay no heed to the insinuations and frowns of dogmatic purists’.