Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 explained

Type:	Act
Parliament:	Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long Title:	An Act to relieve Persons who impugn the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity from certain Penalties.
Statute Book Chapter:	53 Geo. 3. c. 160
Introduced Commons:	William Smith^[1]
Territorial Extent:	United Kingdom
Royal Assent:	21 July 1813
Repeal Date:	5 August 1873
Repealing Legislation:	Statute Law Revision Act 1873
Status:	Repealed
Original Text:	https://books.google.com/books?id=lptaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA418

The Act 53 Geo. 3. c. 160, sometimes called the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813,^[2] the Trinitarian Act 1812,^[3] the Unitarian Relief Act,^[4] the Trinity Act, the Unitarian Toleration Bill, or Mr William Smith's Bill (after Whig politician William Smith),^[5] was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which amended its blasphemy laws and granted toleration for Unitarian worship.^[6]

• Section 1 amended the Toleration Act 1689 (passed by the Parliament of England) to include non-Trinitarians among the Protestant dissenters whose practices would be tolerated.
• Section 2 repealed the provision of the Blasphemy Act 1697 (also English) which imposed civil penalties on anyone professed or educated as a Christian who denied the Trinity.
• Section 3 repealed two Acts of the Scottish Parliament which made blasphemy punishable by death: the Act against Blasphemy 1661 and Act against Blasphemy 1695.

The Dissenters (Ireland) Act 1817 (57 Geo 3 c 70) extended the Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 to Ireland, and amended the Prohibition of Disturbance of Worship Act 1719 (passed by the Parliament of Ireland)^[7] in the same way as the 1813 Act had amended the 1689 Act.^[8]

The Doctrine of the Trinity Act 1813 was repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1873.^[9]

Further reading

• Archibald John Stephens. The Statutes Relating to the Ecclesiastical and Eleemosynary Institutions of England, Wales, Ireland, India, and the Colonies. 1845. Volume 1. Pages 1066 and 1067.
• John Shortt. The Law Relating to Works of Literature and Art. Second Edition. 1884. Pages 368 and 369.

Notes and References

1. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b333360&view=1up&seq=586 Hansard HC 5 May 1813 s1 v5 c1147
2. Walker. A Legal History of Scotland. 1988. Volume 6. p 409.
3. Krueger. "Clerical". Tucker (ed). A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 2014. p 141.
4. [Amherst D. Tyssen]
5. Maclear J.F., Church and State in the Modern Age: a documentary history 1995
6. Dudley Julius Medley, A Student's Manual of English Constitutional History. Sixth Edition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1925), p. 653.
7. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433035265143&view=2up&seq=544 An act for exempting the protestant dissenters of this kingdom from certain penalties, to which they are now subject
8. https://books.google.com/books?id=q444AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA637 An Act to relieve persons impugning the doctrine of the Holy Trinity from certain penalties, in Ireland
9. https://books.google.com/books?id=bl9MAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA383 Statute Law Revision Act 1873, Schedule