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    mittee , necessary to give them requisite publicity . 4 SAMUEL MILLS , Chairman .

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    At a Meeting of the General Committee of the Societies of the hie Rev . John Wesley , Convened for the purpose of taking into consideration a Bill , brought into the House of Lords by the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Sidmouth , intituled ,

    ' < An Act to explain and render more effectual certain Acts of the first year of the reign of King William and Queen v Mary , and of the nineteenth year of his present Majesty , so far as the same relate to Protestant Dissenting Ministers : * ' he / Id at the New

    Chapel , City Road London ,, the 14 th of May 1811 ; t—it was resolved , I . That the said Bill , if carried into a law , will be a great in-f fringement of the laws of religious Toleration , and will be subversive

    of tfee most valuable rights and privileges which we as a religious society enjoy . II . That the said act will in future curtail the privileges and

    exemptions of our regular preachers , who are wholly devoted to the functions of their office , and to which they are legally entitled under the letter and spirit of the Act of Toleration .

    HI . That the said act will render it very difficult , if not impracticable , to obtain certificates for tte great body of local preachers ar exhorters , and who are not

    jtoly au useful part of our Society , ut whose aid is essentially necesar the very numerous chapels ai * d meeting ^ hduses in which our Con gregations assemble .

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    IV . That with great grief of heart we have observed of late , a growing disposition in different parts of the country , to disturb our meetings , even those which

    are held only for prayer to Almighty God , and to enforce the penalties of the Conventicle Act upon those who officiate in them ;

    fhe great inconvenience and heavy expences of which we have already felt . If this system of persecution should be persevered in , the subordinate teachers of our

    body , to the amount of many thousands of persons in the united kingdom , will be driven to apply for certificates to protect them from the penalties of the Conventicle Act , which indeed they can obtain under the existing laws

    without obstruction ; but if the present bill should be passed into a law , it will be utterly impossible to consider such persons as Dissenting Ministers , and to certify them under the said act : therefore , either an ercd will be put to the functions of a most valuable and

    useful part of our community , or they will be exposed to all the penalties of the Conventicle Act ; the consequence of which will be , that as the people cannot , and ought not to refrain from acts of

    social worship , and meetings for religious instruction , the penalties cannot be paid , and the prisons will be peopled with some of the niost peaceable and pipus characters in the country .

    V . That a great number of the persons mentioned in the last resolution ( as . well as a large proportion of our societies ) considering themselves as members of the established church , to which they are conscientiously attached , will feel it quite incompatible with

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    Toleration Act . 503

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1811, page 303, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2416/page/47/