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    Small-Pox hospital : womci it be wrong to apply the bequest to the charitable promotion of vaccine inoculation ? The welfare of society demands the change , and it would be laid down in any court , that the testator , were he now living , would himself do that which is done bv his trustees . The

    same may be determined as to opinions . There is at Warboys , in Huntingdonshire , an endowed annual lecture against witchcraft ; but since there is no longer any belief in witchcraft , and it is no crime in the eye of

    the law , may not Mr . Nicholson or any other preacher honourably receive the endowment for a sermon shewing that the origin of the establishment was itself superstitious , and that the founder was under a delusion ?

    The fallacy of the whole argument , in favour of the literal and punctual execution of Dissenting trusts , lies in the notion that there is property in opinions , and that : one generation can bind the faith of another . This is

    wholly impossible , and hence the futility of all endowments tending to mortgage the belief of posterity . A father may recommend his own notions to his children , but he cannot do more : a founder of a trust may express his wishes for this or that system of opinions being taught , but he

    cannot secure his wishes by any legal instrument ever yet devised . Nor ought any one to have the power to tie up the human mind , even by golden chains , or by threats or bribes to interfere with the progress of knowledge and the interests of truth . A trust for opinions is a solecism , and is per se invalid . Such a trust would

    be an establishment for opposing Protestantism , the essence of which is , that the Bible is the sole rule of faith , and that every individual shall judge of the Bible for himself . In the case of endowments for

    Protestant Dissenting worship , the intention of the testator must be judged of by the fundamental principles of Protestant Dissent . These are , that each individual shall have liberty of conscience , and that the majority of every

    congregation shall have power to determine every thing that appertains to such congregation ; be it faith , worship or discipline . If I build and endow an Unitarian chapel , I do it with the knowledge that the majority

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    of ttye worshipers in such a cliapej * at all times , must have absolute power of believing and worshiping as they please , in spite of any thing in the trust deed by which I attempt to en * slave their minds . This attempt of any man or body of men to legislate in matters of faith for a future generation is arrant Popery .

    The Calvinists of the present day have as little right in their old endowments , as the Presbyterians in theirs ; for though they have not departed so widely as the Presbyterians from the faith of their fathers , they have gone

    astray sufficiently to disinherit them , according to Dr . J . P . Smith ' s principle . In fact , they are no more Calvinists than the Presbyterians are Presbyterians ; and a Westminster Assembly man would disown and condemn them as rank Arminians . Where

    then are their consciences ? Put the case of an academical institution founded upon the law of subscription to articles , and that in process of time the trustees abolish such subscription . Let Dr . Smith say whether , on his own shewing , this be not malversation hi office ? The founders

    believed that subscription was the only safeguard of orthodoxy , and would not have laid out their money on buildings or books or any other academical property , but on the faith of

    subscription being continued : in abo ^ lishing it , the trustees fly in the face of the original founders , and undo the very thing on which they placed all their hopes and wishes .

    Put the case a ^ ain , of property bequeathed for the use of such as believe and teitch the Assembly ' s Catechism ; and suppose those that manage , or in any way enjoy the benefit of , the endowment , have arrived at the conviction that 1 John v . 7 , 8 , which is set down in the Catechism as holy

    scripture , and as the main proot ot the doctrine of the Trinity , is a gross forgery ; can they on the principle I am controverting honestly hold their appointments ? If the intention of the testators be decisive , they certainly cannot ; for the Trinitarian Dissenters , a century ago , or even Ies 9 , would have denounced him as little better

    than a " JSoeinian , " who should have given up the three heavenly witnesses ^ and much more one who should have proposed their being ousted with dis-

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    On Dissenting Trusts . 263

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1825, page 263, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2536/page/7/