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    *» y A nan brethren . We also have had our share of the abuse . Some of the public journals have abounded with the grossest misrepresentations of our motives and conduct . la a work with which some of this body are said to be intimately connected , I and several of ray friends have had the honour of occupying a very prominent place , and of being exhibited in every possible way to public scoru and reprobation . In the observations with which I am about to trouble

    you , I shall studiously avoid every epithet that might irritate or provoke , when I attempt to reply to my eloquent friend Mr . Montgomery—for I will still call him friend , notwithstanding our difference of opinion . ( Hear , hear , from different quarters , and especially from Mr . Montgomery . ) Every one will admit that my task is no sinecure . Such a ilow of powerful and commanding eloquence I never heard : and were the

    principles and reasoning as sound and conclusive as the language is beautiful and appropriate , I should , consider the speech of my learned friend absolutely unanswerable , Mr . Montgomery , however , and the greater number of the gentlemen who have joined him ., assume the following principles as the basis of their reasoning , and these , 1 think , a little close and candid investigation will shew to be unsound . They assvjme that the declaration of faith made this and

    last year in the Synod , together with the present overtures , are an infringement of civil and religious liberty : that the right of private judgment includes under it the right of public teaching ; that the people of any congregation are the property of the minister who happens to have been ordained amongst them ; that to them he has a prescriptive right ; that when parents have gone to expense in the education of their children for the

    ministry o £ the gospel in connexion with this Synod , it is unjust to deny them admission on the ground *? f religious opinion ; and that simple or honest error is neither criminal nor dangerous . You will find all these assumptions in the speech of my learned friend $ and I shall begin to shew how unfounded they are , by simply stating what is the nature of the measures against which my friend

    has exerted his eloquence . A » » church , you call upon your members , in the sphif ; of candour , to state openly , not an opinion which you dictafi , but what is their own opinion respecting a most impoiv taut fundamental article of ; religious belief . You do thia because a mo » t Jujurious representation has gone abroad

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    that many in your body entertain , upon that subject , very erroneous sentiments ; and that some of them are base enough to cloak , under obsequious and apparently orthodox ' expressions , their real but exceptionable opinions . Now , what infringement of civil and religious liberty is there in this ? What similarity to

    the " rack , " the " gibbet , " the torturing irons , and other instruments of inquisitorial tyranny , dwelt upon with such honest indignation by my learned friend ? Did we go to every private individual in the community , and say to him—Sir , you must state to us your religious belief;—and had we the power ,

    in case of finding him heterodox , to punish him by any species of bodily torture or civil deprivation , then would there be some basis for the reasoning of Mr . Montgomery ; but to such a measure we have neither the power nor the inclination to resort . We call upon our mem bers to be honest men—to openly state what they privately believe on a subject

    which we have commissioned them publicly to preach—and is this tyranny or torture I Alas 1 for the honesty and liberality and candour that feels it to be torture to be brought into the light . Your uniform practice , since you were a Synod , has been to call upon young mea to declare before their people , at their ordination , their views of religious belief ;

    and this has never been felt or alleged to be torture . How , then , does it change its character and become inquisitorial cruelty when applied to men who have been for some years , ordained ? Is not every member still under the care of the church ? And does it not possess the right to superintend as well as to appoint ita members ? You do not interfere

    with any man's private judgment . He may have and think what he pleases in his private capacity ; but when he chooses to offer himself as a public teacher of the people committed to your care by the Almighty Head of his Church , you first ask him what he proposes to teach—and when you afterwards hear that he has fallen from what you think to be the truth , you call upon him to state his

    views of religious doctrine , lest he should teach God's people error . With respect to the overtures , they are simply a precautionary measure against the recurrence of an evil in future , the existence of which you now lament . When our forefathers settled in this country , they were all of tfte same views upon the fundamental doctrines of Christianity ; and it is manifest , . that no man would have proposed or expected to become a mem-

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    Intelligence . —Synod of Ulster . 721

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    VOL . IU 3 E

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1828, page 721, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2565/page/65/