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    Repository ? What have we to do with the isolated , and almost personal , disputes of an inconsiderable churcih , at the distance of some six or seven hundred miles from our own country ? Or again , what are we to think of the wisdom of the Venerable Company itself , in putting forth to the world a statement of matters , which are of no general or public interest ? To

    answer the last question first , it appears from the work before us , that the Company of Pastors , having brought to a termination their proceedings in the case of M . Gaussen , had wisely determined to let the matter drop , hoping that the member whom they had felt themselves compelled to reprove , would exercise the same moderation in return . In this hope , however , they were disappointed . Instead of allowing the affair to pass

    into oblivion , M . Gaussen appears to have circulated , and even sent to the press , copies of the letters which had passed ; and the facts of the case were also noticed in various public journals , both in Switzerland and in other countries , with so much of misrepresentation , and in a spirit so hostile to the Company , that this body had at last no alternative left but that of laying the whole before the eye of the public . This unfortunate affair has

    thus become matter of history ; and as such we feel ourselves bound to notice it , since it relates to a church , which , though small in extent , is mighty in power , and which both has exercised , and will continue to exercise , a very considerable influence over the religion of Western Europe . In order to render the origin of these discussions intelligible to an English reader , it is necessary to explain a custom which prevails in the

    Church of Geneva . Once a year the Venerable Company addresses to each of its members a kind of admonition , called-a grabeau . The pastor who is grabeld goes out of the room , and each of his colleagues gives his opinion of him , whether for good or bad ; after which he is readmitted , and the Moderator sums up what has been said in his absence . It will easily be" conceived that this custom is now little more than a form , there being few sinners of such magnitude as not easily to escape through the

    meshes of this antiquated net . M . Gaussen , however , was not so fortunate . Having , in the sittings of September , 1830 , gone out , when it came to his turn to be grabeU , it was stated in his absence that he did not teach the catechism , and that this had given much uneasiness to some of his parishioners . Being interrogated as to the fact , he allowed that it was as it had been stated ; and being further called upon to explain , the method of instruction which he had adopted , as well as the reasons which had induced him to infringe the established regulation without first asking permission of

    the Company , or even making any communication to them on the subject , be replied that he certainly had , for the last two years , discontinued the use of the catechism in the different courses of instruction which he gave to the children of his parish ; and that , as for his reasons , the catechism adopted by the Company was faulty in its doctrines , faulty in its plan , and in every respect inferior to the method of direct instruction by the Bible

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    608 The Pastors of Geneva and M . Gaussen .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 608, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/32/