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against the validitie of the election of "The question given to Mr. MartinElders at Ouldham. dale, An liceat mere privato in ecclesia "The hearinge of the businesse was constituta publice concionare. Neg. defered till the next Classis.

"5. In the meanetyme twoe Ministers are desired to meete and heare the differences among the Members of the congregation, and compose the differences amongst them, and give account what they doe therein the next Classis.

"Mr. Angier and Mr. Harrison are desired to be the Minsters.

"10. Ordered publicke notice bee given in the Parish Church of Prestwich, that Mr. Furnesse haveinge a call to Bury, desireth dismission from the Classis from Prestwich, they are to come in to shew cause to the contrarie, if they have

cause.

"The 25th Meetinge at Manchester, the 7th October, 1648.

"2. There came some of the congregation of Rostourne, and declared that they were desireouse to have Mr. Martindale to be there Minister at Rostourne aforesaid, and hee with them desired Ordination from this Classis; they tendered a certificate to manifest his call to that place under the hands of above 268 of the said congregation. Hee delivered in a certificate of his age, that hee was 25 years of age; and hee brought like wise a certificate that hee had taken the nationall covenant. Hee was admitted to examination to the end the Classis might receive satisfaction of his fitnes for the Ministrie, and so might certifie the same to the Comittee above, to the end his civil right may be cleared to Rostorne aforesaid; hee was approved so far as he was proceeded with in his examination.

"6 Mr. Anthonie Allen came to the Classis, and brought a presentation from the patron at Oulton, and satisfyed the Classis of the vacancie of the place at Oulton; hee is admitted to examination, and approved so farr as hee was proceeded with in examination.

"7. Mr. Joseph Kellett came out of Notinghamshire to desire ordination; hee brought certificate of his call to Hauton, neare Newarke, affirmed he was Batch loure in Arts, brought testimonie of his good life and conversation and fittnes for the Ministrie, was admitted to examination, and approved soe far as was proceeded with in his examination.

"8. Mr. Thomas Fowler came out of the countie of Derbie," &c. same as last minute, mutatis mutandis.

"The question given to Mr. Kellett, -An sint distincti ordines Presbiteron. Affirm.

"The question given to Mr. Fowler, An Presbiteri sint ejusdem ordinis. Affirm.

"The question given to Mr. Allen,An gratia salutifera possit amitti. Neg.

9. Those of the congregation of Ouldham that had petitioned against the election of Elders at Ouldham, were appointed to bring in there exceptions, if they have any more than are in there petition, the next Classis.

"10. There is noe cause shewed by anie of the congregation of Prestwich to hinder Mr. Furuess his dismission from that place.

11. This day there was a petition preferred to this Classis from manie of the parishioners of Prestwich, takeing notice of Mr. Furnesse intention to remove from thence; and desireing no Minister may be placed there without the consent of the major part of the parishioners.

"It was agreed to give them answeare, that the Classis hath taken there petition into consideration, and will give them due and meete satisfaction accordinge to there desire.

"The 26th Meetinge at Manchester, the 210 November, 1648.

"2. There appeared divers of the parishoners of Rostorne delivered a writeinge unto which there names were subscribed, and by such as were there present attested, and subscribed by a publicke notarie, as they said, who was present and attested it, wherein they objected against Mr. Martindale's ordination.

"3. It was resolved not to proceeed to ordaine the said Mr. Martindale to Rostorne, till the tytle he had to the place was cleared.

"4. Mr. Anthonie Allen, Mr. Josephe Kellett, Mr. Thomas Fowler, did all bringe in there thesis, and disputed, and were approved, and resolved to proceede to ordayne them.

"The 27th Meetinge at Manchester, 19th December, 1648.

"4. The parishioners of Ouldham were appointed to produce witnesses to prove theire exceptions against the election of Elders at Ouldham the next Classis."

N.B. A similar minute is registered under the next Meetinge.

"The 28th Meetinge at Manchester, 6th Januarie, 1648.

"6. Evann Clarke, by generall consent of the Classis, is appointed, pro tempore, for their Register. And Mr. Hollinworth entreated to overlooke and to have au eye upon him.

"Mr. Birch, schoolmaster, at Prestwich, is by the Elders thereof to be appointed to appeare at the next Classical

Letters in the" Christian Observer” on Quakers and Unitarians. 147

Meetinge at Manchester, for baptiseinge children, and for makeinge clandestine marriages.

"The 29th Meetinge at Manchester, February 13, 1648.

"None of the Elders of Flixton appeared."

This minute is entered in the Regis ter of several former Meetings.

"2. There appeared severall other Eldershipps to the number appointed for a Classe.

"3. The generalitie of the people of Newton did appeare before this Classe, and there did declare theire willingnes to have Mr. John Walker to bee there Minister.

4. Mr. John Walker appointed to preach the next Classicall Meetinge, at Manchester, being the 13th of March next. "5. Mr. Dury hath beene examined in Logicke, Phisicks, Ethicks, Metaphisicks, Greeke and Hebrae.

"8. Mr. Birch, schoolmaster, at Prestwich is once more to be advertised by the Elders there, to appeare before this Classe for haptiseinge children privately without order, and to appeare upon Tuesday the 13th of March next.

9. It is ordered, that the Elders elected for Ouldham come in the next Classe to bee examined in point of knowledge, and that the said Elders elected have notice of it publickely in the said congregation.

The 30th Meetinge at Manchester,

March 13th, 1648.

"2. This Classe hare rendred thanks

to Mr. John Walker for his paines in preacheinge before the said Classe.

"4. Agreed that the exhortation from the Provinciall Assemblie be reade in everie congregation within this Classis the next Lord's Day, beinge the 18th of March instant.

"7. A warrant to bee drawne up to bringe in the witnesses to testifie what they can against Mr. Birch, schoolmaster, at Prestwich, for private baptizeinge of children, and makeinge clandestine marriages.

66

8. Agreed that there bee a solemne day of humiliation to be kept at Manchester, upon the grounds and reasons in a petition presented to us by some of the well-affected in Manchester.

"At the first Classe within the province of the Countie of Lancaster, April 10th, 1649. "A copie of a warrant for Mr. Birch, schoolmaster, at Prestwich.

of anie part of the Ministeriall function within these bounds, hath beene heretofore admonished for baptizeinge of children, and hath contemned theire order; whose offence herein is further aggravated by his baptiseing in private contrarie to the directorie, and hath been,

proved before them by oath; and have inge alsoe beene divers tymes sumoned to appeare before this Classe, has refused to make due appeareance, these are therefore publicklic to give notice to your congregation at Prestwich, that the said Mr. Birch is prohibited by this Classe to baptize anie children either publickly or privately, or to exercise anie other parte of the Ministeriall function. And these are further to give notice to the said Mr. Birch, to appeare before this Classe at theire next Meeteinge at Manchester, the 8th day of May, or otherwise they must proceede to the further censure of him for his severall contempts, and makeinge clandestine mar. riages, whereof there are complaints made unto us."

Your readers will perceive that the change of the date of the year in the Register is made in April.

In my selections from the Register, though many items, by no means devoid of interest, have been necessarily omitted, to the best of my judgment I have given the preference to those which appeared most generally interesting. Perhaps I may be thought to give too much rather than too little; or more probably in this, as in almost every thing else, different tastes will decide differently. I shall be guided by any hint which you, Mr. Editor, deem may

necessary.

My next communication I intend to contain the Resolutions of the "Provinciall Synod at Preston," being in number forty-three.

W. J.

P. S. Allow me in a few words to correct an error, probably of the press, in Dr. Carpenter's Examination of Magee's Charges. In a note in the 5th page, Dr. C. ascribes what he is pleased to designate "An able Letter on the Atonement," to G. of Manchester. It ought to be J. of Manchester, the latter of the initials subscribed above.

SIR,

Evesham, January 15, 1822.

"Forasmuch as Mr. Birch, schoolemaister, at Prestwich, beinge not ap- THE insertion of three harmless

proved by this Classe for the exerciseinge

ΤΗ

letters from the Illinois, in the

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Number for October, 1820, Vol. XV. pp. 606-609, has been made the pretext for a very heavy charge against the Monthly Repository. It is preferred by a Constant Reader and Occasional Contributor to the Christian Observer, in the Number for November, 1821, Vol. XX. p. 690, under the signature of T. P. His letter is without date, but says, were the month to pass away without bringing to my door its Number of the Christian Observer, I should feel as though that month had lost a day of sunshine." He adds, "It happened, not long since, that my favourite pamphlet found its way to me in company with a number of the Monthly Repository. I am no reader of the latter production; but my bookseller observing in it some private letters, from a family to which I am related, now residing in the Illinois State, North America, sent it for my perusal."

T. P. describes himself, moreover, as "residing in a small town at a great distance from the metropolis." He is of opinion the said letters should not have been published without the permission of the writers. Adding, "This liberty, however, if not justifiable, loses its fainter hue of enormity, when compared with the attacks on public opinion, for which the Monthly Repository is so justly celebrated." As he is "no reader of this work, though his censure is intended to convey no slight hue of enormity, it seems as if T. P. judged it not from examination, but from report. He should have been more careful to avoid even the appearance of " defamation and detraction," against which the Society of Friends, of which I suppose he is a member, give salutary cautions, and profess to bear a religious testimony, He should also have considered, that an attack on public opinion," may be sometimes not only innocent, but useful and commendable. The writers of the New Testament attacked it boldly and with great effect, as faithful witnesses and servants of their Lord and Master.

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hood, called Quakers-in the comprehensive fraternal embrace" of the Unitarians. This, he thinks, has of late "been a favourite design with them. And as those letters from the Illinois were written in the style and language" of the Quakers, he says, "it would seem to the undiscerning public to corroborate this claim to association."

Yet I think the public are not so blind as this attack of T. P. supposes, for not one word do those letters contain respecting Unitarians, or any of their distinguishing doctrines. “This error, however," adds he, " can only operate on minds totally unacquainted with the opinions, feelings and worship of the Quakers." It should, therefore, seem, if his object was to correct the error into which the style of his relatives had led your readers, that he should have addressed you on the subject, not the Editor of the Christian Observer. His next sentence may, however, explain why he did not, though he fancies you have fewer readers among Friends than the latter work, and being otherwise curious, I shall give it entire. He says, "As this people have found their happiness materially guarded, by avoiding, as much as possible, all disputes on theological questions, I am not going to drag them into the arena of controversy. But I cannot apprehend any danger, from throwing into the pages of the Christian Observer (for no periodical work is so much read, or so well received by them) a passage I have lately met with, which I think explains their feelings on certain points of difficulty, in a manner that places them at an immense distance from the hardy Unitarian;” a character as little alarmed at controversy, as any he could have mentioned, because it is not apt to build on the sand of human invention, but "on that foundation which cannot be moved."

The document T. P. quotes for the above purpose, is not from Penn's "Sandy Foundation Shaken," or any T. P. does not think he is "wholly other approved work of the early ignorant of the channel through which Friends, but from “Dr. Waterland's those letters found their way to pub- controversy with Dr. Clarke," as cited lication," or of "one of the motives"in a letter from Edward Nares to for printing them;" viz. "to catch Francis Stone," two entire strangers the little, quiet, undisputing brother- to me. This quotation informs us,

Letters in the “ Christian Observer” on Quakers and Unitarians. 149

"The first Christians easily believed that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in whose name they were baptized, and whom they worshiped, were equally divine; without troubling themselves about the manner of it, or the reconciling it with the belief in one God." It is much easier to make these assertions than to prove them.

If, as Archdeacon Blackburne observes, we read the supposed baptismal form, Matt. xxviii. 19, as follows, "Go ye, therefore, and disciple all nations (baptizing them) into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" there is not a single tittle altered in the text of the Evangelist, save in the pointing; and yet a very material alteration of the sense of the passage obtained, which makes the two Evangelists [Matthew and Luke] perfectly consistent with each other. For as the passage stands above, explained by the parenthesis, the command to baptize refers to no particular form at all, and leaves us to suppose, what was certainly the truth of the matter, that the apostles being already well acquainted with the form used in the baptism of Jesus, it was quite superfluous to enjoin it here.

St. John tells us expressly, chap. iv. 2, that the disciples of Jesus made and baptized other disciples to their Master, and these not a few. This is a sufficient proof without any other, that the apostles of Christ were well versed in the form of baptism prescribed by our Saviour; upon which account the repetition of it in this solemn manner, is one of the last things one would look for in this particular passage.

The Archdeacon, I need hardly add, was of opinion that the words in question contain "no baptismal form at all." Works, I. xxvi. Appendix B. Barclay, in his Quakerism confirmed, says, "That the apostles used the words Father, Son and Holy Ghost, when they baptized, cannot be proved; far less used they the word Trinity, which was not invented [till] long after the apostles' days." Works, III. 139. And, accordingly, he is entirely silent on that doctrine in his "Apology for the true Christian Divinity," which he of course thought might well do without it. The Quakers have always

held that the above text has no relation whatever to water baptism.

Dr. Waterland, as quoted by T. P., adds, "Probably these plain, honest Christians believed every person to be God, and yet but one God." This is oddly enough called "the artless simplicity of the primitive Christians," of which, however, the New Testa ment, the only, or at least the most authentic record of their faith, affords not even the slightest evidence. "It seems they troubled not their heads with any nice speculations about the modus of it, till prying and pretending men came to start difficulties, and raise scruples and make disturbances; and then," adds the Doctor, "it was necessary to guard," not the purity and simplicity of the apostolic faith, as expressed in Scripture, but "the faith of the church," in new notions which required new terms against such cavils and impertinencies as began to threaten it."

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How did the church act in this difficulty, as T. P. confesses it still is, to reconcile the doctrine of the Divine Unity, with that which he holds the common doctrine of the Trinity? His oracle, Dr. Waterland, says, "Philosophy and metaphysics were called in to its assistance, but not till heretics had shewn the way, and made it in a manner necessary for the Catholics to encounter them with their own weapons."

"Some

This is, in other words, to say the Catholics adopted heretical language. I confess there is too much truth in this, whether they or others first set so bad an example. new terms and particular applications came in by this means, that such as had a mind to corrupt or destroy the faith" aforesaid, "might be defeated in their purposes; but after the heretics had invidiously represented the Catholics as asserting a division," by the new terms they had adopted in speaking of the one true God, instead of those used by the sacred writers, and by their Lord and Master, "it was high time," says the Doctor, "for the Catholics to resent the injury, and deny," not disprove," the charge." He adds, "There was no occasion for mentioning of three hypostases, till such as Praxeas, Noetus and Sabellius, had pretended to make one hypostasis

an article of faith," which he calls very properly" their prime position." "The userior itself," he says, "might have been spared, at least out of the creeds, had not a fraudulent abuse of good words brought matters to that pass, that the Catholic faith was in danger of being lost, even under Catholic language."

Such is the substance of T. P.'s quotation, of which he says, "The point I aim at is this-to refer the reader to the simple view of the full and supreme divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, ascribed by Dr. Waterland to the apostles and the primitive Christians; for precisely the same view is taken of this high doctrine by the Quakers in the present day; a view, which is greatly con firmed by their almost exclusive use of the Sacred Scriptures as the fountain of their doctrines."

If T. P. has done the Quakers justice, I must say that on this point the Unitarians have greatly the advantage of them, for the Scriptures are not merely "almost," but the sole fountain of their doctrines. Freely admitting T. P.'s right to profess his own faith in any words he may choose for himself, or adopt from any writer, ancient or modern, I must demur to his competency to speak in such positive terms of the faith of the Quakers, even "in the present day;" amongst whom, perhaps, I have had as large an acquaintance as himself, and at least equal, if not better opportunities of knowing their sentiments, and how very generally the most strict amongst them of every class, even when closely pressed, refuse to admit in any sense whatever, any distinction of persons in the Deity. I have also read many of the writings of their best and most approved authors, none of whom, so far as I know, ever professed to hold that doctrine. William Penn said, very truly, in his Sandy Foundation Shaken, for writing and publishing which, being a notable attack on "public opinion," he was persecuted by his enemies, but applauded by his friends the Quakers, with remarkable unanimity, that "the Scriptures undeniably prove that ONE is God, and God only is that only ONE; therefore he cannot be divided into or subsist," says he, "in an holy THREE,

or THREE distinct and separate holy ones."

In pointing out "the absurdities that unavoidably follow the comparison of-the vulgar doctrine of Satisfaction, being dependent upon the second person of the Trinity," he even describes "Jesus Christ as a finite and impotent creature," without reference to the unscriptural notion of two natures, and his God and Father as "the infinite and omnipotent Creator." I am aware that some of their ap proved authors have sometimes used mystical language on the subject, as nearly approaching the present standard of reputed orthodoxy, as Sabellians have long ago employed, but I know of only one writer amongst them who has gone so far as T. P., and that is the author, whom I much esteem, of a work published in 1813, by Wm. Phillips, London, and entitled "Remarks suggested by the Perusal of a Portraiture of Primitive Quakerism, by William Penn; with a Modern Sketch of Reputed Orthodoxy,' &c., by Thomas Prichard."

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The Portraiture is reviewed in your journal for 1812 (VII. 523). The remarks on it have, I believe, not come under your notice. The greater part of the pamphlet consists of a republication of another tract of Penn's, which was more to the Editor's taste than the Portraiture, the readers of which he describes as "introduced to this amiable writer, only through the medium of Unitarian quotation.” Whereas, it must be confessed, the other tract is rather strongly tinctured with Sabellianism, but with nothing like "the common doctrine of the Trinity," without which he considered the Quakers as consigned "to the invidious condition of the bat in the fable, neither bird nor beast, with all its pernicious consequences.' "Yet he tells his readers, that Penn's Sandy Foundation Shaken, or the above Portraiture, "professes to attack all that is of mere human authority and invention in the tenets that relate to the Trinity, imputed righteousness, and the satisfaction and atonement made by Christ." The author considered the whole as founded on the sand, and tells us he "endeavoured a total enervation of those cardinal points, and chief doctrines so firmly believed,

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