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place, he should retain that honour that will leave him scope, and inspire him with courage to act a manly part. A Christian pastor can never fulfil his office, and attain its highest ends, without being free to act among his people according to the light of his conscience and his best discretion. To have elders and deacons to rule over him, is to be a slave-is not to be a man. The responsibilities, cares, burdens, and labours of the pastoral office are enough, without being impeded and oppressed by such anxieties as these. In the early history of New England, a non-conformist minister, from the old country, is represented to have said, after a little experience on this side of the water, I left England to get rid of my lords the bishops; but here I find in their place my lords, the brethren and sisters; save me from the latter, and let me have the former.'

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"It has actually happened within a few years in New England, and I believe in other parts of the country, that there has been a system of lay

rumour,

visitation of the clergy for the purpose of counselling, admonishing, and urging them up to their duty; and that these self-commissioned apostles, two and two, have gone from town to town, and from district to district of the country, making inquisition at the mouth of common and by such methods as might be convenient, into the conduct and fidelity of clergymen whom they never saw; and, having exhausted their means of information, have made their way into the closets of their adopted protegés; to advise, admonish, pray with, and for them, according as they might need. Having fulfilled their office, they have renewed their march, ‘staff and scrip,' in a straightforward way, to the next parish in the assigned round of their visitations, to enact the same scene, and so on till their work was done.

"Of course, they were variously received; though, for the most part, I believe they have been treated civilly, and their title to this enterprize not openly disputed. There has been

an unaccountable submission to things of this kind, proving indeed that the ministers thus visited were not quite manly enough; or that a public opinion, authorizing these transactions, had obtained too extensive a sway in their own connection, and among their people, to be resisted. By many, doubtless, it was regarded as one of the hopeful symptoms of this age of religious experiment.

"I have heard of one reception of these lay apostles, which may not be unworthy of record. One pair of them-for they went forth two and two,' and thus far were conformed to Scripture-both of them mechanics, and one a shoemaker, having abandoned their calling to engage in this enterprize, came upon a subject who was not well disposed to recognize their commission. They began to talk with him: • We have come to stir you up.'- 'How is the shoe business in your city?' said the clergyman to the shoemaker, who was the speaker; for it was a city from which they came. The

shoemaker looked vacant, and stared at the question, as if he thought it not very pertinent to his errand; and, after a little pause, proceeded in the discharge of his office: We have come to give your church a shaking.'— 'Is the market for shoes good?' said the clergyman. Abashed at this apparent obliquity, the shoemaker paused again; and again went on in like manner. To which the clergyman: "Your business is at a stand, sir, I presume; I suppose you have nothing to do.' And so the dialogue went on; the shoemaker confining himself to his duty, and the clergyman talking only of shoes, in varied and constantly-shifting colloquy, till the perverse and wicked pertinacity of the latter discouraged the former; and the shoemaker and his brother took up their hats, to shake off the dust of their feet,' and turn away to a more hopeful subject. The clergyman bowed them very civilly out of doors, expressing his wish, as they departed, that the shoe business might soon revive. Of

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course, these lay apostles, in this instance, were horror-struck; and it cannot be supposed they were much inclined to leave their blessing behind them.

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"I believe I do not mistake in expressing the conviction that there are hundreds, not to say thousands, of the Presbyterian and Congregational clergy, who will sympathize with me thoroughly in these strictures on the encroachments of the laity upon pastoral prerogative; who groan under it; who feel that it ought to be rebuked and corrected, but despair of it; and who know that their usefulness is abridged by it to an amount that cannot be estimated.*

* "The Rev. Mr. Reid mentions a very whimsical instance of the interference of the laity in every possible way. He says, that being at church one Sabbath,' there was one reverend old man, certainly a leader among them, who literally, as the preacher went on with his sermon, kept up a sort of recitation with him; as, for instance, the preacher continuing his sermon

The duty here inferred is, to deny ourselves—
Elder. God enable us to do it.

Preacher. It supposes that the carnal mind is enmity against God—

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