LITMIR.BIZ

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an ecclesiastical constitution by penal laws. It appears from the preamble to the act, that the declared design of it is to keep persons from deviating from the ecclesiastical discipline established by law, in the year 1708 and that under the penalties by this law enacted. But that they have no such authority, has been fully demonstrated in the foregoing pages, which I need not repeat. Whence it must follow, that the act is fundamentally wrong, being made without any authority. Be pleas’d to reflect one minute on this power challenged by this law, to correct, and that by penal laws, such disorders as are purely of an ecclesiastical nature, and see the consequence of it. One disorder to be corrected is, a minister’s preaching out of his own parish undesired by the minister and major part of the church where he shall so preach. If the civil magistrate has this power the act supposes, if he judges it to be a disorder for the minister to preach in his own parish on a week day, he may then restrain him: or if he thinks it a disorder that there should be any public prayers but by a set printed form, he may then restrain all to such a form. It is plain, if the civil magistrate has authority to correct ecclesiastical disorders, he has a right to judge what is a disorder in the church, and restrain the same. If he may execute this in one instance, he may in another: and every thing is on this principle liable to be disallowed in the worship of God, which does not suit with the civil magistrate’s opinion. Whatever he judges to be a disorder, is so by this principle, and may be restrained accordingly. And so farewell all Christian liberty. It signifies nothing to say, your civil magistrates are so sound in the faith, there’s no danger they will go so far. I hope so indeed with you; tho’ you can’t tell what those or others in succeeding times may do. It is no new thing for civil authority to make dreadful havock of the liberties and religion of Christians; but the argument, you see, proceeds upon the nature of things. The principle, that law stands upon, you may plainly see, is directly inconsistent in its own nature, with the unalienable rights of Christians. What sad effects have been felt in our own nation, in some former reigns, from this very principle’s being put in practice; who at all acquainted with history can be ignorant? While they were executing what they were pleased to call wholsome severities on dissenters, they were only in their judgment correcting disorders in ecclesiastical affairs. If this power belongs to the civil authority, as such, it must belong to those in one state as well as another; and is as justly challenged by the civil authority in France, as in New-England. Let it be but once supposed the civil magistrate has this authority, where can you stop? what is there in religion not subjected to his judgment? All must be disorder in religion, which he is pleased to call so; you can have no more of the external part of religion than he is pleased to leave you, and may have so much of superstition as he is pleased to enjoin under the head of order. So that this law stands on no better a foundation, than what infers the destruction of Christian liberty.

      Having made this general observation, I go on, to consider the first paragraph, which runs thus—

      That if any ordained minister or other person licensed as aforesaid to preach, shall enter into any parish not immediately under his charge, and shall there preach or exhort the people, he shall be denied and secluded the benefit of any law of this colony made for the support and encouragement of the gospel ministry; except such ordained minister or licensed person shall be expresly invited and desired so to enter into such other parish, and there to preach and exhort the people, either by the settled minister, and the major part of the church of said parish; or in case there be no settled minister, then by the church or society in said parish.

      The minister’s heretofore supposed right to have assistance and help from his brethren in the ministry by preaching, is hereby cut off. None may preach unless the major part of the church desire it; tho’ the minister and one half of the church and all the rest of the congregation, which make up much the greater part of the number, who have right to hear the word preached, are ever so desirous of hearing the word from another, and apprehensive (as the case may be) of the great necessity of it. Before this law was passed, I should have presumed, there was not one minister on the continent, but what thought he had good right to invite any orthodox minister to preach in his pulpit: not only ministers, but churches in every part of the world, have so supposed and practised. But it seems by this law this supposition is a mistake, and the practice a disorder in the church. Yet if the minister has no such right, how comes it to pass, that the greater part of his hearers are cut off from any right to hear such as may be ever so well qualified to instruct. The non-communicants, which perhaps make three quarters of the parish, are in one part of this paragraph consider’d as a cypher, and in another part as having full right to hear whom they desire, viz. in a parish where they have no settled minister. In such case, it is supposed by this law, they have right to hear any minister they desire tho’ not one church-member join with them in the desire; for they may make up a majority of the society without one communicant with them. Yet the day before, while the minister of such a parish was living, it seems, if the same persons had been desirous of hearing the same man, they are by this law cut off the privilege; if the minister’s desire too had been joined with them, it would have helped nothing: or rather (in short) as this law stands, this very circumstance of their having a minister extinguishes their right of hearing such preachers as they desire. Such now being the plain sense of this paragraph; I say then,

      II. That it is apparently inconsistent with itself, deprives ministers and particular Christians of their rights and liberties, and invests a lordly power in a small part of a parish-society, viz. a major part or one half of a church, over a worshipping assembly, since they never had nor can have any rightful power to hinder other Christians in the parish from hearing such ministers as they judge may promote their spiritual good, as by this law they are enabled to do.

      III. It invests an exorbitant power in ministers over a church and congregation. This may look very strange, especially when you reflect, that by the preamble to this law the ministers are represented as having departed from the established ecclesiastical discipline, and been guilty of disorderly and irregular practices; and therefore are such persons as are not fit to be left to conduct themselves, in their ministerial office, nor to be governed by their own ecclesiastical constitution, but must of necessity be laid under some extraordinary legal restraints. I say, they are thus plainly represented (whether truly, or not, is not the question) by the preamble; yet, nothwithstanding all this, they are by this law vested with an exorbitant power over the churches. Christians, it seems, must be strip’d of an invaluable branch of liberty Christ has vested them with, & the same must be lodged in that order of men, who are represented as unfaithful in the execution of their trust. For by this law every minister has not only power given him, to prevent any other minister’s preaching in his parish, not only if a small number desire it, but if the whole worshipping assembly desire it; not only in the pulpit, but in any private house, which is directly inconsistent with the rights of Christians: but also in case a parish be under a necessity of settling another minister thro’ the incumbent’s disability to discharge his pastoral office, it is put into his power to negative any choice they shall make of a minister, and so churches are really stript of their right of electing their own ministers. It is plain by the words of the law, none can preach in the parish without the settled minister’s consent: & if one preaches to day by his leave, and the whole worshipping assembly desire his continued preaching, he has it in his power by this law to prevent his preaching to-morrow. And therefore if a church can call and settle none (in such a case) but whom their present pastor pleases (as is certainly the case by this law), the right of electing their minister is taken from them. A supposed right in A, dependent on the will of B, is no right at all. And this, as I have heard, is the case of one church on Connecticut River, now groaning under this oppression: which may also prove the case of any, or of all other churches in that colony, if they remain under the misery of such a law.

      IV. The persons supposed to be criminal by this law, are subjected to an unreasonable punishment, and this too without any trial in the law, in any form whatever. The supposed crime is a minister or licensed candidate’s preaching in a parish where the incumbent and major part of the church have not invited: i.e. If the incumbent has invited with one half of the church and three quarters of the whole parish, or if the whole church and parish invite, and not the incumbent, or if there is not more than half of the church, or more than half of the society, where there is no incumbent; each of these is such a crime for which the punishment is, the denial and seclusion from the benefit of any law of the colony

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