Monthly Repository. No. CCXXXIII.] MAY, 1825. [Vol. XX. Mr. Hunter in Reply to Dr. J. P. Smith, on the Right of Presbyterians in their Chapels. SIR, T Bath, May 6, 1825. HE subject of Dr. Pye Smith's communication (208-211) is of such importance to the present race of Presbyterian Dissenters, that I wish to be allowed to offer a few remarks upon it; in which I hope to be able to shew that there is a material fallacy in his main argument, and an important misapprehension of an historical fact in what is the sixth head of his letter. In his exposition of the duties of trustees in general, he is doubtless in the main correct. It is for them to carry into execution the intention of their founder or testator. But it is evident that there are cases in which they may lawfully, and even meritoriously, depart from the strict letter of his instruction. A testator, for instance, may direct that a trust for the benefit of minors shall be managed in a particular way. Circumstances unforeseen arise which make it most inexpedient that the property shall be deposited according to the letter of his instructions. If the trustees are willing to submit to the increase of responsibility which a departure from their instructions may bring with it, there can be no moral wrong in their doing so on the contrary, they are in fact performing their duty with more conscientious propriety, than they would do were they to comply with the letter of their testator's requirement; and are, though against the letter, more strictly fulfilling his will. I mention this instance, not that it bears closely upon the subject before us, which will be seen to be not a case of specific injunctions being at variance with general intention and spirit, but to shew that Dr. Smith has drawn too closely the obligations by which trustees are bound, looking upon the subject not as a lawyer but as a Christian moralist, when he denies to trustees in general all right of deciding what is : VOL. XX. 2 L expedient in respect of their trusts, and of acting accordingly. In fact, every thing in this world that is prospective, is to be moulded and governed more or less by circumstances as they arise, all of which cannot be foreseen and provided for: and there is, therefore, in all such engagements a tacit understanding between the founder and the trustees, that while his great and general design is kept in view, they shall in the detail be at liberty to bend before new and unexpected positions of human affairs, and to ask themselves, What if our founder were living in these times is it probable he would now do? Dr. S. contends that nothing but physical impossibility, or an immorality in the requirements, can release a trustee from his obligation to conform in all respects to the directions of his founder. Would he then have the strict letter of the ancient statutes of several of our national colleges enforced, when the certain effect would be, that the colleges would be deserted of all students, and the munificent intentions of the founders be wholly frustrated? As long as mutability is the characteristic of sublunary affairs, and human beings limited in their prospective vision, no founder when he creates a trust which is to have perpetual endurance, can be supposed to look for the punctual performance of all his intentions through all successive centuries, but only that the persons to whom he commits the management of the trust will not wantonly and needlessly deviate. But taking Dr. Smith's own exposition of the duties of trustees, it does not appear to me that the trustees of our Presbyterian chapels have departed from the line of their duty. On the contrary, that so far from meriting the harsh epithets which have, it seems, been applied to them, I cannot see how they could consistently have acted differently from what they have done respecting them. In considering the subject, two questions appear to arise, in which the whole case is contained. First, what was the intention of the founders of the Presbyterian chapels in the erection of them? And, secondly, Are the present ministers and congregations assembling in them the legitimate successors of those persons for whose use they were erected. legal security of them. Doctrine was but at best a collateral consideration. If doctrine had been the leading consideration, the chapels would not have been erected at all: for in respect of doctrine the fathers of Presbyterian Nonconformity agreed with the church, were willing to subscribe her doctrinal articles, and would not therefore on that account have established an interest against her. The general tenor of Dr. Smith's communication would lead one to suppose that he regards the Presbyterian chapels as having been erected in assertion of certain points of Christian faith that they were rallying places for Calvinists or Arminians or people of some other particular faith, which prevailed among the first race of Presbyterian Nonconformists: that there were in those times the Trinitarian chapel and the Unitarian, and that the members of the latter had crossed over and taken possession of the chapel founded and endowed by the Trinitarians. The analogical case with which he concludes his letter has plainly this bearing, and such must be the impression which most readers would take from the general tenor of his letter. But no one knows better than Dr. S., that these chapels were not founded with a view to the maintenance of Trinitarian sentiments against Unitarian, or in assertion of any point which can strictly be called a point of faith. Any one so well acquainted with the history of Nonconformity as he is, knows that the intention of their erection was to afford ministers who were unable to comply with the terms of the Act of Uniformity, opportunities for the convenient and regular exercise of their ministry; and persons who were attached to their ministry, or who were dissatisfied with the impositions of the Act, opportunities for the convenient attendance upon them. By the erecting of these chapels they secured the benefit of the regular performance of public worship, unfettered by the language of the public liturgy, and of the performance of other Christian ordinances in what to them appeared a more scriptural or more edifying manner. This, and not the maintenance of any particular system of 'Christian faith, was the object in the erection of the chapels, and the creation of the trusts requisite for the That the intention of the founders of the Presbyterian chapels was that which I have now described, must be evident to every one who is acquainted with the religious history of this country at the period in question. The declaration of uses in the original compact between the founders and the trustees it is supposed is, nearly in all instances, couched in the most general terms. If there are any instances in which it is required of the trustees that they shall allow the build ing to be used by no congregation or minister who do not profess the doc trine of the Church of England or of the Assembly's Catechism, those instances would require a separate consideration. If there are any such at at all, they are exceedingly rare: the declaration of use being generally like that of the original trust deed of the Wolverhampton chapel, about which so much has been said, that the chapels were to be used for the worship of God by Protestant Dissenters. It is added perhaps in most instances, Of the Presbyterian denomination ; sometimes, of the Presbyterian or Congregational denomination; and perhaps in some of our smaller towns, where the number of Nonconformists of every denomination was but sufficient to erect and maintain one place of worship, those of the Baptist denomination might be joined with the others. But the great mass of the chapels which have been so long known as the Presbyterian chapels were founded for the worship of God by Protestant Dissenters of the Presbyterian denomination only; and as such they have continued to be used. In the fluctuations of human affairs some of our societies have become extinct: but where we still see them, the chapels have been used in uninterrupted succession as places where the Presbyterian societies assembled for public worship, the administration of the Lord's supper, catechizing, and, in many instances, the performance of the rites of baptism and sepulture. For these purposes are they now used by the Protestant Dissenters who as semble in them. Whatever constitutes identity in such an association with continual succession, is found in us. We see in our societies aged persons who were born and baptized in them long ago and young persons growing up to be their future supports. We see lying in the graveground which generally surrounds our meeting-houses, the forefathers of those who are now the members of our societies, and we can trace many of them in our baptismal registers to the time when first these societies were constituted, and in some instances to the very persons who were themselves the principal contributors to the erection of these chapels, and the actual members of their original trusts. Some families once Presbyterian may have returned to the bosom of the church. Others have come among us, but not to such an extent as to have changed the character of the body to which they have united themselves, but to have taken their character from it. To the present race of trustees the interest committed to the original trust has been conveyed by all the proper and legal forms. The ministers also, however unworthy they may be of the honour, are the legitimate successors of those who first occupied the pulpits in our Presbyterian chapels. The great majority of them were born in Presbyterian families, who had been members of that body since first Presbyterian Nonconformity had a name. Not a few are they who are of families that appear (like the Levites of old) to have been separated to the work of the ministry, having never in all their generations been without one or more of their members employed in the ministerial office. They have been educated in academies which were supported by the successive generations of Presbyterian Dissenters. Some of the first race of ministers were the persons who directed the education of those of the second: they again of the third: and, however we may come behind our predecessors in faith or knowledge, we owe what we are to our Presbyterian instructors, and they their ability to teach, to the Presbyterian tutors before them. They have also been successively elected to the ministerial office in particular congregations, by the suffrages of those congregations according to the primi tive use of the Nonconforming Presbyterian societies. Would Dr. S. have the trustees of their chapels turn round upon the ministers, and (if they have the power) dismiss them from their stations, and substitute others who have no connexion with the Presbyterian body? Where would be the justice and propriety of such a measure? Or shall they (if they have the power) dismiss the congregations from the chapels raised by their forefathers, and place in them a host of strangers who would thus be saved from the burthen of erecting places of worship for themselves? But, say Dr. S. and his friends, you have departed from the faith of the fathers of Presbyterian Nonconformity, and have therefore vacated your right to the use of the chapels erected by them. And if the chapels had been founded in assertion of points of faith, and not to afford opportunities for religious worship and the orderly performance of religious ordinances to those who would not comply with the provisions of the Uniformity Act, then might Dr. S. be right in his inference, that, having left the faith, you have no right to the chapel. But the present race of Presbyterians, though differing in points of faith from their forefathers, yet retain the impress of the great discriminating character. They are still opposed to the Church as by law established: they still protest against the impositions of the Act of Uniformity: and they still find the same necessity which their ancestors found for places of religious assembly apart from the Church. I agree with Dr. S., that our forefathers would have looked with concern upon the change which has taken place in the religious opinions of their posterity. But I am not so sure that they did not contemplate such a change, or at least something like it, at the time when the chapels were erected and the trusts formed. Few have an earlier date than the Act of : Toleration and the majority of trusts in the Presbyterian Nonconformist body are, it is believed, not older than about the year 1700, and some of them later. Now the average of Orthodoxy at that period was not the same with the average in the genera tion before. At least the importance of maintaining orthodox sentiments in opposition to those which were verging towards the Unitarian view of the subject, was not so sensibly felt as it might have been in the time of Vincent Alsop and other eminent and earlier Presbyterians. I do not inean to say that they were not orthodox in the wide signification of the term but they did not set their love of Orthodoxy against another principle which they had received, the duty of forbearing to fetter inquiry, and of bringing every doctrine to the test of its conformity to Holy Scripture, of which the decision was to be left to the private judgment of the individual. On this part of the subject, I would refer Dr. S. to the Catechism of his late friend Mr. Palmer, of Hackney, who will not be suspected of any very violent leaning towards Unitarianism. Under the head of "The Reasons of the Protestant Dissent from the Established Church," the first question is, "What are the grand principles on which the Protestant Dissenters ground their separation from the Church by law established?" To which he gives this answer: "The right of private judgment and liberty of conscience, in opposition to all human authority in matters of religion: the supremacy of Christ as the only head of his Church, and the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures as the rule of faith and practice." Now it appears to me that before the creation of these trusts, these principles had begun to produce their natural effect, a diversity of religious sentiment; for no one can suppose that when these principles are conscientiously maintained and acted on, there will be a continued uniformity of religious faith: but rather that, what has in point of fact taken place, was foreseen, that there would be a declension, be it greater or less, from what at the beginning was the average of faith among those who professed the principle. And to this, as it seems to me, may be in part attributed, the absence of all restriction in respect of doctrine in which the Presbyterian trustees were left by their founders. The year 1719 was not long after the date of the original trusts. Many of the original trustees and the founders of Presbyterian societies were then in being: and Dr. S. is not ignorant that the zeal for Orthodox opinions was at that time much reduced from what it may have been, and that in the estimation of the majority of the Presbyterian ministers in and about London, it sunk before what appeared to them the superior importance of maintaining freedom of inquiry and the right of private judgment. But it appears to me absurd that a religious body shall admit a principle, and then be declared dissolved in consequence of the natural and necessary operation of that principle. If it was a principle admitted by them that neither themselves nor their posterity should be fettered in their religious inquiries, their posterity must have a right to adopt and to profess any scriptural truth to which their studies in the word of God may have led them. The founders and original trustees and ministers of these chapels might not, perhaps, have foreseen the whole extent to which their principle would lead their successors. But we cannot suppose them to have been so ignorant as not to have foreseen that such changes would take place and it seems to me that if they had wished, or meant to counteract them, we should have found clauses to that effect introduced into the trust deeds, which might with the utmost ease have been done by them. The declension moreover has been gradual. One point of Orthodoxy was dropped after another. I would ask Dr. S., What quantum of unbelief disqualifies for the possession of their property, and whether he is not acquainted with instances in the very first race of trustees, congregations and ministers, in which there were departures from the Orthodoxy of such men as Alsop and the other founders of Presbyterianism? So that if a change of sentiment were to disqualify for the possession of these chapels, the very persons by whom they were erected must, in some instances, themselves have left the chapels which their own-hands had built. The changes too have taken place through the whole body. Congregations, trustees and ministers have gone together. For the trustees to eject the congregation were to eject themselves and to leave the chapels among the waifs and strays of society, not to be used at all for the purposes for which they were erected, or to be taken possession of by persons who neither in themselves nor their ancestors had borne the burthen of their erection, and who in many points of considerable importance, entertain not a similarity of sentiment with those by whom they were founded. Dr. S. further says, that we have no right to the name of Presbyterians, because we have nothing of the Presbyterian discipline among us. But at what period since the establishment of the trusts in question did any of the Presbyterian discipline exist in the body which, notwithstanding, was called Presbyterian? At no period since the foundation of these chapels have there been "Courts of Review," &c.: so that, according to the criterion which Dr. S. would establish, there never was any right to the name of Presbyterian among the Presbyterian Nonconformists, since they had any chapels amongst them. And perhaps the name, like the name Methodist, never was peculiarly appropriate. The truth is, that the name was acquired before they began to take their place as a religious denomination of Dissenters. It was given to them at a time when they were labouring to supersede the episcopal form of Church Government in England by the Presbyterians. A name once acquired usually adheres to a party; and this name was continued to them when they appeared in the character of Dissenters, though they were then little strenuous for the Presbyterian discipline, and in fact never attempted any general establishment of it amongst them. From the first foundation of these chapels they were what, in this respect, they now are, congregational or independent: i. e. so far as each congregation was regarded, competent to the direction of its own affairs, with no foreign interference, and acknowledging no spiritual superiority. This is now the case. So that it seems, if there is any thing in a name, the modern Presbyterians, can with as much propriety and fairness as their forefathers, call themselves by the name. Under the sixth head of his letter, Dr. S. insinuates, that many of the chapels now called Presbyterian would be found to have been built by Congregationalists. I believe that it is much more probable that many of the chapels now occupied by the persons who call themselves Independents, would be found on inquiry to have been erected by the Presbyterians: the Presbyterians having been at the time when these chapels were erected so vast a majority of the whole body of Dissenters, and through their wealth, so much more able to give that direction to their zeal. "Of one important instance" he says "he can speak with certainty. The Upper Chapel at Sheffield was built in 1700, for Mr. Jollie and his church, who were strictly Congregationalists." It is too much to say that Mr. Jollie and his church were strict Congregationalists, since it is not unknown, I presume, to Dr. S., that Mr. Jollie was ordained pastor of that church, not in the Congregational but the Presbyterian manner. This is expressly recorded by a Presbyterian minister of great eminence, who took a part in the ordination of Mr. Jollie, and who regarded the circumstance as a gratifying proof of a disposition to union between the Congregationalists and Presbyterians at that time (1681) residing at Sheffield. From the academy, over which Mr. Jollie presided, issued more ministers who took their places among the Presbyterians, than In a life of him * Oliver Heywood, of Northowram, one who was ejected by the Act of Uniformity, and continued his diligent labours in the ministry till his death in 1702. An attempt has been made to deprive the Presbyterians of the credit of this venerable name. published by the Rev. Dr. Fawcett, p. 79, is what purports to be a copy of a license granted to him in 1672, in which he is described as of the Congregational persuasion. Where the Dr. met with this license I know not: but the original license which he took in that year is certainly in possession of his descendants, and he is described in it as of the Presbyterian persuasion, |
