[
283]
to communicate any
validity to certain ordinances when administered by a person duly ordained, which they would not otherwise possess,—then he conceived it, and we think justly, to be a groundless and pernicious delusion; and a compliance with any outward ceremony which has usually been connected in the popular view with an imagined or pretended right to communicate such powers, ought by all means to be avoided.
The frank and open declaration of these sentiments in the terms which have just been quoted well illustrate the character of the man; and it is also a valuable record, as indicating the views on this subject entertained and acted on at this period by several of the most influential men of the denomination to which by this act he attached himself, and who by taking a part in his formal reception into their body not only gave him the right hand of fellowship, but virtually, if not openly, disclaimed all pretensions to sift his creed, or to demand pledges and confessions from future candidates for ordination.
It may, however, be doubted, whether the freedom thus exercised was in all respects acceptable to some of those who had invited him to be their minister, and in whom the old leaven of Presbyterianism, as it had existed a century before in all its rigour, may not yet have been altogether worked out. They may, perhaps, have been startled at the entire overthrow of the barriers against the intrusion of unsound teachers, established by ancient institutions, of which only the shadow or the name was now retained, and also at the liberty asserted by their new minister,
