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the name of
James Peirce will ever occupy a conspicuous place in the annals of religious liberty.
It was not his lot, like the worthies we have already commemorated, to contend against the magistrate and the judge, wielding the terrors of the law in support of an established faith.
The parties with whom he had to deal were happily divested of these formidable attributes, and unable to visit their opponents with fine and imprisonment; but they gave ample proof that the spirit was not wanting; and if they did not assume the character of persecutors in the worst sense, it was from a deficiency of power rather than of inclination.
Their proceedings, we fear, shewed but too plainly, that the old leaven was far from being as completely worn out as might have been supposed: there is, however, every reason to think, that the controversy excited on the occasion, notwithstanding the heat and violence with which it was conducted, was mainly instrumental in opening the eyes of great numbers to more just and liberal views, both of religious truth, and of the proper mode of conducting religious inquiries.
In this way the wrath of man is made to work out the righteousness of God, and his vehement passions and contentions with his brethren are over-ruled and directed to better purposes than were intended; so that what
