the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[191] as were convenient for the purpose of public worship,—there seems no reason why they might not be left to settle their internal constitution in any way they pleased. But when a multitude of such churches are banded together into one great body or sect, either as established under the auspices of the state, invested by its authority with rich endowments, political privileges, and a power of interfering with the social rights of their fellow Christians, or as combined on some plan of association, more or less voluntary, into a regularly organized community, whose members seek to exercise lordship over each other, or to engage with other similar bodies in the struggles for sectarian preponderance, the case is wholly altered. The act of exclusion now assumes a new character, because it affects the political rights, the secular interests, or the social position of the excluded party. In such a case it is idle to talk of heresy as being determined by the act of a body so constituted, or of rendering the individual affected by it a heretic. The heresy is within them;—it forms an essential part of their own constitution;—it is they who are the true heretics, in exact proportion to the degree in which they suffer themselves to be influenced by that evil spirit of sectarianism, which is the bane of the present plan of religious association, and utterly adverse to Christian charity and brotherhood.

In 1744, on the death of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Hunt, Mr. Foster received an invitation to succeed him in the pastoral charge of the congregation at Pinners' Hall. His connexion with the Baptist society in Barbican, in conjunction with