conspirators succeeded to the official stations in the churches, whose deadly wound was not healed. Both those ministers were finally absolved from the charge, there being no valid evidence which could be adduced against them.

But in this two-tongued world, "facing-both-ways," after the example of the primitive crusaders against heresy, some modern Church Courts have sanctioned the deceitfulness of their own familiars, and dispensed with the irregularities of their own brotherhood. A direct complaint for the violation of the moral law was made against a preacher by the members of his own congregation. A committee of the ecclesiastical body was appointed to explore all the facts. Having made all the necessary arrangements with the alleged delinquent, they set apart a time to meet the complainants, and to hear their evidence.

The first witnesses who were called upon were ridiculed; then puzzled with captious questions; next insnared into apparent contradictions; afterwards refused all opportunity of explaining themselves; then entangled in admissions which were construed as so entirely favorable to the preacher, as to invalidate their other statements; and finally so insulted by the "judicial committee," and their brother minister, that some of the cited parties left the meeting. Others refused to give their testimony because they could not be secured from a repetition of the gross indecorum into which the prior witnesses had been intrapped. At last, all of them openly protested against the competency of a committee who had evidently determined to banish impartial evidence; to pervert and conceal

the truth; to irritate the feelings of the injured; and to terminate all inquiry respecting the only subject of dissatisfaction. The consequence was this-the committee reported, that the minister was innocent, because there was no sufficient evidence, as the persons who alleged the improprieties against him were altogether unworthy of belief. Thus that case was dismissed, and the outraged brethren were obliged to submit to their unjust censure and unmerited reproach.

In one of the other cases already specified, the person who either directly inspired, or who secretly excited those falsifying trumpet-tongues of Common Fame, himself introduced the subject before the Church Court, with the necessary cant respecting the honor of religion; the general remarks upon the notoriously criminal conduct; the importance of examining the case to sustain the "character and dignity" of the church; and his deep concern for his lamented brother's alleged turpitude!—with other subtilty which is purloined from the hall of the inquisition.

After the customary forms, to impress the laymen with a conviction that every thing is done with impartial gravity, the complainant and some subordinate, who will say "ditto" to every thing which the Rabbi will announce and execute, are appointed a committee of spies to go about from house to house throughout the congregation, and to make inquiries.

During their progress by artful insinuations, by sly inuendos, by inveigling questions, and by proposing "matters of doubtful disputation" among the members, before they have half finished their intended hypocritical

search, the congregation are in an ungodly uproar of malicious "hard speeches." While the minister himself is probably almost the only person who is not apprized of the mischief; all of his friends, from different causes, being shut up in silence. As the preacher is absent from the conclave where the business first is discussed under the engagement of secrecy,-for the Judas, who conceals himself under the vizor and behind the ignis fatuus imagery of common fame, would not dare to utter his calumnious falsehoods in the presence of the injured-he may thus know nothing of the dastardly unchristian plot, until the indictment from the clerk of the Church Court is formally Idelivered to him.

No allegations against a minister of the gospel can be presented with so much facility, as those concerning the transgressions of the seventh commandment.

In ordinary cases, they are fatal to his usefulness, if not to his reputation. No acts are more difficult to be disproved; because they are generally stated so indeterminately, as to preclude the establishment of the negative. Besides which, there is no charge against a preacher which admits of witnesses being so easily deluded by the

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cunning craftiness" of Jesuits "who lie in wait to deceive, while they are on the prowl, employed on their visitation of slander. In numberless instances, the fact alone, that a committee are exploring the certainty of a minister's indecent behaviour toward women will metamorphose "the shadow of a shade" into a visible substantial reality; and in the estimate of weak, credulous and suspicious persons, will transform purity into indecorum, the

most virtuous social intercourse into sinful familiarity, and Christian courtesy into the wantonness of a libertine.

In one of the cases now cited, it is averred, that not only were the accusations dismissed, because they were not sustained by the evidence, but some of the witnesses solemnly attested upon oath, that they neither had given the committee of inquiry the information which had been presented in their name, nor had they ever heard of it, before they received the notice to attend upon the trial. The primary, probably the sole object of the secret cabal, however, had been obtained; for the ministers retired from their stations, and the persons who had been previously designated obtained a settlement.

It is also not a little remarkable, because the actors themselves seem to be altogether not less unconscious of the startling fact, than the Dominican Jesuit inquisitors are of the apocalyptic prophecies which promulge those "judicial procedures," that upon occasions of that kind, trials which are originated by the infamous clamor of Common Fame; Church Courts always exemplify the genuine attributes of the Beast which the Apostle John saw in Patmos, as he is described in Revelation. The "Ecclesiastical Judicatory or Court," as the Associate Presbytery of Albany denominate that antichristian thing, are like a leopard in their swiftness to do mischief, a bear in their tenacity to execute their odious and cruel purpose, and a lion in their greediness to devour their prey-commingling also "the two horns like a lamb" with its bleating while they "speak as a dragon."

There seems to be a resolute determination to accomplish their design, as if the lordship which they exercise "over God's heritage," and the pride and character, even the prolonged resistance of their ecclesiastical system, depended on their obstinacy to verify the accusation, and to crush their opponent, by the proof of guilt and the sentence of condemnation.

Examine the record of their "judicial procedures;" and however barefaced may be the iniquity, as it is detailed by themselves, and with all the artifices by which they conceal the truth in the case, after having obliterated its prominent features, still enough of the arcana is discernible to render the monster's ugliness shocking to the moral sense: for "Common Fame" stands before you in all the naked deformity of an incorrigibly wilful slanderer, and some protestant Church Courts, in that department often seem to be directly guilty of subornation of perjury; and are therefore more justly condemned than their progenitor, and their elder craftsmen of Portugal and Spain.

Some

A grand moral battle may be anticipated upon the subjeet of that "wolf in sheep's clothing," Common Fame. The permission, or rather the invitation which Church Courts have given that Cainite to take up his permanent residence in the fold of Christ, must be rescinded. minister of the gospel, it is to be feared, has yet to "resist unto blood, striving against sin," in the religious conflict with Common Fame and the Protestant inquisition, of which that demon fox is the cardinal prop and machinist. Should some humble, innocent follower of the Lamb be arraigned by that "sorcerer, who is a child of the devil,