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notice ? Surely the Synod would not use a brother minister worse than they would a common servant . The manner of the thing proved the malignity of the spirit in which it was engendered . —No notice had been given to Mr . P . of the intended motion .
Mr . Magill observed , that he had received the Commissioner ' s report so very shortly before the meeting of Synod , that he had uot time to write . [ Mr . Montgomery then put some questions to Mr . Magill , regarding his having consulted
with Lord Feirard on this subject ; and it appeared that Mr . Magill had obtained of him a copy of Mr . Porter ' s evidence on the second Tuesday of May . ] Mr . Montgomery then went on to observe , that it would be well if the clergymen and members of the Established Church
would purify themselves , before they cast a stigma on them . He lamented the aspect of affairs in that Synod , and asked why Mr . Porter should be punished for doing what Mr . Cooke had done ?—[ He then read an extract from Mr . Cooke ' s
evidence , in 1825 , iu which he had said , that " very few of the Arian members of the Synod were willing to lavow it . " ] " You accuse Mr . Porter of bringing a charge of hypocrisy against you , and yet Mr . Cooke had done the same thing twelve months before without remark .
In the name of consistency , what do you mean ? It is now a century and a year since you drove out one portion of your body ; and you are now about to place a moral stigma on your character , which ages cannot remove . " Mr . Porter was a civil officer , paid by Government ; and that body had no right to interfere in an ecclesiastical mauner , and punish such officer for matters of opinion . On these grounds he opposed the motion .
Mr . Porter said , that his personal feelings dictated that he should have remained silent , but this might be construed into disrespect . He denied that the present motion had been rashly made , and said that for many years it had been in a state of concoction . He said that
these were not random assertions , for there were two gentlemen in the house who had been solicited to join iu the cabal against him . Still , however , as the season drew near , their courage began to fail . It was found that no effective strength had been collected . The good
work was of course necessarily delayed till a more convenient season ; and the mortification of seeing Mordecai the Jew seated at the king ' s gate , had to be a little longer endured . He said the season for the attack had at length arrived : and although some were dissatisfied with him on account of religion , and some on ac-
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count of politics , yet he felt satisfied , the whole of the present proceedings had their origin in personal hostility . Mr . Magill and Mr . Simpson were mere tools in the hands of designing men . Mr . Porter felt assured that his political feelings had their share in producing the present procedure ; and that his advocacy of Roman Catholic Emancipation had
been partly instrumental in producing the present motion ; and eutered his protest against the unjust and ungenerous principle , that he was to be held accountable , as their clerk , for any thing not illegal or dishonourable , which he might conceive himself called on to say or do , as a free-born Irishman . He declared himself favourable to Catholic
Emancipation : and protested against being made a victim to party for having merely avowed himself friendly to a measure which had on three several occasions received the stamp of the Synod ' s approbation . The present procedure agaiust him could hardly originate in that ; and as to the prejudice which might
exist against him on account of his religious sentiments , he had Mr . Cooke ' s authority for stating that he held those sentiments with between thirty and forty members of the body . —Differences of opinion had long existed ; and he would not insult the body by supposing , that so long as it retained Arians in communion , it would exclude them from offices of
ecclesiastical emolument . The Synod had chosen for its Moderators , Dr . Campbell , Dr . Crawford , Dr . Nelson , Dr . Dickson , Mr . Cuming , ( who was Mr . Porter ' s immediate predecessor in the Clerkship , ) Mr . Shaw , Mr . Bankhead , Mr . Dunlop , Dr . William Nelson , and Dr . Malcolm ,
who were all deceased ; he would not name the living man , of new-light sentiments , who had been chosen to fill their chair , as it might be considered invidious ; but as the Moderatorship was a spiritual or ecclesiastical office , and as men of those sentiments had been chosen to
that office , without detriment to the religious character of the body , surely their admission to the secular office of clerk could not be injurious . But the salary , the money to be derived from the situation , that was the rub against the grain , which had set on end ministers' sanctimonious
bristles . They admitted men of openly acknowledged new-light principles to ministerial communion and places of spiritual trust , but were quite horrified at the idea of appointing a person of that description to a civil situation , if it happened to be lucrative . Mr . Porter contended
that the situation of clerk was always held during life or good behaviour ; and although the words , «< Mr . such a-one
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Intelligence . —Synod of Ulster . 705
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 705, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/73/
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