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Untitled Article
tor , is one way in which I account for the decline of our Presbyterian congregations in the generation immediately succeeding to that of the ejected ministers . The successors of these
worthies were most of them men of the same stamp . Trained up under their immediate instruction , they imbibed much of their spirit , and proved able and useful ministers of the New Testament . Their
congregations also were many of them large and respectable ; though , upon the whole , it is certain that the Presbyterian interest was not so prosperous as in the times of their predecessors . The cessation of this second race of ministers produced a new era in the history of Presbyterian societies . Their successors were not equally successful in keeping up large congregations ; but during the last half century , which has produced a new order of things ,
the declension has been more visibly awful . The cause of this remains to be stated , and I am afraid that the blame here will ascend from the hearers to their teachers . In what I am about to
advance , I know that I shall be treading upon tender ground ; but as I speak in the confidence of truth , and to persons who are not very ceremonious in their treatment of those who differ from them , I do not know that much apology will be necessary . When I speak of Calvinism , I attach no imporlance to it any farther than as it corresponds with the oracles of divine truth ; but that there are certain doctrines which form
the peculiar glory of the evangelical dispensatiou and arc the very life and soul of a gospel ministry , the voice of scripture and
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of experience fully demonstrates - To defend these doctrines is not the design of the present paper . But whether they be true or not , and should it turn out that man is not a guilty creature , and stands
in no need oi a mediator , my argument will remain just the same . To lay no stress upon the points in dispute between Calvin and Arminius , it is a fact beyond contradiction , that those doctrines which relate to the ruin of
man by sin and his recovery by Jesus Christ , formed prominent features in the preaching of the founders and earlier ministers of our Presbyterian churches . It is also a fact equally certain , that when these doctrines were kept
back From , the people , and in their room were substituted dry , critical discourses , and harangues on the nature and beauty of virtue , the audience gradually declined . What Mr . Job Orton observed
respecting Mr . Cardale , a learned Socinian preacher , may be applied with equal effect in a hundred other instances . After preaching about forty years at Evesham , u at the last ( says Mr . Orton ) he had about twenty people to hear him , having ruined a fine congregation b }^ his very ] earned , dry , and critical discourses , an extreme heaviness in
the pulpit , and an almost total neglect of pastoral visits and private instruction / ' What has been the consequence of this state of things is well known . Scores of V % J •¦ AJ \^ -t « - > K * J W W *— ' ¦*¦ * *¦ »¦ «¦ ¦• v ^ - w w Jt M W ^ - ^ ^ - ^ » - — * X ^ AvJ ^ r J * .
meeting-houses have been shut up ? and either gone to decay or fallen into the hands of upstart and self-created preachers , who throw no real weight into the dissenting scale . An inspection of the few remaining Presbyterian
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6 * 0 On the Decline of Presbyterian Congregations .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1810, page 60, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2401/page/12/
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