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has inhaled the fumes of the midnight lamp , and perhaps drawn disease into his vitals , arid has ransacked and perplexed his brain in order to set in order the valuable truths of a religion which has the promise of this life and of that which is to come , he is to be thought paid by a paltry pittance , which will barely keep his children from starving and himself from a jail ?
But what is the general fact ? Stipends have in roost places lowered , as every necessary of life has risen in price ; and still our congregations require men of
education and of character to enter , tain and to instruct them , while they are luxuriantly seated in their quilted pews on a Sabbath . The salaries of excisemen and of custom-house officers have been
doubled , because they could not live without it . And , while a government , oppressed by an
incalculable weight of debt , have found it necessary to increase the pay of those servants , without whom their pleasure could never be performed , we have even heard the illiberal , the base insinuation thrown out , by some who pretend to an esteem for the Christian ministry , that ,
" they pay enough , " and that i € their ministers are as well off as others of the community . '' I have known the man , if 1 may dignify him by the name of man , who has evinced such feelings , who , with a furious profession of love for the
simple unadulterated doctrines of the gospel , has withdrawn his paltry guinea , because his minister toiled for the means of a respectable existence , and pleaded for an apology that he would not keep him in luxury ; and I have mlso known one who could spehd
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scores of pounds on the fashionable education of a daughter , but could not afford to continue a small subscription to the church of Christ . Can such folks and
the like of them , love the gospel with its sacred doctrines ? Can they wish to see them spread yet farther and more generally known in the world ? Do they recollect that miraculous gifts ceased with
the apostles , and that the Christian labourer is , according to every principle of common honesty , as much worthy of an adequate hire , as any other human being ? Or must we , unawed by that spirit of liberality , to whose
dictates it becomes us in most cases to submit , reply to them as Peter once replied to a worldly-minded professor : — " Away with thee and thy money ! Thou hast neither part nor lot in this doctrine . "—( ActsvVu . 20 . —Wakefield s Translation . )
Let professors consider whether their religion be worth any thing to them : if it be , it must be worth a great deal . And let them determine whether it be necessary for their pleasure , for their spiritual improvement , and for the ge .
neral welfare of society , that a set of men be educated in a liberal manner to give them private counsel and public edification ; and let
them calculate the reasonable service , as they calculate the business of their manufactories , counting houses and shops ; and they will acknowledge the complaint is not unfounded , which is made by
their faithful servant , Your constant Reader , A Protestant Dissenter .
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STO The Dissenting Minister ' s Complaint .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1813, page 370, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2429/page/14/
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