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worship , the administration of the Lord ' s supper , catechizing , and , in many instances , the performance of the rites of baptism and sepulture . For these purposes are they now used bv the Protestant Dissenters who as-J m * WW "T » . Whatever
semble in them . constitutes identity in such an association with continual succession , is found in us . We see in our societies aged persons who were born and baptized in them long ago : and young persons growing up to be their future
support * . We see lyiflff in the graveground which generally surrounds our meeting-houses , the forefathers of those who are now the members of our societies , and we can trace many of them in our baptismal registers to the time when first these societies
were constituted , and in some instances to the very persons who were themselves the principal contributors to the erection of these chapels , and the actual members of their original trusts . Some families once Presbyterian may have returned to the bosom of the church . Others have come
among us ,, but not to such an extent as to have changed the character of the body to which they have united themselves , but to have taken their character from it . To the present race of trustees the interest
committed to the original trust has been conveyed by all the proper and legal forms . The ministers also , however unworthy they may be of the honour , are the legitimate successors of those who first occupied the pulpits in our Presbyterian chapels . The great
majority of them were born in Presbyterian families , who had been members of that body since first Presbyterian Nonconformity had a name . Not a few are they who are of families that appear ( like the Levites of
old ) to have been separated to the work of the ministry , having never in all their generations been without one or more , of their members employed in the ministerial office . They have been educated in academies which
were supported by the successive generations of Presbyterian Dissenters . Some of the first race of ministers were the persons who directed the education of those of the second : they again of the third : and , however we naay come behind our predecessors in
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faith or knowledge , we owe what we are to our Presbyterian instructors , and they their ability to teach , to the Presbyterian tutors before them . They have also been successively elected to the ministerial office in particular
congregations , by the suffrages of those congregations according to the primitive use of the Nonconforming Presbyterian societies . Would Dr . S . have the trustees of their chapels turn round upon the ministers , and ( if they have the power ) dismiss them from their stations , and substitute others
who have no connexion with the Presbyterian body ? Where would be the justice and propriety of such a measure ? Or shall they ( if they have the power , ! dismiss the congregations
from the chapels raised by their forefathers , and place in them a host of strangers who would thus be saved from the burthen of erecting places of worship for themselves ?
But , say Dr . S . and his friends , you have departed from the faith of the fathers of Presbyterian Nonconformity , and have therefore vacated your right to the use of the chapels erected by them . And if the chapels had been founded in assertion of points of
faith , and not to afford opportunities for religious worship and the orderly performance of religious ordinances to those . who would not comply with the provisions of the Uniformity Act , then might Dr . S . be right in his inference , that , having left the faith , you
have no right to the chapel . But the present race of Presbyterians , though differing in points of faith from their forefathers , yet retain the impress of the great discriminating character . They are still opposed to the Church
as by law established : they still protest against the impositions of the Act of Uniformity : and they still find the same necessity which their ancestors found for places of religious assembly apart from the Church .
I agree with Dr . S ., that our fore ^ fathers would have looked with concern upon the change which has taken place in the religious opinions of their posterity . But I am not so sure that they did not contemplate such a change , or a ' t least something like it , at the time when the chapels were erected and the trusts formed . Few have an earlier date than the Act of
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on the Right of Presbyterians in their Chapels . 259
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1825, page 259, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2536/page/3/
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