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    counsel of God ? Where will he point out to us a church in which , if one of its clergy ventures to preach a doctrine at variance with that of the majority , he will not very soon be experimentally convinced that his vaunted freedom was nothing more than a shadow ? The very name , in short , of an established church precludes the idea of freedom j and our only subject of astonishment is , that any man of good understanding should so far mistake its nature as to look in it for that which he will never find . To this point M . Gaussen again reverts in p . 61 , where he says , that neither a mere hearer nor a minister ought , without very strong reasons , to separate himself from a church whose confessions of faith are in unison with the

    word of Qrod , and in the bosom of which a free profession of the whole truth may be made ; and he adds , that it is only when laws , or when men , put a restraint on conscience , that such a separation ought to be made . But here again we would ask , " Where is the established church in which no such restraint as this is imposed ? " We believe that none such can be found .

    In p . 44 , M . Gaussen argues in a much more manly style , that since the Church of Geneva is a national and a Presbyterian church , every one ought to submit to its acknowledged laws so long as he is a member of it , but that he is at liberty to leave whenever he feels his conscience restrained either by its relations with the civil government , or by its formularies of faith . The question then occurs , * ' What are the acknowledged laws and

    institutions of the Genevan Church ? " With a view to solve this question , M . Gaussen quotes an ordinance of the state , which declares that , " in order to avoid all danger , and that he who is received into the ministry may not hold any false doctrine , he is required to profess that of the holy prophets and apostles , as it is contained in the books of the Old and the New Testament , of which doctrine we have a summary in our catechism . " The catechism ,

    therefore , he sets up as expressing the creed of his national church ; and while he allows that it may be altered with the consent of the great and the small council of the city , he complains that changes have been silently and gradually introduced into it by the authority of the clergy alone . The validity of this charge we shall afterwards examine . We pass on to the latter part of his second letter , in which he complains , p . 58 , that the Company should be so strict with him in regard to the catechism , and yet

    so lax in the terms of admission to holy orders ; but is it not implied , we would ask , if not expressed , when a man enters into holy orders , that he engages to teach the catechism of his church , and , if so , that the Company have the right of enforcing the use of it ? He then again discusses the propriety of dissent , and expresses his astonishment that any of his colleagues should expect him to give up his living , and retire from the Established Church of his country . He repeats his protest against the exclusion of certain doctrines from the catechism , as well as his declaration that he

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    • The Pastors of Geneva and M . Gaussen . 611

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• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1831, page 611, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2601/page/35/