Page:Records of the Life of the Rev. John Murray.djvu/215

Rh amongst us, in the work of the Gospel, by the great Lord of the Vineyard, our friend and brother. This we do, from a full conviction, that the same God, who sent the first preachers of Jesus Christ, sent him; and that the same Gospel they preached we have from time to time received from him. Thus, believing him a Minister of the New Testament, constantly declaring the whole counsel of God, proclaiming the same divine truth that all God's holy prophets from the beginning of the world have declared; we cordially receive him as a messenger from God. And as it hath pleased God to open a great, and effectual door, for the preaching of His Gospel, by this His servant, in sundry parts of this great continent; whenever it shall please his, and our divine Master, to call him to preach the everlasting Gospel elsewhere, we will wish him God speed; and pray that the good will of Him, who dwelt in the bush, may accompany him, and make his way clear before him."

Thus, we repeat, the little congregation in Gloucester considered themselves an. They were conscious that they had, in every instance, demeaned themselves as good citizens, and that their utmost efforts had uniformly been embodied, for the advancement of the public weal; they felt themselves deservedly invested with the privileges and immunities of free citizens, entitled to those liberties, with which God and nature had endowed them, and which they believed to be secured to them by a constitution of government, happily established by the people of this commonwealth. Dissenting essentially from the doctrines taught by the established minister, they had borne an early testimony against his settlement; and they humbly hoped, it would be sufficient for them to believe the, and to adopt the pure system of morals contained therein, as the rule of their conduct, and the. They rejoiced in the liberty of free inquiry, guaranteed by the strong arm of government; and they felicitated themselves, that they had been ushered into being at a time, when that fearful period had gone by, which, arming the Religionist with the potent vengeance of civil authority, wrapped the whole world in a cloud of impenetrable darkness, debilitated the human intellect, by closing the door of free inquiry, and gave birth to eight hundred years of ignorance, and barbarism, unequalled by any preceding era; whence arose an awful chasm in the history of the world, and men ceased to think, because thinking was a crime. The Gloucesterians adopted the idea of a respectable writer, who considered Ordination as nothing more than the solemn putting a man into his place, and