Page:The Judicial Capacity of the General Convention Exemplified.djvu/5



This pamphlet contains a foil and accurate account of a matter which was forced upon the General Convention, in 1854, by the action of its Executive Committee, and which has since obtained some notoriety through the publication, in the Convention's organs, of two reports, both of which are singularly at variance with the facts and evidence in the case, and singularly unjust to innocent and aggrieved parties.

The pamphlet is designed exclusively for receivers of the doctrines of the New Church, and more especially, the members of the General Convention.

Copies will be sent, in the first instance, to the Rev. Thomas Wilks, and every member of the Executive Committee of the Convention; and I shall wait awhile—perhaps three or four weeks—to hear any suggestions which those gentlemen may have to offer in relation to the matter, before circulating the pamphlet more widely. I do this, because I prefer to err on the side of too great forbearance, rather than on the opposite side ; and because I can conceive of one way—only one—in which those brethren may prevent the general circulation throughout the New Church, of the facts herein set forth.

In presenting the facts and evidence in this case in a printed form, I am not prompted by any personal feeling, nor by a wish to injure any one, but by the hope of adjusting, in some measure at least, a great wrong, to which the General Convention has now become a party, being itself involved in the wrong through its repeated efforts to shield the guilty.

If gross and cruel calumnies, when uttered by the friends of hierarchy against it opponents, are to be treated by organized bodies of men as venial offences, or no offences at all—are to be hushed up or altogether overlooked, and the calumniators elevated to offices of dignity in those bodies, then there is small hope for order, peace or quietness among brethren. When a single individual sides with the wrong, and pronounces the guilty innocent, it is sad enough. But how much more sad, to see a large and organized body of men ally itself with the wrong, and lend the weight of its influence to screen the guilty and condemn the guiltless.

I have many reasons for placing on record and in a readable form the facts and evidence in this case ; but I shall give only a few of them.

1. First, it is a duty which I think I owe to myself. For the General Convention, through its Committee on the Journal, first gave publicity to this matter; and in its published report upon it, in 1855, 1 am virtually charged with having brought false accusations against one of the brethren, and with having otherwise offended, in this particular case, against the divine law. Let the candid reader judge whether I am justly amenable to any such charge.

2. Second, it is due, I think, to Mr. Wilks, that this statement should be given to the New Church public; for he will then have an occasion, and indeed will feel called upon, to make equally public the evidence which was