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with them can pass in these times: adherence to God's word, and knowledge of it, makes the poor and naked so much more hateful in the sight of the professors of this time, and has no more effect with our Doctors than it had with the Jewish Rabbies. Hence the imprisonment of such as dare to obey God's word rather than theirs; and hence is it that meetings have been lately called by our Doctors, to defeat the very word of God, and to force every conscience from its obedience to theirs—said to be for the poor.
In Greenock, a meeting, as I am informed, was called for the poor, where neither Christ nor the Apostle of the Gentiles could have opened a mouth for the poor, had they been there. The Apostle tells us he fought with beasts at Ephesus, but even that would have been denied him there, because he was neither Doctor nor Heritor. I was told, at one of these late meetings of Reverend Gentlemen and Heritors, said to be for the poor, a Reverend Doctor observed, that he had been studying the plan before them for twenty years. But had he employed all that time to have his people honestly instructed, visited, and examined—the ignorant and scandalous of them kept back from eating and drinking damnation to themselves; nay, had he studied how unclean fornicators, adulterers, drunkards, &c. might be reclaimed, and prevented from bringing diseases and misery on themselves and connections; I will venture to say, one half that are now driven on the poor's funds thereby, might have been helpers of the poor, in place of consumers of their funds.[1] What then were all these twenty
- ↑ If the shepherd upon the mountains is in danger of neglecting his flock, and will not escape with impunity if he does; why should the shepherds of congregations of immortal souls be suffered in such neglect, to the ruin of both souls and bodies of many, and to the distress of others, through their indolence and breach of faith?
