about schism and the history of the church, and of division in it grow ing out of such assemblies, was new knowledge strangely learned, and never possessed before the reading of this article. He speaks of these men "as pious and sober-minded." They speak of them as raging and passionate men, using vile and illtempered language against the missionaries and their friends.

But says Mr. S., the missionaries expressed themselves satisfied with my explanations of innocence at the conference, and we forever buried the matter. This he tells us in his vindication. This he tells the missionaries in his correspondence with them on hearing of the charges against him at Rochester-and this be reiterates in his reply, with many words of forgiveness under injury, which would all be very well, provided the case were first clearly proved on which side the injury lay. Of this, the missionaries say, that they might have said that they were satisfied that he did not do the thing from personal malice, but with the reasons of his doing such a thing they never were satisfied. This they say to him and the publicand they say farther, that they have ever ascribed this and every other hostile act, to his peculiar views of duty, growing out of his views of the church and of the evil of an unauthorized ministry, &c. ; to all which he replies, that to reason from a man's principles, is very impertinent and unjust, and that for him to define his principles would be to turn his reply into a theological essay! They are so kind as to be lieve that his principles were not so exclusive in 1836-38, as when he returned; to which he replies, by very courteously saying, that neither at the one time nor the other, did he believe them of the authorized ministry. They tell him that he received the sacrament from the hands of such as they at first, but would not afterwards. He replies, that he

longed so much for the grace of the sacraments, after being deprived for two years, that he took for once the sacrament from hands which could give no sacramental grace; and adds, that he was then a deacon and could not consecrate, and afterwards was a priest and had no occasion,-to do what? Why, to receive from hands that were not even deacon's and could not consecrate at all!

If these considerations be added to Mr. S.'s own story, which of itself condemned him, they leave him in a most unenviable position. He has not, and he can not justify himself. He may be innocent, but he has not proved his innocence. Protestations and readiness to forgive his opposers, are singularly out of place. They not only do not supply the want of arguments, but in such want, are themselves an argument against the man who uses them. The missionaries not only are justified in their charges, but they could not avoid the obligation to urge them.

Our limits will not allow us to remark upon Mr. S.'s vindication from the charges of " co-operating with Mr. Badger," and "of coinciding with Papists, in their opposition to evangelical religion." The first he denies, but without a fact or an argument. The second he does not "understand." Our readers will easily understand and believe both, from the statements already given.

Mr. S. endeavors to produce the impression, that the consequences of this interference were very slight, that the closing the meeting was a very insignificant thing, and that as this is all that has been alledged against him, it is a great ado about nothing. The reply to this is obvious-if they were slight in fact, that does not prove that serious and even terrific issues were not risked. He that fires a gun which refuses to be discharged, is guilty of all the lives which would have been destroyed. These Armenians might, as he well

knows, have presented the paper to the Patriarch and he to the Sultan, and the Turkish sword might have leaped from its scabbard-and Mr. S. either in rashness or crime risked all this. For it he is guilty. If thoughtlessness is his excuse, let that be urged. If his duty to his church and his horror of schism, let him hug these to his heart, and get all the comfort which they can give. But on this point, we quote from an unpublished letter, written in answer to Mr. S.'s appendix, and dated at Constantinople, Oct. 10, 1844.

"And now we are prepared to answer the questions was Mr. Southgate responsible for the suspension of our Armenian service? The object of his appendix seems to be, to make the impression that this was the chief charge brought against him, and that it is entirely false. We know not what newspapers may have said, but we have never referred to the suspension of our meeting, as the most disastrous result that has followed his unfavorable representations to the Armenians, in connection with showing them the Herald. That it was one result, however, is certain, and all Mr. Southgate's ingenuity can not show it to be otherwise. It is true, as we have said, that we closed our meeting voluntarily, and not by any compulsion, and yet it was a choice between two evils, and we were placed in that dilemma by Mr. Southgate's course. The most mischievous consequences of that course, however, were not the suspension of the service, but the diverting of men's minds from things spiritual to things formal; and starting among them questions, that lead to contention about external things, and thus creating animosities and divisions, and drawing them away from the great object of seeking the salvation of the soul. It is impossible to estimate the magnitude and duration of these evils. The evil consequences of suspending for a few weeks our

service, were comparatively slight in their nature, and temporary in their duration; but the consequences of thus interrupting the progress of religious enquiry, even in a few minds, and diverting the thoughts from that which is fundamental and eternal, to that which is external and comparatively trifling, are fearful indeed; and it is impossible to tell when and where they will end. We have no fears for the work which God has begun among the Armenian people, but we have seen enough to convince us, that many who might otherwise have sought and found the truth, and renouncing all confidence in forms and ceremonies, have rested upon Christ alone for salvation, will, in consequence of the efforts of the two or three disaffected individuals alluded to, live and die under the grossest error and delusion. And we regard Mr. Southgate, as bearing no small share in the responsibility of all these results. It is vain for him to attempt to shake off the responsibility on the plea that the minds of those upon whom he directly operated, were previously prepared for acting as they did, in hostility to the preaching service, and to our other labors, or that what he did in the matter, was just the performance of one single act, in which he had no intention of producing all the results that have followed. It would be a poor excuse for a man who had set a city on fire, to say that he found a house in it already filled with combustible materials, by somebody who evidently intended to fire the city, and all he did was to communicate a mere spark to the tinder, and that without the intention of making such devastation. We do not suppose that Mr. Southgate had all the results of this one act in full view before him at the time he did it, nor do we suppose that he, or any other human being, can even now tell what all its fearful consequences will be; but it is nevertheless true, that he is, in a

very important sense, responsible for them all. That city might never have been burned, notwithstanding all the preparations made, had that reckless man never struck the spark into the tinder; and that preaching service might never have been suspended, nor these wavering friends become decided and virulent enemies, nor those other minds have been prejudiced and confirmed in error, had it not been for Mr. Southgate's one act of translating the passage in the Herald, which he has quoted; and his comments upon it. We do by no means allow however, that this is his only attempt to prejudice the minds of the people against us, and interfere with our work. We have satisfactory evidence that he has done this in repeated instances."

2. Has Mr. Southgate made good the charge which he urges against the American Board? Mr. S.'s way of conducting a vindication is a little anomalous. He does not seek to show that the charges can not be true, which is the ordinary and ap. proved method with honest men; but he strives to prove that those who made them were influenced by bad motives. It is very well that he says in his second pamphlet, that his first was "styled unfortunately by a friend-a Vindication," and that in a letter to the Church Chronicle he has the grace to acknowledge that the greater part of it is directed against the American Board itself.

The charge is, that the American Board has from the first been hostile to Episcopal missions at the East. In this hostility he finds the solution of the readiness to believe and magnify the charges made against himself. This charge, in the form which he brings it, we affirm to be false, and we can not see how Mr. S. could fail to see it to be false. To one method of conducting Episcopal missions it is opposed, and must be opposed. To another method of conducting these Vol. III.

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missions it is most cordial, and to Episcopal missions and Episcopal missionaries it was most friendlylong before Mr. S. conceived the idea of carrying into that church the missionary spirit to which he has been so untrue. The quotations which Mr. S. gives from the reports and correspondence of the Board, all have reference to the one class of Episcopal missions, and to quote them as applying to the other, is deceitful in fact and if done with knowledge on the part of the writer, is deceitful in design. In England, these two classes of missions are conducted by different societies. In the American branch of the Episcopal church, differences are not acknowledged to exist, and hence Mr. S. must not allow that he has changed his views upon catholicity, and Bishops McIlvaine and Doane are alike responsible for such a man as Bishop Southgate. Hence too, remarks and efforts by the friends of the Board, directed against missions after the highest style of catholicity-missions which are to theirs what that of Saul on his way to Damascus was to the apostolic church-are quoted by Mr. Southgate as proving hostility to all Episcopal missions.

The facts are these. In England there is on one side, "The Society for promoting Christian Knowledge" and "The Venerable Society for propagating the Gospel," and on the other, "the Church Missionary Society." The former of the first two was started as a conventicle or prayer-meeting, among the Methodistical portion of the church of England about the year 1700, and the latter was never an organ or branch of the church. Recently they have been cried up as the only societies that can be consistently patronized by the true churchman. Their motto is Catholicity. The Church Missionary Society on the other hand, though of the church of England, believes

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more in propagating the gospel" and "Christian knowledge," than in propagating" the church." With the missionaries of this last society and those like them from this country, the American Board has been most cordial. It has indeed held from the first, that for two societies of different denominations to occupy the same field of labor, must occasion inquiry, perplexity, and dispute among the natives; and for one to thrust itself in where another was already planted, was 66 an interference." For the agents of the Oxford party in England to thrust themselves upon the Eastern churches, and to seek to prejudice the minds of the bigoted natives, and to destroy their confidence in their missionaries as "unauthorized" and "unordained"-they have held to be more, and have looked upon them as in effect "coinciding with the papists" and riveting the bonds of formalism. Of their efforts it has spoken freely-and against them, its friends lift up their prayers to God. Mr. S. must have known all this for aught that we can see. If he did know it, he has spoken "deceitfully for God."

Besides these quotations which he has thus abused, he has endeavored to fasten the report of "the Nestorian massacre" on the Board and its friends. He says distinctly in his last pamphlet, that, as brought about by Mr. Badger, was "invented" by the friends of the Board, and the solution of it is its hostility to Episcopal missions. The massacre was reported by a letter writer, for a leading London paper, who was residing at Constantinople. It was believed in England by those Episcopalians who knew Mr. Badger's fiery and hostile spirit.* It

"The letter attributing the massacre to Mr. Badger was written to the London Morning Chronicle, was copied into an Episcopal paper at Oxford, and into the Record, the leading Episcopal paper in London. The writer of the letter, and

was made the subject of a spirited rebuke by a leading writer of the day, and an ardent Episcopalian, and through these channels it came to this country. It was credited to Mr. Badger here, as there; but not by the Board at all, nor by its friends exclusively. More than all, the first and most satisfactory account of the transaction, which vindicated Mr. Badger from any charge of the kind, was from an American missionary, Dr. Grant, a missionary of the American Board. The only agency of the Board or its missionaries in respect to this rumor, was first, effectually and finally to put it to rest. Mr. Southgate knew all this. Why then does he speak of it at length in his Vindication, as coming from hostility to Episcopal missions, felt by the American Board ? And why with more audacity still, in his Reply, does he say it was "invented" by its friends for the occasion ?

Another proof of this hostility is, that the missionaries and their friends-all, or some, or one, have had the presumption to put the natural construction on parts of certain letters to the heads of the Eastern churches, and instructions to Episcopal missionaries. The missionaries and their friends have given to these passages their true meaning, as intended and fitted to make invidious comparisons between the American Episcopal church and those of non-Episcopal churches, as adapted to aggravate prejudices already existing, and to rouse these prejudices to a bigoted and fanati cal rage. They have thought that though not understood at home; in their operation abroad, they would be the same influences in kind, if not in degree, with the line

all the English papers in which it is remembered that the matter was noticed, were Episcopalian. The Record had severe strictures on Mr. Badger about that time, showing that they thought him not too good for deeds of rashness and folly."

of conduct pursued by Mr. Badger. Mr. S. is not content to stand on the defensive and give a milder construction to these passages. He leaps by a bound upon the enemies' cannon and imagines them wheeled at once against them, himself astride, with hat in hand. He brings the just construction of the passages as a proof of hostility to the Episcopal church. His language is-would you believe it-these men would have the presumption to quote the language of the excellent Bishop Griswold in its honest import. But what are these passages. The first is from the instructions of the presiding Bishop.* "You may farther state to them, [the bishops and other ecclesiastical authorities of the Eastern churches,] that many of those called Protestants have rejected, and are still so opposed to, episcopacy and confirmation, and the use of liturgies, that an intimate fellowship and connection with them, is at present impracticable." Mr. Southgate says, that the acknowledged signs of a church at the East, are episcopacy, confirmation, the use of a liturgy, fasts and feasts, &c. A communion without these marks is not known, nor can it be conceived of, as a church. The Episcopal church has these signs, and ought to make use of them, and it is for using these advantages, not possessed by us, that he has excited our jealousy. The missionaries say, and their friends, why not represent your own church, and not take upon you also to represent the churches that are non-Episcopal? Why did not your church bid you to do this, and not also bid you to tell them,

* Of this, Mr. Southgate says: "A common onset is made upon the Episcopal church and its missions. Old instructions are raked up and made to live again in new meanings." The missionaries say that they were noticed by themselves and complained of to Messrs. Robertson and Southgate, at the time they first ap peared. The reply was, "that the Bishop was an old man,' &c.

that in regard to non-communion with these dissenting bodies, you have the honor to imitate in some humble manner, the exclusive and excommunicating spirit of the most apostolic Greek patriarch, &c. &c. It was in obedience to those instructions we suppose, that Dr. Robertson, when some Armenians ventured to say that the missionaries of the Board were regularly ordained, raised his hands in horror, saying, "They are no priests; they are no priests. I am a priest-but they are no priests."

But says Mr. S., is not this a plain matter of fact-and why object to have it known? We reply by asking, Is it not a plain matter of fact, that two bishops of the most important dioceses in the American Episcopal church, have recently been convicted of disgraceful immoralities-and what if the fact should be used to aggravate and inflame the prejudices of these orientals against their co-Bishop Southgate. The ground of complaint is not that the Episcopal church seeks to represent itself with all its advantages, but that while it does this, even though it appeals to a fanatical bigotry that is now stolid and stupid enough, it should use the same bigotry to the disadvantage of others. The next extract is from the Bishops' letter to the Syrian patriarch. "He (Mr. S.) will make it clearly understood that the American church has no ecclesiastical connection with the followers of Luther and Calvin, and takes no part in their plans or operations to diffuse the principles of their sects." This Mr. S. says was intended to guard against the application to ourselves of the epithets, "follower of Luther or Calvin," by which is understood at the East, "an infidel, a man destitute of all religion," &c. "The missionaries earnestly evade the application of it to themselves, and why should we be less so." But why Mr. S. should the term "ecclesiastical" be used, if the