these decisions, and it is confidently believed that maturer reflection will produce a fuller acquiescence in the authority of the Church. It is alike We believe that the present troubles, threatening anarchy and confusion in the Church, and farther defection and schism, are but little else than the sinful continuation and working, in a religious form, of the criminal spirit and designs of the insurrection in temporal affairs; and we are persuaded that neither the country nor the Church can have peace or security, until the religious poison is healed or purged out. In both respects, both of the State and of the Church, it is better, immeasurably, to heal, if it be possible. If that may not be, it is better, immeasurably, to keep the Church pure, and restore it to peace, let it cost what it may. The Presbyterian Church welcomes to her bosom, joyfully, all who desire to be as she and her children are. If others will insist on sharing her blessings, which are neither few nor small, they ought not to be allowed to revile her acts, contemn her authority, waste her inheritance, traduce her character, tear her vitals, and corrupt and destroy her integrity and unity. All such attempts to impair her testimonies, mar her peace, and hinder her usefulness, ought to be put an end to, if God permit, by the General Assembly firmly adhering to the testimonies and enactments hitherto uttered from the highest tribunal of the Church; and by the appropriate exercise of her discipline, effectually dealing with those who may have set themselves persistently to revile her acts, to defy her just authority, to destroy her peace, and to distract and rend her communion. Thus believing, your memorialists, without presuming to dictate, and without unlawfully combining to carry, in this House, the measures they propose, do now respectfully and dutifully submit the results of their deliberations to the Church and to this General Assembly. Your memorialists, therefore, do hereby respectfully represent, in reference to the recent persistent attempts made in various parts of the Church to have the deliverances and injunctions of the General Assembly (produced by the disturbed state of the Church and nation during the past five years) reconsidered and changed, that the General Assembly has nothing in the matter aforesaid to change, nothing to explain, nothing to modify, nothing to take back, nothing to amend, in any way, shape, or form whatever; it being needful only, for any one, to correct the misrepresentations published and industriously circulated concerning those deliverances and injunctions, in order clearly to vindicate both the moral and ecclesiastical right of the Assembly to enact the same. All the more do your memorialists earnestly press upon the Assembly the importance of thus firmly adhering to all that has been said or done, regarding the great moral and religious issues involved in the struggle of the past five years, inasmuch as the spirit of rebellion still rages in some portions of the Church, even to the extent of public official, as well as public personal defiance unto and insult of the authority of the General Assembly-notable instances of which are the adoption, by one of our Presbyteries, and many of our members, of a “Declaration and Testimony," reviling the Assembly, and covering the Church with unmerited reproach, and especially the election of some as commissioners to the Assembly whose eminence, in open hostility to the loyal deliverances of the Assembly, and to the Assembly itself, is unsurpassed in the history of our Church. Your memorialists, in calling the attention of the Assembly to the opposition thus made by individuals, by church courts, and by the press, do hereby also invite its attention to the vast multitude of fatal heresies connected with and logically growing out of it-not the least of which is that which denies to the deliverances and injunctions of the Assembly, during the past five years, upon slavery and rebellion, any binding force whatever. The action of the supreme tribunal of our Church is denounced as contrary to the constitution and immemorial usage of the Presbyterian Church, and disobedience to the same publicly and privately counseled. The peace and purity of the Church imperatively demand that the General Assembly, whose duty it is to suppress schismatical contentions and disputations, shall adopt efficient measures to put an end to the anarchy and confusion which this course of things is bringing upon the whole Church. They who thus revile the authority, and disturb the harmony of the Church, should be required to desist from such revolutionary and schismatical conduct; and where church officers or courts persist in defiance of the order of the Assembly, they should be dealt with as offenders against the peace, purity, and order of the house of God. Less than this, your memorialists believe, will be not only an encouragement of rebellion against the government of the Presbyterian Church, but against the very essence of all lawful government itself, and must inevitably tend to the fearful result of anarchy and irremediable ruin. The General Assembly must be fully aware that, even amongst those who cordially approve of its past deliverances, and those who will stand by the Church of their fathers, although they may not approve all those deliverances, there is some diversity of judgment as to the course which ought to be pursued by the Church henceforth towards the schismatical sect of united Old School and New School Presbyterians which has been organized in the wide region covered by the lately rebellious States; fully aware, also, that to a large extent the Church, in a state of opinion which may be called immature, awaits some clear deliverance of the General Assembly touching the relations which are to exist on our part to that sect. Besides this, it is notorious that all the past deliverances of the Church condemning the schism in the Church South, and the conduct of those ministers who produced and organized that schism, and used it to sustain the rebellion and the civil war, and now use it, not only to prevent the restoration and spread of our Church in the Southern half of the nation, but to extend the schism into all parts of the Church, have been, and continue to be, openly denounced and intentionally disobeyed by all such members and office-bearers of our Church as approve the wicked conduct of the authors of that schism, and repeat its sinful revilings of the Presbyterian Church and its acts. While this convention has earnestly besought this General Assembly not to take back, nor modify, nor explain away, under re the past and present purpose of our Church to preserve within its fold all who sincerely and earnestly love its orders and doctrines, and to fan into bellions menaces and heretical expositions and intrigues and conspiracies, in the interest of slavery and disloyalty and schism, any portion of its past deliverances touching the state of the Church and the country, we suppose that a fresh deliverance, founded on the actual condition of affairs, more especially as they affect the Church, and embracing amongst other things the vital subjects contained in this petition and memorial, would be of very high importance at the present time. It needs to be kept in perpetual remembrance that the frightful civil war was encouraged and eagerly supported, from the beginning, by those who organized this sinful schism, as soon as possible after bloodshed began, mainly (as) openly avowed by themselves) upon the two atrocious ideas of the perpetuity of negro slavery, and, to that end, the creation of a new nation, out of a part of this nation, through its destruction by freason and carnage. It must be farther kept in mind that after the lapse of four years of ceaseless activity in this sinful course, during which all the horrors and miseries of civil war fell upon the land, with a violence seldom exceeded in extent or bitterness, and after the new nation had expired, and the perpetual slavery had perished under an act of sublime national retribution, those same schismatics deliberately resolved to perpetuate the sectarian organization they had created, in such circumstances for such objects, accompanying this last act with formal statements, identifying their past conduct and principles with the future career marked out for themselves, and striving in particular to make mutual confidence and fraternity, much less mutual fellowship, and least of all, organic unity with the Church, which the great mass of them had betrayed, forsaken and traduced, for ever impossible. The Presbyterian Church has no alternative consistent with safety, with self-respect, with the righteousness of its own past conduct, with fidel ity to divine truth or Christian duty, or with obedience to God, but to accept the renunciation of these deluded men, to testify against their sinful acts, and to keep her skirts clear of their miserable doings. Three great duties remain to her, connected with this subject: upon the right performance of which, a great reward awaits her, and upon the neglect of which, trouble and confusion. The first is, to purify herself from the widelydiffused poison of the times, which, in a form more or less virulent, is diffused through all the churches; and to do this, as remembering that the discipline of the Church is of God, is an ordinance of mercy to backsliders, and stands related to the threatenings of God's word in some manner, as the sacraments thereof do to the promises of God. The second is, to hold out and wide open the arms of her love to every child of God in the Southern country, who has been a victim, not the willing partaker, of the sins against God, against his Church, and against their country; against which Divine Providence has testified by such severe and most righteous judgments. The third is, to proceed at once, and with a zeal proportioned to the urgency of the necessity, to redeem the solemn promise made by the first Assembly, after the schism organized in 1861, that she would wholly disregard its existence, and, as God might enable her, would strive to recover all she might lose by it, and to extend and estabblish, more and more, throughout the whole South, the precious system of Divine truth, unto the liberty and power of which God has called her by his grace. Let the revenge we will ask of God be a double share in the work of saving those who have cast us out as doubly vile. Adopted unanimously; and ordered to be signed by the officers, in behalf of the convention assembled at St. Louis, Missouri, May 19, 1866. W. W. COLMERY, W. D. HOWARD, PRES. Clerks. J. G. REASOR, The following persons, with the Presbyteries to which they belong, were members of the Convention. these decisions, and it is confidently believed that maturer reflection will produce a fuller acquiescence in the authority of the Church. It is alike We believe that the present troubles, threatening anarchy and confusion in the Church, and farther defection and schism, are but little else than the sinful continuation and working, in a religious form, of the criminal spirit and designs of the insurrection in temporal affairs; and we are persuaded that neither the country nor the Church can have peace or security, until the religious poison is healed or purged out. In both respects, both of the State and of the Church, it is better, immeasurably, to heal, if it be possible. If that may not be, it is better, immeasurably, to keep the Church pure, and restore it to peace, let it cost what it may. The Presbyterian Church welcomes to her bosom, joyfully, all who desire to be as she and her children are. If others will insist on shar ing her blessings, which are neither few nor sinall, they ought not to be allowed to revile her acts, contemn her authority, waste her inheritance, traduce her character, tear her vitals, and corrupt and destroy her integrity and unity. All such attempts to impair her testimonies, mar her peace, and hinder her usefulness, ought to be put an end to, if God permit, by the General Assembly firmly adhering to the testimonies and enactments hitherto uttered from the highest tribunal of the Church; and by the appro priate exercise of her discipline, effectually dealing with those who may have set themselves persistently to revile her acts, to defy her just authority, to destroy her peace, and to distract and rend her communion. Thus believing, your memorialists, without presuming to dictate, and without unlawfully combining to carry, in this House, the measures they propose, do now respectfully and dutifully sub mit the results of their deliberations to the Church and to this General Assembly. Your memorialists, therefore, do hereby respectfully represent, in reference to the recent persistent attempts made in various parts of the Church to have the deliverances and injunctions of the General Assembly (produced by the disturbed state of the Church and nation during the past five years) reconsidered and changed, that the General Assembly has nothing in the matter aforesaid to change, nothing to explain, nothing to modify, nothing to take back, nothing to amend, in any way, shape, or form whatever; it being needful only, for any one, to correct the misrepresentations published and industriously circulated concerning those deliverances and injunctions, in order clearly to vindicate both the moral and ecclesiastical right of the Assembly to enact the same. All the more do your memorialists earnestly press upon the Assembly the importance of thus firmly adhering to all that has been said or done, regarding the great moral and religious issues involved in the struggle of the past five years, inasmuch as the spirit of rebellion still rages in some portions of the Church, even to the extent of public official, as well as public personal defiance unto and insult of the authority of the General Assembly-notable instances of which are the adoption, by one of our Presbyteries, and many of our members, of a "Declaration and Testimony," reviling the Assembly, and covering the Church with unmerited reproach, and especially the election of some as commissioners to the Assembly whose eminence, in open hostility to the loyal deliverances of the Assembly, and to the Assembly itself, is unsurpassed in the history of our Church. Your memorialists, in calling the attention of the Assembly to the opposition thus made by individuals, by church courts, and by the press, do hereby also invite its attention to the vast multitude of fatal heresies connected with and logically growing out of it-not the least of which is that which denies to the deliverances and injunctions of the Assembly, during the past five years, upon slavery and rebellion, any binding force whatever. The action of the supreme tribunal of our Church is denounced as contrary to the constitution and immemorial usage of the Presbyterian Church, and disobedience to the same publicly and privately counseled. The peace and purity of the Church imperatively demand that the General Assembly, whose duty it is to suppress schismatical contentions and disputations, shall adopt efficient measures to put an end to the anarchy and confusion which this course of things is bringing upon the whole Church. They who thus revile the authority, and disturb the harmony of the Church, should be required to desist from such revolutionary and schismatical conduct; and where church officers or courts persist in defiance of the order of the Assembly, they should be dealt with as offenders against the peace, purity, and order of the house of God. Less than this, your memorialists believe, will be not only an encouragement of rebellion against the government of the Presbyterian Church, but against the very essence of all lawful government itself, and must inevitably tend to the fearful result of anarchy and irremediable ruin. The General Assembly must be fully aware that, even amongst those who cordially approve of its past deliverances, and those who will stand by the Church of their fathers, although they may not approve all those deliverances, there is some diversity of judgment as to the course which ought to be pursued by the Church henceforth towards the schismatical sect of united Old School and New School Presbyterians which has been organized in the wide region covered by the lately rebellious States; fully aware, also, that to a large extent the Church, in a state of opinion which may be called immature, awaits some clear deliverance of the General Assembly touching the relations which are to exist on our part to that sect. Besides this, it is notorious that all the past deliverances of the Church condemning the schism in the Church South, and the conduct of those ministers who produced and organized that schism, and used it to sustain the rebellion and the civil war, and now use it, not only to prevent the restoration and spread of our Church in the Southern half of the nation, but to extend the schism into all parts of the Church, have been, and continue to be, openly denounced and intentionally disobeyed by all such members and office-bearers of our Church as approve the wicked conduct of the authors of that schism, and repeat its sinful revilings of the Presbyterian Church and its acts. While this convention has earnestly besought this General Assembly not to take back, nor modify, nor explain away, under re the past and present purpose of our Church to preserve within its fold all who sincerely and earnestly love its orders and doctrines, and to fan into bellious menaces and heretical expositions and intrigues and conspiracies, in the interest of slavery and disloyalty and schism, any portion of its past deliverances touching the state of the Church and the country, we suppose that a fresh deliverance, founded on the actual condition of affairs, more especially as they affect the Church, and embracing amongst other things the vital subjects contained in this petition and memorial, would be of very high importance at the present time. It needs to be kept in perpetual remembrance that the frightful civil war was encouraged and eagerly supported, from the beginning, by those who organized this sinful schism, as soon as possible after bloodshed began, mainly (as openly avowed by themselves) upon the two atrocious ideas of the perpetuity of negro slavery, and, to that end, the creation of a new nation, out of a part of this nation, through its destruction by treason and carnage. It must be farther kept in mind that after the lapse of four years of ceaseless activity in this sinful course, during which all the horrors and miseries of civil war fell upon the land, with a violence seldom exceeded in extent or bitterness, and after the new nation had expired, and the perpetual slavery had perished under an act of sublime national retribution, those same schismatics deliberately resolved to perpetuate the sectarian organization they had created, in such circumstances for such objects, accompanying this last act with formal statements, identifying their past conduct and principles with the future career marked out for themselves, and striving in particular to make mutual confidence and fraternity, much less mutual fellowship, and least of all, organic unity with the Church, which the great mass of them had betrayed, forsaken and traduced, for ever impossible. ity to divine truth or Christian duty, or with obedience to God, but to accept the renunciation of these deluded men, to testify against their sinful acts, and to keep her skirts clear of their miserable doings. Three great duties remain to her, connected with this subject: upon the right performance of which, a great reward awaits her, and upon the neglect of which, trouble and confusion. The first is, to purify herself from the widelydiffused poison of the times, which, in a form more or less virulent, is diffused through all the churches; and to do this, as remembering that the discipline of the Church is of God, is an ordihance of mercy to backsliders, and stands related to the threatenings of God's word in some manner, as the sacraments thereof do to the promises of God. The second is, to hold out and wide open the arms of her love to every child of God in the Southern country, who has been a victim, not the willing partaker, of the sins against God, against his Church, and against their country; against which Divine Providence has testified by such severe and most righteous judgments. The third is, to proceed at once, and with a zeal proportioned to the urgency of the necessity, to redeem the solemn promise made by the first Assembly, after the schism organized in 1861, that she would wholly disregard its existence, and, as God might enable her, would strive to recover all she might lose by it, and to extend and estabblish, more and more, throughout the whole South, the precious system of Divine truth, unto the liberty and power of which God has called her by his grace. Let the revenge we will ask of God be a double share in the work of saving those who have cast us out as doubly vile. Adopted unanimously; and ordered to be sigued by the officers, in behalf of the convention assembled at St. Louis, Missouri, May 19, 1866. W. W. COLMERY, W. D. HOWARD, PRES. J. G. REASOR, Clerks. The Presbyterian Church has no alternative consistent with safety, with self-respect, with the righteousness of its own past conduct, with fidelThe following persons, with the Presbyteries to which they belong, were members of the Convention. life and energy every lingering spark of genuine attachment to our faith and order which may exist in those portions of our country where the spirit and unrelenting power of the rebellion drove many true and loyal Presbyterians into a hostile attitude toward the Church and country. With this enlarged and Christian view, it is appropriate to declare that whilst the testimony and authority of our Church are to be obeyed, the fullest Christian liberty of opinion is tolerated and protected, and no enforcement of the deliverances of our Church is expected or demanded, except that which will debar from our communion and Church courts all those who refuse to submit to the powers that be," and remain in willful antagonism to the manifestations of God's providence and the authoritative decisions of our Church. No. XXVI.-From Northern Indiana and Wheeling Synods, and Lake, Lewes, Madison, and Monmouth Presbyteries, respecting the removal of the Board of Domestic Missions from Philadelphia, Pa. The committee recommend that as a committee has been appointed to report to the next Assembly on this subject, no further action is necessary. Adopted. No. XXVII.-From the Board of Church Extension, requesting that the Trustees of the General Assembly be required to take charge of certain deeds and mortgages, &c., &c. The committee recommend the following resolution: Resolved, That "the Trustees of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America" are hereby authorized and required to accept and take charge of any estate, real or personal, which may be granted, conveyed, or assigned to said Trustees, at the request of the Board of Church Extension of this Church; and whenever the said Board of Church Extension shall request the said Trustees to grant, convey, or release any right, title or interest in any estate, real or personal, which has been or may hereafter be vested in said Trustees, by reason of or in consideration of any grant or appropriation made by said Board in aid of the erection of any church edifice, then the said Trustees shall make such grant, conveyance, or release, to such parties, and upon such condition or conditions as the said Board of Church Extension shall by resolution direct: provided, that the covenants contained in any such grant, conveyance or release, so executed by said Trustees, shall be such only as said Trustees shall approve. Adopted. |