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The bitter words of Walpole have indeed been often quoted, but they cannot be omitted here: "They may ring their bells now; before long they will be wringing their hands." Walpole was thinking, no doubt, of the Family Compact, and of "the King over the Water." Parliament met in November, 1739, and the seceders were all in their places again.
When the Charleston Convention proper reassembled at Baltimore, it was seen that the programme laid out by Jefferson Davis and others in their published address had been adopted. The seceders had met at Richmond, taken a recess, and now appeared at Baltimore making application for readmission.
A third scripture, perverted to support the above principle, is Luke xx, 25: "Render therefore to Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's." From this, Seceders imagine strongly to fortify their cause.
But, as an influence on the class of persons from whom men of letters are drawn, no one has exceeded him in his day. The dramatic catastrophe of the Disruption of the Scotch Kirk, which, by a strange coincidence, was nearly contemporary with the crisis of the Oxford Movement, set the final seal upon the reputation of Thomas Chalmers, who headed the seceders.
If he had not determined to divide the Association on this question, he did all a man could do who had so determined. I shall only trouble the reader with two quotations more. They refer to the question immediately under discussion, namely, that the Seceders were as much opposed to the obnoxious clauses of the bill as those with whom they differed.
Whether they were right or wrong ... no man of fairness will fail to allow that the record of the Seceders all through the period of decadence was a noble one, a record of splendid service to the cause of Christ and the historic Church of Scotland. Presbyterian Worship Outside of the Established Church of Scotland.
It was the merest effervescence from that state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by the vague anticipation of a 'scene, possibly of a quarrel, together with the natural interest in seeing men whose names had been long before the public in books and periodical journals. The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a pseudo-General Assembly.
Universally it is evident, that little stress is to be laid on a negative act; simply to have declined going out with the Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act which may cover indifferently a marked hostility to the Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness not quite equal to so extreme a test.
Consequently upon their consciences lies the responsibility of having weakened the pillars of the Reformed churches throughout Christendom. Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were it possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside for generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers of reproach before 1834?
And the authorities in town and village nailed up the barn-doors, and dispersed the canal boat congregations, while the populace pelted them with stones. The seceders appealed to the Stadholder, pleading that at least they ought to be allowed to hear the word of God as they understood it without being forced into churches where they were obliged to hear Arminian blasphemy.
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