Exert:
My Christian brethren, let me seriously ask of you, has the honor of God been truly promoted by this schism-making paraphernalia of speeches, associations, and district divisions ? Cannot we distribute Bibles to the African or Hindoo without increasing the political dangers of the country? Cannot the Bible be distributed among Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, without the machinery of the Bible Society ? Will the kingdom of Christ be really extended by this strange and unnatural combination of truth and error ? This heterogeneous union is not certainly absolutely requisite to distribute Bibles at home. Whether it is essential to enable us to disperse Bibles abroad, is a question which must be decided by our examining the claims of the Church Missionary Society.
This is a body of professed churchmen, animated with zeal for the best cause, the universal propagation of the Gospel. Believing with many, that the signs of the times announce the near approach of that millennial period, “ when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea,” they have united to send missionaries into remote and barbarous countries. Undoubtedly they meant to do well. But how can that churchman approve their society, who understands and practices the demands of an Episcopal Church? They have sacrilegiously appointed laymen to exercise the holy functions of the priesthood. They have commissioned some to preach in our colonies which are under the Episcopal jurisdiction of the bishop of London. Others are sent to places not within our dominions. The London Missionary Society, a body of pious dissenters, have at length been partly successful in the South Sea Islands, and in other stations ; yet if the advantage these societies have rendered to the heathen were tenfold, it is our duty, as Christians, to withhold from them our support and sanction, for this scriptural reason : the heathen must be converted in that manner successfully pursued by the Apostles, and therefore : commanded by God. The prophecy which has foretold the universal diffusion of the Gospel will be accomplished by miraculous or human means : most probably by the latter. But until we receive an additional revelation to assure us that we are permitted to deviate from the apostolic plan, we must believe the heathen will be converted by our following this plan, and no other.
