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DEAR BRETHREN, -
A year ago, your attention was called in public and in private, to the great duty of dropping your sectarianism and uniting in one church and one communion. That duty you have neglected to perform. May not this neglect account, in a great degree, for the peculiarly low state of religion amongst us, the past year? In all that time, notwithstanding death has administered its warnings with unwonted frequency, how very few amongst us have turned from the world to Christ!
The spirit of sectarianism is apt to run high, when the spirit of christianity runs low. Accordingly it is not surprising, that we now hear of a plan to build a Methodist Meeting House in our Village, and of a plan to remove, at a great expense, the Baptist Meeting House into the heart of the Village. The perishing Heathen cry for the Missionaries and the Bibles and the tracts, which we could furnish them by rightly expending the thousands of dollars, that the Devil is about to get from our pockets to promote his own cause of sectarianism. I say sectarianism is his own cause: - for if sectarianism is not devilism, what is? If that, which makes Presbyterians and Baptists and Methodists the great props of American slavery, is not of the Devil - then nothing is.
Once more then, dear brethren, we call on you to throw down your sectarianism into the pit, whence it sprung, and to embrace each other as Christians. Jesus Christ receives all of you. He includes you all in His Church. Why then should you not receive each other; and extend to each other the hand of Christian and church fellowship?
We beseech you to desist from the wicked plan of wasting the Lord's gold and silver in the erection of another House of Worship. We beseech you to convert the Baptist Meeting House into an Academy; and to take the Presbyterian house, which is larger and better situated, for your only House of Worship. There is room enough in that building for all of you. There meet from Sabbath to Sabbath to enjoy the fellowship of Jesus and the fellow ship of the saints. Choose one of your present ministers for your teacher: and send the others to labor amongst some poor and destitute congregations, whose lack of means to support the gospel ministry you will gladly supply. Or if you cannot cordially unite in one of your present ministers, look elsewhere for your teacher. Perhaps you can agree to recall that beloved man of God, Elder Maddock. Keep your pulpit open for Christian teachers of all denominations. Hear them all with candor: and encourage them to speak freely on whatever topic they may choose to discuss. Be not afraid, that differences of opinion will alienate you from each other. He, who adequately feels the duty of Christian Union, will continue to hold in the embrace of Christian fellowship all, whom he believes to be the friends of Jesus, however numerous their mutual differences about religious doctrines. Such an one, whilst he will have firmness to govern his own conduct by his sense of duty, will, nevertheless, have Christian toleration to bear with an Armenian or a Calvinistic interpretation of the Bible - sprinkling or immersion - with paedo baptism or anti-paedo baptism - with a kneeling, sitting or standing posture at the Lord's table.
As the Presbyterian House of Worship will, from its size and location, be preferred to the other, the Presbyterians will naturally be expected to move first in this matter. Let them, without delay, come together - substitute a Congregational for their present form of government - and substitute for their present conditions of fellowship the single condition, that the candidate give satisfactory evidence, that he is a Christian: and let those, who own the pews in the Presbyterian House, generously offer them to such, as will occupy them. The Lord would smile on this beginning of the good work: and He would carry it on rapidly, until our only Church would be "The Church of Peterboro." Then (John xvii: 23.) Jesus would be commended with new and convincing power to sinners: and the Lord would add unto "The Church of Peterboro daily such as should be saved."
A LOVER OF ALL WHO LOVE JESUS CHRIST.
PETERBORO, February 25, 1842.
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