“Why not? What is the matter, gentlemen?”
“Your doctrine is dangerous; it is infidelity, and we want no more of it.”
“Did any of you hear my discourse to-day?”
“No, and we don’t want to hear such stuff.”
“How then do you know it is dangerous and infidel?”
“We are not here to have a controversy with you, but to notify you that you cannot occupy the school house this evening.”
My host here informed the gentlemen, that he had an interest in that house, and that I should preach in it if I desired to. “This gentleman,” said he, “is a stranger in this place; I heard his sermon in the morning, and although I know nothing about Universalism, he uttered not a word I consider dangerous or infidel.”
“When you reflect,” I remarked, “on the mean business you are here on, you will be heartily ashamed of yourselves, and your conduct. You admit you did not hear me, and yet you are loud and angry in your condemnation. I am a stranger in this place, and to you; I have never harmed a hair of your heads, and yet you treat me with savage rudeness. Is this Virginia hospitality? What do you suppose I teach?”
“We understand you teach, that there is no God, no Savior, no hell, and that the good and the bad, go to heaven together.”
“You have been misinformed. My advice to you is, to acquaint yourselves with the principles you so rudely condemn, for you are as ignorant of them as the Hottentots are of English grammar.”