And, if the tenderness of your message does not subdue us, we trust its terrors will prevail still less. We are not ignorant, indeed, that, in dealing with weak minds whose solicitude for their personal security is greater than their generous faith in truth and God, you enjoy an advantage over us. We avow that we have no alarms whereby to urge men into our Church; that we know of no “terrors of the Lord” by which to “persuade men,” except against sin; nor do we esteem ourselves exclusive administrators of any salvation, except that best salvation, which consists in a free mind and emancipated heart; reverencing Christ as the perfect image of the Father, listening to the accents of reason and conscience, as to the breathings of God’s spirit, loving all men as his children, and having hope in death, of a transference from this outer court into the interior mansions of His house. For this reason, imbecile souls, without Christian trust and courage, may think it safer, at all events, to seek a place within your Church; but we wonder that you can feel satisfied, retaining your Protestantism, to appeal thus to fear and devout policy, rather than to conviction, and that you cannot discern the mockery of first placing us on the brink of hell and lifting up the veil, and then bidding us stand there, with cool and unembarrassed judgment to inquire. Over converts, won by such means, you would surely have as little reason to rejoice as had the priests of Rome to exult on the recantation of Galileo. Our fellow worshippers have learned, we trust, a nobler faith; and will listen to your arguments with more open and tranquil mind than your invitation, had it attained its end of fear, would have allowed. They will hold fast, till they see reason to abandon it, their filial faith in a Divine Father, of whom Jesus, the merciful and just, is indeed the image; and who, therefore, can have neither curse nor condemnation for “unwitting” error, no delight in self-confident pretensions, no wrath and scorn for any “honest and good heart,” which “brings forth its fruit with patience.”
To this God of truth and love, commending our high controversy, and all whose welfare it concerns, we remain your fellow-labourers in the Gospel,
James Martineau,
Minister of Paradise-street Chapel.
John Hamilton Thom,
Minister of Renshaw-street Chapel.
Henry Giles,
Minister of the Ancient Chapel, Toxteth Park.
Liverpool, Jan. 26, 1839.