and that I, who had enjoyed the privileges and exercised the rights of a member, for twentyseven years, blameless and uncensured, should have ever become an object of obloquy, resentment, and persecution, has excited feelings the most painful that ever wrung my heart. I must say, however, that the pungency of these feelings did not arise so much from the situation to which the proceedings of Synod have reduced me and my family, as the effect which they may have on the interests of a body to which I had uniformly devoted my affections and my labors. Indeed, this latter idea still presses so painfully upon my mind that I enter upon the following recital with great reluctance: and I hope the coloring which has been given to public statement by private calumny, in order to justify the conduct of Synod towards me, will be deemed a sufficient apology. During my confinement in Ireland, for ten months, my Rev. Fathers and brethren kept at awful and loyal distance from my prisons. A very few, even of those with whom I had long lived in intimacy and friendship, dared to call on me; and a few more apologised for their inattention, by pleading the terror of the times. At their annual meeting, in 1798, no Presbyterial return was made to the Synod, respecting me or my congregation, though it was holden nearly three months after my arrest: nor was I i any any notice taken, in their records, of my name, conduct, or situation; though, in other respects, they gave them the aspect of a Newgate chronicle, or a Tyburn gazette, rather than a registry of men and matters purely ecclesiastical. But, however trivial their minutes of this meeting may appear, so far as they respect individuals, with regard to the members constituting the body met, they will ever be viewed in a light truly interesting. Their address to Majesty, wherever read or heard, must ever command serious attention; and lest it should be thought that I am capable of garbling or misrepresenting this interesting memoir, I shall here give it in full, from a copy duly authenticated, that the world may judge of it, in all its parts. "To the King's most excellent Majesty, the humble Address of the Ministers and Elders of the General Synod of Ulster, assembled at Lurgan on the 28th. day of August, 1798. MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN, We your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, the Ministers and Elders of the General Synod of Ulster, though prevented by a daring and flagitious rebellion raging in two counties of this province, from assembling at our stated season, eagerly embrace the first opportunity afforded afforded by the return of tranquillity, to lay our sentiments of loyalty to your Majesty, and of sorrow and shame for the calamities and crimes of our country at the foot of the throne. We chearfully renew those declarations of fidelity to the crown, and attachment to the constitution, from which we have never swerved. We can confidently assure your Majesty, that these have been the invariable principles and professions of this body-and we appeal to history to attest the inviolable attachment of the Presbyterians of Ireland to monarchy, counselled by an hereditary nobility, and supported and limited by an elective representative of the commons, But while we dwell with exultation on those periods of our annals in which our ancestors firmly resisted the usurpation of Cromwell, vi, gorously supported the exertions of King William, and strenuously defended your Majesty's illustrious progenitors from the repeated attacks of a desperate pretender to the British throne, and this kingdom against the restless ambition of France; we are constrained to lament with the deepest humiliation, that the most stable and sacred principles of many of our people, and of some of our members, have been shaken by the convulsions of this sceptical and revolutionary æra. Though we cannot presume to suggest the general infatuation of a great part of Europe, nor the incessant and deceitful artifices employed in this country to seduce our people, as apologies for crimes, which we ourselves deem inexcusable, much less for those few unworthy members of our body, whose conduct we can only view with grief and indignation.-Yet we venture to entreat your Majesty not to impute to the whole the transgressions of a part, nor to believe that the Synod of Ulster has fallen off from that line of conduct, which it heretofore uniformly maintained, nor from those principles which it has often solemnly avowed. We beseech your Majesty to accept the faithful exertions of those who have withstood the torrent of popular fury, and the seductions of sophistical philosophy, as an atonement for their deluded brethren. Let the madness of the multitude be hidden from your eyes by the courage and sufferings of those of our communion who have fought and died in defence of their King country, their liberty and religion, and deign to hearken to our solemn engagement to recall the deluded from their errors and crimes-to make a strict inquiry into the conduct of our delinquent members; and to withstand to the best of our abilities those pernicious foreign principles, which threaten alike the temporal and eternal interests of mankind. Finally, Finally, we beseech the King of Kings, who stilleth the madness of the people, and maketh the wrath of man to praise him, and their vices to redound to his glory, to bless and protect your Majesty, to preserve your subjects from every fatal delusion, and to convert our follies, crimes, and miseries into instruments of wisdom, piety and happiness both now and for ever. Signed in our name and by our appointment, THOMAS CUMING, Moderator. A true copy. THOMAS CUMING, Clerk of the The Of this important memoir, various as are its matter and its merits, I do not wish to express a criticism, much less to utter a censure. first three paragraphs I admire, notwithstanding some expressions savoring of the cant of the times; but the systematic theology of the fourth and fifth, respecting imputation, atonement &c. &c. with respect to a mortal like ourselves, seems rather constrained; and the last, I candidly own, I do not presume fully to understand. The only circumstance, which I shall particularly remark, is couched in the following prayer to majesty : deign to hearken to our solemn engagement to do our utmost to recall the deluded from their errors and crimes; and to |