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CHAPTER II. 



LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM CALL TO EDINBURGH LEAVES 



CROMARTY. 



THE most plausible of the make-believes with which 

 the Evangelical majority were tempted by statesmen 

 to put off the people was the concession to congregations 

 of a right to specify certain objections to presentees, 

 which, if supported by adequate proof, would afford valid 

 grounds for their being set aside by Presbyteries. If 

 the pastor or probationer selected by the patron could 

 be proved to be unsound in doctrine, defective in 

 literary acquirement, or lax in morals, the rights of the 

 patron were, in that instance, to lapse. At first sight, 

 it may appear to many that the liberty of congregations 

 would thus have been abundantly fenced. What more 

 could they ask than that their pastor should be accurate 

 in doctrine, accomplished in letters, irreproachable in 

 life ? The reply is simple and conclusive. They could 

 ask that he should be one whom they could personally 

 love, and from whose preaching and ministering their 

 souls could derive nourishment; and the reasons why 

 one man might answer to this description, and another 

 man might not, are obviously of a nature to evade dis- 

 tinct apprehension even in thought, and which it might 



