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MINISTRY AT WARRINGTON. [Chap. IV. 



but I have no right to refuse what they are pleased in 

 giving." 



The congregational meeting was held February 2 : on 

 the 1 8th a deputation called on Philip with a memorial. He 

 heard it in silence, taking shorthand notes of what was said 

 respecting it. The liberty of the preacher is not to be so 

 asserted as to destroy that of the hearer : and a minister who 

 upholds the rights of others would be glad that those who 

 strongly dissented from him, but were attached to their place 

 of worship, should free their consciences by a faithful protest, 

 which might help him to consider how conflicting claims could 

 be met. The memorial entered on those doctrines which 

 seemed to form the basis of his preaching, and asked, " How 

 is it possible for us to listen, Sunday after Sunday, to views 

 entirely opposed to our own, so as to derive from them any 

 religious life? It is with extreme reluctance we confess our 

 fears that positive moral and spiritual deterioration must neces- 

 sarily ensue to us from a long continuance of this state of 

 antagonism between us." Unfortunately the memorial, how- 

 ever correctly it expressed the convictions of those who pre- 

 pared it, was obviously untrue in the case of many who had 

 signed it with the view of displacing a minister for whom they 

 professed "high and long-continued respect" as a man, sub- 

 scribing themselves "very sincerely and affectionately yours." 

 Philip observed that only a minority of the forty-five memorial- 

 ists were regular attendants at the chapel (six of them he had 

 not seen there for three years), and that persons of notoriously 

 immoral life, who had not attended his ministry, had been asked 

 to express their fear of "moral and spiritual deterioration" 

 from it ! He found among them only fifteen subscribers, and 

 no unpaid voluntary labourer in the congregation or Sunday 

 school, in the choir or in the night school, or as visitor of the 

 sick. He wrote a very powerful reply, which he invited some 

 of his friends to hear, and printed copies of it for their con- 

 sideration and for his family : we thought it too personal. 

 Ultimately he sent a note to the memorialists, thanking them 

 for the free expression of their opinions, which he had carefully 



