MINISTRY AT WARRINGTON. [Chap. IV. 



Philip printed a letter to the congregation, in which he 

 showed that he had been faithful to his engagement with them 

 to preach Christianity "as a spiritual influence, irrespective 

 of sectarian distinctions" (p. 78), and also to the chapel trust. 

 The attempt to dismiss a minister on the ground of doctrinal 

 difference seemed the more inconsistent, because some of the 

 memorialists had taken an active part in executing the school- 

 deeds, which gave the use of the new building to the congrega- 

 tion only so long as it " shall profess and practise the principles 

 of religious liberty unrestricted by articles of faith, creeds, or 

 other religious tests" and emphatically affirmed "the express 

 intention of the founders in no way to prescribe to their 

 successors, or to any persons connected with the management, 

 the religious opinions they themselves entertain." Philip 

 also referred to the Ministers' Stipend Augmentation Fund, 

 which had just been raised by Unitarians to supply the place 

 of Lady Hewley's Charity, of which they had been deprived 

 before the law was amended by the Dissenters' Chapels Act : 

 this prescribed that the ministers who benefited by it, and 

 the members of their congregations, must not " submit to any 

 test of religious doctrine, unless it be the simple acknowledg- 

 ment of the Scriptures ... as containing a record of Divine 

 Revelation." The memorialists considered it " essential that, 

 at least on all the great fundamentals of religious thought, the 

 opinions of our minister should be in harmony with our own \ " 

 and on the subject of human nature, which was the only 

 doctrine to which they specially referred, they expressed their 



for Unitarian worship, which I casually met with in looking out my hymns 

 for the day. Hymn 199 : — 



* 4 To this vile world Thy notice bend, 

 These seats of sin and woe. " 



Hymn 262 : — 



" Buried in sorrow and in sin, 

 At hell's dark door we lay, 

 But we arise by grace divine 

 To see a heavenly day." 



Philip could scarcely have used stronger expressions as to the condition 

 of human nature without the assistance of divine grace. 



