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Lawrence Greatrake (1793-c.1840) Lights and Shades... (Pittsburgh, 1836) |
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Rigdon mentions in text below: p. 15 p. 24 p. 29 p. 34 p. 40
"Undercover Campbellite, 1822-25" | Greatrake's 1824 pamphlets | Campbell's first reply (1824)
Elder Walter Scott's 1824 pamphlet | Rev. Alexander Campbell's 1825 pamphlet
Greatrake's 1826 pamphlet | Greatrake's 1827 pamphlet | Greatrake's 1830 pamphlet
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LIGHTS AND SHADES OF THE WATERITE REFORMER, AND ONE FACT APOSTLE; ALIAS, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, V.D.M.B.B BY A REGULAR BAPTIST, ALIAS, LAWRENCE GREATRAKE, PHYSICIAN IN ORDINARY TO THEOLOGICAL ADVENTURERS AND REFORMATION LUNATICS! "MENEN AEIDE THEA." "The Reformer's wrath to me -- the direful spring Of woes unnumbered -- Ossian like, I sing." 'Ad populam phalcris, ego te intus et in cute novi.' "Away with those trappings to the vulgar; I know thee both inwardly and outwardly" -- au fond -- "to the bottom." Pittsburgh: PRINTED FOR THE PUBLISHER. 1836 |
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==> An Irishman, just from the Emerald Isle, and who, like the Reformer, could do any and every thing, and a little more, was sent by his employer into the woods to fell trees, and make rails. He cut down and butted a gigantic gum, and commenced in sturdy maulings to open it; but after driving a dozen or two iron wedges into it, and exhausting himself by a half day's pounding, he found that he had lost his wedges, his time and his labor, thus far. A thunder storm, accompanied by rain, coming up, the Irishman took shelter under some umbrageous saplings, close by; and while there, the lightning, attracted by the wedges, split the log to pieces; when the son of Erin clapped his hands and exclaimed, in the humor peculiar to the 'Queen of the ocean' -- "Arrah, by my showl, but you have met with YOUR MATCH NOW!" ==> From those editors to whom we shall send a copy of this pamphlet, we look for some respect to be paid to the character of the press, and that they will contribute an item in the premises towards neutralizing the infernal infamy that such wholesale editorial caluminiators and forgers of lies as Campbell are clothing it with; that they will exemplify, somewhat, fiat justitia ruat coelum. This request will appear reasonable when it is rememberes, that such fellows as Campbell take care to attack, as far as possible, the defenceless; and that their master pieces of slander are against those who have no press by which they may defend themselves; and that what they may do through such a medium as this, is likely to be, in a great measure, at their own expense. So that while Campbell gets a 10 or 20 dollar note for every lie he publishes, they have to lose that much in exposing the lie. So hell triumphs through such religious periodicals, Millennial Harbingers, as the primitive faith Apostle's! ==> A single copy of this pamphlet is 25 cents; six or more copies, 16 cts. each; to be had at the Monongahela Bridge, and at the 'Emporium of Fashion.' Market, between Third and Fourth streets, and at the bookstores generally, in Pittsburgh. [ 3 ]
TO
Sir: -- The attempt that you have lately made to consign my name to infamy, through the medium of your Harbinger, is, no doubt, estimated by the multitude of your mole and bat proselytes, as an auto ad fe -- an act if faith; worthy the great apostle of the "ONE FACT and ONE DIPPING" gospel; while thousands of others may conceive, that you were sublimely bold in adventuring on such a publication concerning me, unless sustained, at least by sub rosa responsible authority, and indubitable facts. Leaving the former to luxuriate in the regions of fancy, while admiring your piety and extolling your CAPACITY, I would suggest to the latter, that you had understood, that I had gone, or was going, to a region of the country, (Texas,) where I should no more hear your Arabic name, or see aught from your oracular and veracious pen: at least, you knew, that I was a thousand miles from you, and, as you concluded, no doubt, and not likely to be back in this region of country again: hence you felt soldier-like and brave as Col. Pluck astride a mammoth hog. So much for your heroism -- your more than Numidian lion nerve! No! you are one of the hecatombs of theological adventurers, and religious speculators, and stock-jobbers, with which this mighty mole-hill, earth, is cursed at the present day; one whose craven, poltroon spirit, and whose soul of mud, seek refuge and security under the profession of christian, and a christian minister, from all responsibilities for the nameless and unnumbered villainies that men of your genus, CAPACITY, and means, can enact with impunity, within the limits of the "glorious law!" Your Elymas attributes of subtlety, prompts you to devise and inflict ceaseless wrong and outrage upon the feelings and characters of those who are really christians among your opponents, under the conviction, that their principles will prevent them from taking that vengeance which belongeth unto God, but which your unprincipled insolence provokes, and your nefarious calumnies richly entitle you to, at their hands. You have only to attempt a few more moral assassinations -- perhaps you may find one such, as we are about to notice, sufficient -- and you may be made to bite the dust -- you may be shot down as a nuisance to the earth; not out of revenge, but to the end, that the CAUSE of your death may gain the notoriety and circulation that the devil gives to your Tophetian Harbinger; and that without expense or loss of time to the objects of your unmeasured traducements. At all events, imitate some other modern christian leaders, and go armed with pistols and dirks, so that while you enact the moral and editorial bravo, you may have at least the appearance of physical unison; and -- in Arminian parlance -- a 4 chance for your life. The time is rapidly coming, hastening as an eagle to the prey, when thousands of such religious editors and ministers as you are, will answer and atone with their lives -- and without the intervention of law -- for their jugglery and profligate calumnies. Read, mark! or you must digest! This may be a digression. We proceed to add -- if the objects of your traducements calim but the prerogative of worms, to resent your licentious abuse of them, so far as to vindicate their characters, and turn the poisoned chalice to your own lips, then your, and your serpentine proselytes' subtelty, oozes forth, in vociferations and philippic against them, as being destitute of all christian forbearance, charity, and forgiveness; * and thus you would have christian charity, that "rejoiceth in the truth," award a premium for lies; and thus, jointly, would make the word of God pander to your slanders. If no vindication is offered by your intended victims, then do you and your Satan satellites construe and proclaim their silence to be evidence, strong as proof of holy writ, that they are guilty in the premises; while, to cap the climax, you, and your rag tag and bobtail proselytes, would make it the duty of those whom you attempt morally to assassinatem to prove a negative -- devolve the onus probandi on those whom you accuse! Truly, your's is a Procrustean bed -- if a man is too long therefor, you will mangle and butcher him shorter; and if too short, you will stretch him to dislocation. You conceive, that because old women and children, and booby men, are terrified at the idea of being published in such a squib and cracker, pop-gun cannonading paper as your's, that there must be something appalling as the ghost of Banquo, or of Saul, therein, to every one; that the stoutest must necessarily quail and be brought couchant and crouchant to your feet, to deprecate your wrath, and woo your clemency, by qualifying, if not recanting, your own base lies and slanders! A man, however, of any moral dignity and spirit, would as soon think of stooping to the worship of the devil, as to approach you thus, or ask any such corrections at your hands. __________ * Among the religious editors who have had us in their papers, was one Uriel B. Chambers, of Ky. who forged a vile story about our lectures on the "Signs of the Times," being horribly blasphemous, and disgustengly vulgar and obscene. His tale was re-published by the coxcomb editor of the "Christian Index;" † and from that print other pious editors transferred the article to their columns; among whom was Bicknell, of the "Counterfeit Detector." We subsequently sent Bicknell a pamphlet, vindicating our lectures from every such charge, by the testimony of numerous professing and non-professing gentlemen among our hearers; and exhibiting as indubitable evidence, that the pettifogging religious editorial U. B. Chambers was about as unprincipled a LIAR as there was in all, even procreative, Kentucky, and as a base a FORGER, as this pamphlet proves Campbell to be; at the same time, we sent Bicknell a note, expressing our contempt for the man who could thus intermeddle with other men's matters, and thus use his press against an isolated individual, and a stranger. Well -- instead of noticing our vindication, this wool-dyed hypocrite our private note to him, with prefixes and affixes thereto, in the form of canting homilies about christian temper, charity, forbearance, and forgiveness. Thus these gentlemen of the press, who laud themselves to the third heavens as being every thing of noble mindedness, amor patriae, and Constitutional principle, will enact the parts of scuttle-fish, and moral bravos, for any popular, purse-proud, bloated religious demagogues; and then in the PIETY of their father, ‡ and to avoid the consequences of their licentious traducements, they will affect great defference for the word of God, and quote scripture to prove their voctims villains, in their self-vindications; and themselves saints in the service of Satan. O tempora! "When the devil was sick, the devil a saint would be; When the devil was well, the devil a saint was he." † Wm. T. Brantley, of Philadelphia. ‡ Matth. iv. 1 to 10. 5 Time is a necessary element in all things; and time, (12 years,) has fully convinced my own mind, that my first impressions, and all that I then, (and as the FIRST MAN WHO EVER TOOK A PUBLIC STAND AGAINST YOU!) said and wrote concerning you, were essentially correct and true. If ever a human being's official life was characterized by one unbroken scene of mental prostitution, and all moral obliquities, trick, finesse, cajolings, scenic thunder and lightenings, thine is that life! "Thou art the man!" Having, for the government of my own life, laid down the principle of "lashing naked round the world" every liar and calumniator that attempts to degrade the cause of God and truth in my person, and having this far unfalteringly adhered to, and triumphantly acted on that principle, I feel no disposition to relax, or constitute exceptions! and if I did, you would be the last to whom that forbearance would or should be extended; as towards you, it would smell rank and foul of treason against all that is true and lovely from heaven, and all that is pure and upright on earth. I had hpped that I was done with you; but you have compelled me to notice you once more through this medium, and on you must rest the consequences. In by-gone days, I exposed you as a gilded ritten post -- a whited sepulchre, which without appears beautiful, but within is full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of all hypocrisy and iniquity; as we shall demonstrate, to more than your heart's content, in the sequel. In doing this we shall perform a task, loathsome as that which a physician encounters when he has putrescence to dissect. But the result of our labors may be to demonstrate in your person, Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat; "Whom God designs to curse, he first gives up to madness:" and that if Satan wounds our heel through the medium of the Bethany Reformer, our's is the perogative to bruise his head in the person of the same august Representative of his ebon throne.
LAWRENCE GREATRAKE.
N.B. Infuriated are you -- you breathe out threatening and slaughter against every one of any prominence in the religious worls, who sternly refuses to call you a christian! I have ever been one of them. Serpents may couple with birds, and lambs with tigers, ere I would call you a christian. Again -- you affect at all times to consider yourself as being entitled to the courtesy, swaviter in modo, due a gentleman! Ah, no doubt you are. And so as truly were the Pharisees, and Elymas, entitled to the same courtesy. And so would an incendiary, midnight assassin, be entitled to the same swaviter in modo, when being taken to the penitentiary or the gallows! But we are not of that number of fools, knaves, or would-be-mock gentlemen who give a premium to villainies, by being traitors to the essential interests of society in confounding, in their deportment towards others, virtue and vice -- the Jesuit with the Israelite, in whom is no allowed guile.
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Sir: -- Some one says, a liar is worse than a thief; for against the inroads of the altter, you may oppose bolts and locks. But what bar shall obstruct, or how will you close the mouth of the former? This sentence prompts me cordially to avow, that I am fully convinced of your flea-like smartness and homer 6 like (extra hogshead) CAPACITY; and that it is extremely difficult to catch you in a lie; while the simple reason is, you are no sooner in one, than you are out of it into another. Ex pede Herculem. Hercules is known by the size of his foot, you know; and the dimensions of your CAPACITY may be, in some tolerable degree, conceived of, from the following paragraph, found in your Harbinger, Vol. 7, No. 2, page 84, or Feb. 1836, No. "It has pleased the Lord, in his all-wise providences, sometimes to unveil the opposers of his cause, and to let both friends and foes, even in the present life, see what manner of spirits oppose Reformation, under the mask of zeal for sound principles and practices. In our public attempts to revive and restore the primitive faith and manners, it has been our lot to be opposed and fiercely assaulted by many persons of much influence with the people; and I doubt not but amongst our opponents have been persons of sterling principle and integrity. But with all our charities alive and active, we must confess, that, in our judgment, such opposers have been a very small minority in the host of assailants whom we have had to encounter. Two of the most zealous of these champions for metaphysical regeneration, who have greatly injured us by false representations, have recently been completely unmasked. LAWRENCE GREATRAKE, a name familiar to the readers of the Christian Baptist -- a Regular baptist of high Calvinian stamp -- for whom not only many preachers of different shades, amongst the regular baptists, but also among the Presbyterians, had much affection, as a defender of their faith, and for whom they opened their meeting-houses, pulpits, and purses, because of his sayings and doings against us. After offering much incense at the shrine ot Bacchus, this militant preacher of the popular doctrine has openly renounced Jesus Christ as an impostor; and, as recently and credibly reported here, has put on the profession of atheism." There's a flight -- there's a Sam Patch leap -- there is a stroke of genius, the hand of a master! There, there, we have the primordia rerum, the first principles, in the Reformation of all Reformations! There we have the moral diastole and sistole of the Buffalo Bishop -- the Harbinger of the Latter-Day Glory -- the Millennial morn! Thou art the man who swelleth, like the frog in the fable, in ineffable self-complacency, that thou art destined to be, a John the DIPPER, to Christ's second coming without sin unto salvation, and and to reign a thousand years on earth! Our's is the enviable preogative to give thee exaltation, high as Haman's, if not as novel as Absalom's -- to aid to embalm thee in the admiration and grateful reminiscences of remotest posterity -- and touch once more the fame of the greatest man the nineteenth century has produced. It is observed, 1st. -- You publish me as having been, or become, an open renouncer of Jesus Christ as an impostor, after I had offered much incense to Bacchus! So much you affirm and publish, on your own open and unqualified responsibility, as being truth and fact; while that which you affirm on report -- credible report, is, that I had "put on a profession of atheism!" a distinction without a difference! I perceive that you design to shelter yourself under the plea, that all you have published is a report. So your Sejannus soul is ever thus artful in preparing some hole to retreat to, when you have crept up and stabbed your victims. But here you will fail to find shelter; for by every law of exegis, and rule of grammar, all that preceeds the copulative, "and," of charge against me, is your own, and not another's! and so I shall treat it, and consider you as having pronounced me a toper and an infidel. 2nd. What a lofty minded man you must be, to make such charges against any one, with alluding to the time when, or the community where, these things took place; or naming any individual as the credible authority you affect 7 to have! What a Draco you would be in your laws, what a Norbury in your decisions, had you the power to make the one, and dispense the other! As liberality does not consist so much in giving largely as in giving seasonably, we would, matchless man, with becoming deference, lay the following documents and suggestions at your feet, to establish your claim to the character of a christian reformer, equal to his who forged a dying recantation of the Rev. August Toplady -- that ascendant of champions for predestinarian doctrine, (Including metaphysical regeneration,) of the 18th century, ==> So, then, at the very time you were hatching this Bacchanalian and Atheistical tale concerning me, the representatives of one of the largest states in the Union -- who had known me for a year -- were estimating and treating me as a christian and a christian minister; fearlessly, faithfully, and -- as they are pleased to say -- ably discharging my official duties. But you -- near a thousand miles off -- could see that I was a Baccanalian and an Atheist! or, at least, you could see that I offered much incense at the shrine of Baccus, and had openly renounced Jesus Christ as an impostor; while some ondits assured you, that I had put on the profession of Atheism. But, again to documents --
8 We would refer, for similar confirmation of what the Apostle of the ONE FACT Gospel has published concerning us, to the following gentlemen, residing in ILLINOIS. -- ElderR. M. Newport, Doctor Norton, Palestine, Crawfold co., George Redman, Wm. Green, Paris, Edgar co.; Benjamin Parker, Cha's Morton, Charleston, Coles co.; Elder Wm. Crow, Jacksonville; Col. Charles Prentice, Vandalia; Berry-Man Creele, Carlisle, Clinton co.; L. Adams, Esq., Dr. Roman, Lebanon; Gov. William Kinney, Gideon Simpson, Belleville. Now, if there is one of those gentlemen that does not confirm the TRUTH of what the great apostle of the One Fact Gospel has published concerning us, just as much as Messrs. Stephens, Oxley and Kennard have, then Campbell is no scoundrel Liar, no fool calumniator, no vile Forger. It is to be hoped, that if the Reformer, or any others interested in the matter, should write to those gentlemen, or any of them, that they will pay the postage of their letters. Ni, we will except the Reformer, and promise him, that such will be their individual and united disposition to bear testimony to his CAPACITY for falsehood, calumny and forgery, that they will cheerfully incur the expense of postage. ==> Only let him state the charges, he has made against us, in his communications to them! Should the Apostle want more similar confirmation, we refer him to our paper, titled, "Signs of the Times," published in Mo. up to May 20th, 1836. But as the foregoing documents and references embrace only two years of time, or my character and labors in Illinois and Missouri; and as by the term, 'recently,' the Buffalo Bishop may in his famous latitudinarianism, mean four or five years, instead of two years, we shall take the liberty of referring, in a passing way, to our three years labors in Kentucky. For instance -- Elder Lawrence Greatrake: 9 your course with joy. So pray your affectionate brethren in the "faith once delivered to the saints.Well, thou prince of visionaries, one might suppose the foregoing to be quantum sufficit of testimony to satisfy the most voracious appetite, short of that of hell and the grave. You see what a large letter I have written to vindicate your veracity, and place you, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion! Had you committed yourself to any measure of nefarious and malic prepense slander, __________ * One object that we have in view, in referring to Kentucky testimonials, is, to shew that not only were there no limits set to the subtle and brazen-faced misrepresentations of us, and ruffian-like assaults made by thousands on our character there; but to add, that Campbell's proselytes were among the most vulgar and licentious of those liars. Who can reasonably doubt it, with what we are now making manifest of their Pope, before their eyes? "Like priest, like people," all the world over. Or what will their masters not do, when low villains can thus presume? What are we not to expect from the principals, when we are thus insulted by their subalterns? 10 Verily, you are a Bertrand, Skalspeare, Sir Archy, and Eclipse, in vault, and wind, and bottom, in SOME THINGS. You have, no doubt, read the old legend, that represents the devil to have been once walking on the sea-shore, to cool his thunder-blasted brow, when he perceived a lobster rapidly advancing towards him; but no sooner did the gifted creature see his Satanic majesty, than he began to move backwards as fast as he has been speeding forwards. Whereupon Satan, in admiration, exclaimed -- "By my imperial horns, but you are a racer!" With what full-orbed complacency, unebbing as the tide of eternity, he must hover over and around you, as a racer! The insignia with which he has invested you, are more numerous than those of prince Esterhazzy, at a continental congress of royality; and compared with which, topaz is ebony, and the diamond an ink-drop. If we have exhibited a chief d'oeuvre of the brillants that corruscate on your majestic brow, it is only an earnest of our unveiling scores of others of little inferiority of water; and the concentrated radiance of which must not only establish your claim to the character of a reformer, but constitute you a religious and editorial phenomenon in its perehelion, glowing o'er, radiating, and vivifying these western moral wilds, as the monarch of the day, rolling in vernal spelendors, gives life and animation to the countless offspring of old mother earth! Ad interim -- come thou, expressive silence, muse his peaise!
LAWRENCE GREATRAKE.
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It may not be irrelevant for me to mention, that a Mrs. Mary Zachary, an old-fashioned predestinarian baptist, a mother in Israel, first apprised me of the distinguished notice you had given me in your Harbinger. She was on a visit from Owen's Station, St. Louis co. Mo. (mark her address!) to her children, settled at Dixon's Spring, Tennessee; and from which place she wrote to me as follows.
11 You will be duly sensible of, as well as thankful, no doubt, for my kindness in thus catering for the gratification of your self-complacency, by giving this additional evidence of your morally sublime CAPACITY. And to prevent the cup of your exultation from being incomplete, we may inform you, that we have had two sons with us in our Illinois and Missouri tour -- or for 2 years past -- who will rise up to confirm your claim to prodigious CAPACITY, if not exactly your claim to VERACITY. They will be able to tell your children what a unique you were, and how entitely by truth and righteousness you got the wealth they will inherit from you! I shall now proceed to a brief analysis of the extract, and draw forth therefrom such an assemblage of virtues, that their united sweets shall torture your sense. You say -- "It has pleased the Lord, in his all-wise providences, sometimes to unveil the opposers of his cause, and to let both friends and foes, even in the present life, see what manner of spirits oppose reformation under the mask of zeal for sound principles and practices." The presumptuous and impious familiarity with which the names of God and of his Christ, are pressed into the service of all that is corrupt and corrupting in the religious Bedlam of the age, is enough to hermetically seal the lips, and paralyze the pen, of every Israelite indeed, in reference to the use of those sacred names. As an instance -- here is the ascendant of reformers, coupling the name of the God of the universe with the foulest lies, and most nefarious slanders! His own malicious fabrications, his own fiend-like traducements of a man, he represents as being the Almighty's providential unmasking him! Well, no wonder the Buffalo bishop, and his proselytes, generally, catch at any thing that they may conceive of as being a veil! they have certainly use for every thing of that sort they can buy, beg, make, or steal, to cover up, but partially, even, their own leprous diffusing corruptions. These infamies they call reformation -- the cause of God -- the primitive faith and manners. Yes, primitive enough, beyond all contradiction, as we find the devil to have been the father of such reformations, belying and slendering even the Almighty himself, for the purpose of reforming in the garden of Eden! (gen. 3, 4, 5.) Again: This sui generis reformer says -- "In our public attempts to revive and restore the primitive faith and manners, it has been our lot to be opposed and fiercely assaulted by many persons of much influence with the people; and [I] doubt not but among our opponents have been persons of sterling principle and integrity: but with all our charities alive and active, we must confess, that such opposers have been a very small minority." The reformer gives us to understand, that he has labored, like old ocean into tempest tossed, to revive and restore primitive faith and manners. Yes, we have ever conceded, that the "prince of the power of the air" has worked in him mightily; and we are now exhibiting specimens of his primitive faith and manners. By their fruits we shall know them. And we would humbly opine, that any principles and practices, masked or unmasked, opposed to his primitive faith and manners, can scarcely be less than correct and good, and that zeal therefore would not discredit any man. We are told that he doubts not but among his opponents have been perosns of sterling principle and integrity. His qualifications to judge concerning sterling principle and integrity, after what we have detailed, are not to be called in question! Sancho Panza could say, "Blessed be the man that first invented sleep;" but by what invention the reformer has been invested with any faculty to apprehend anything of sterling principle and integrity, is as mysterious as polar attraction; but that he is lynx-eyed, and an Argus, in such appregensions, is not to be called in question by 12 any one who expects to be interested in his great salvation. We may suggest, that all of those opponents whom the reformer has succeeded in cajoling or flattering into his Falstaff, regiment-like ranks, are perosns of sterling principle and integrity! their having him as their Custos morum guarantees that -- while all those who remain his fierce opponents, are thereby demonstrated to be the very Simon Maguses and Julians of the age! His charities are obtruded upon our notice, and are not to be passed by without receiving that attention they deserve: he tells us that they were all alive and active. This must have constituted an epoch in his wonderful life: his feelings, under their influence, must have been as strange as those of incipient maternity, or as light and air to newborn infancy. His charities! in magnitude, no doubt, equal to a globule of the blood of those animalculae, of which, according to a celebrated Naturalist, are more in the milt of a single cod-fish, than there are men, women and children, on the face of the earth; while if the globules of their blood bear less the same proportion to their bodies, as those of man do to his, then it may be proved, that the smallest grain of sand, visible on the sea-shore, would contain more of those globules, or drops of blood, than ten thousand two hundred and fifty-six of the largest mountains in the world would contain grains of sand! Whew! St. Anthony's devils -- twenty thousand of whom could dance a saraband on the point of the finest cambric needle -- were very Goliaths, compared with them: and then the quality of his charities quadrates with their regular magnitude: they are like the thorns and thistles of the forest wild: they do but afford a shade for the hissing serpent of SLANDER to repose beneath, or shower their mock beauties on the deadly asp of heresy. Matchless man! we hope his Atlean shoulders will not groan, crack, and break beneath the avalanche of his lively and active charities; and that their splendors may not abash and oppress his modest and retiring soul. A specimen of those peerless charities is found, in characters of more than living sapphire, in our second letter. We shall terminate our third letter, by returning unto our second person PLURAL, and just to say -- en passant -- one of your ruse de guerre -- your vilis artificium -- is, if possible, to villify into non-resistance every antagonist that you dread; to parade yourself as a very Hector of Troy with the quill, and any you deem comparatively imbecile; and flatter into partizans all that are vain, and the mere scum and offals, moral vermin, * of other religious sects: in all of which you demonstrate that subtlety of the serpent, and the conscia mens recti, worthy of the POLYPHEMUS REFORMER of this age of ages.
LAWRENCE GREATRAKE.
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In the next two sentences of the extract, you are pleased to say -- "In the list of assailants whom we have had to encounter, two of the most zealous of those champions for METAPHYSICAL regeneration, who have greatly injured us by false representations, have revently been completely unmasked. __________ * Many have been the cursing, swearing, and drunken, habitually drunken members of the Campbellite churches; and among them, deacons, too! He gets into his synagogues little more than natural, corrupt, and cirrupting materials, who are ripe for any enormities, and who exhibit Italian attribute in bold relief. But bid him go to hell -- to hell he goes." 13 LAWRENCE GREATRAKE, a name familiar to the readers of the Christian Baptist -- a Regular baptist of high Calvinian stamp -- for whom not only many preachers of different shades, amongst the regular baptists, but also among the presbyterians, had much affection, as a defender of their faith, and for whom they opened their meeting-houses, pulpits, and purses, because of his sayings and doings against us. After offering much incense at the shrine ot Bacchus, this militant preacher of the POPULAR doctrine has OPENLY renounced Jesus Christ as an impostor; and, as recently and credibly reported here, has put on the profession of atheism." Here, thou pink of magnanimous candor, and dignified ingenuousness, you inform us, that among the list of your fierce assailants, there were two of a superlative degree of fierceness, and who are now completely unmaksed. Unmasked! UMASKED!! Was conscience telling you a tale? or what mirror were you contemplating yourself in, when the idea of a mask so irresistibly fastened on your imagination? 'Twas a palpable optical illusion, only accounted for upon a principle of solar reflection and refraction, in the contemplation of yourself! Unmasked! Unmasked!! How truly this illustrates and confirms a recondite criticism on all great dramatic authors, namely, the principals of their dramatis personae they always draw upon themselves for -- as in Milton's Satan, Shakspeare's Richard the Third, and Campbell's Lawrence Greatrake! So your par nobile fratum J. M. PECKS, URIEL CHAMBERSES, and scores of kindred religious editors and authors, have made L. Greatrake appear on their canvass, what L. Greatrake has subsequently demonstrated them to be, in living flesh and blood -- in principle and in overt-act!! But L. G. has offered much incense at the shrine of Bacchus. How classical, how significant, how ingenuous, is this suggestion! When, where, at whose house, in company with whom, it was not necessary for the REFORMER even to suggest! His 'say-so' is enough. Much incense! What was the 14 Richelieu, the cunning of a Mazarin, the insensibility and cruelty of Louvois, the profligacy of Dubois, the suppleness of a Maurepas, and the activity of a Vergeanes. But what, pray, was your object in thus FORGING, (for you have given no authority, as you have none to give,) such lies concerning L. Greatrake? It was to slander and calumniate, in my person, all who have ever been, or hereafter shall be, your opponents, at least prominent opponents, by representing what your lies make me appear to be, as a personation of them! This liberty you took while L. G. was a thousand miles from you, fondly dreaming that you would escape the lash your profligate enormities provoke. Another specimen of your reformation -- your primitive faith and manners! It appears that I have injured you greatly by, what you call false representations. Why did you not specify some, at least, of those false representations? In the absence of such specifications, did nit not strike you, that you appear the liar? particularly in connection with what we have exhibited, and shall exhibit, in these pages. In making this charge, you allude to my LETTERS to, and MINIATURE PORTRAIT of you -- two pamphlets published in 1824. Ah, they were like Hercules' shirt to you; they made you writhe from head to heel; and to this day, no doubt, you feel them to be like a sheet of lead to a gouty foot, or a plaster of cantharides to a fresh wound. You will recollect, that those pamphlets were written over the signature of 'A Regular Baptist;' and that you got my real name by sacrificing your veracity and word of honor as a man, a professed christian, and christian minister! The principal object I had in view, in not giving my real name, only on a principle of mere justice to you, was, that I knew how capable you were of taking all dastardly advantages that your press could give out against an opponent situated as I was. I will give you once more the written condition I left with the printers of those pamphlets, and on your compliance with which condition, they were to give you my real name. Messrs. Eichbaum & Johnston:Well, what did you do? Did you go to Caesar's tribunal? Did you take the legal measure to prove that there were false representations of you? No! but you sneaked off to your editorial kennel, to bark forth your gratuitous charges and malevolent lies against me; and by putting together odds and ends of what I had written to you, to make me appear a monstrum horrendum, a horrid monster, for your proselytes to chatter at and about, like an army of 15 monkeys in a cane-brake. 'Tis true, you came to see me with the now Mormonite Sidney Rigdon, (then your right-hand man as a reformer,) and Walter Scott, and complained to me that there were false representations of you in my letters. I told you to go to Caesar's tribunal and prove the falsehoods, as you were solemnly pledged to do. You replied, that we were both christians; and you wished the affair to be adjusted on gospel principles. I asked you, if you thought I was a christian? you answered certainly. I then replied, that I should lie like Lucifer, if I were to say, that I thought you were a christian! and so I say still. Thus low, and thus dastardly, were the means by which you got my name, to render it familiar to the readers of your lying sheets, and to hang it up in the shambles of your Christian Baptist, where you have cut up and quartered hecatombs of the best of characters, for your proselytes to feed upon, with the appetite of jackals. You perceive I am making steady, if not rapid, advances, towards demonstrating you to be the ascendant of all theological illuminati -- a pillar of cloud by day, and if fire by night, to all that have eyes, but see not; and of consequence, the knight La Mancha of all reformers. But as expectation makes the blessings dear, and as it is a gratification to me to imbue my services, on your behalf, with every ingredient of happiness, I shall suspend my remarks for the present with the suggestion, that you must, at least, already appear an admirable exemplification in your own life and character, of the "Allon iatros, autos elkesi bruon" of Plutarch -- the physician of others, while he himself teems with ulcers.
LAWRENCE GREATRAKE.
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Sir -- In the extract under notice, you are pleased to tell the public, that I am, or was, a regular baptist, of high Calvinian stamp, a zealous champion for metaphysical regeneration -- for whom many preachers of different shades among the regular baptists, as also among the presbyterians, had much affection as a defender of their faith, * and for whom they opened their meeting-houses, their pulpits, and their purses; because of my sayings and doings against you. At the same time, you, in that extract, state those sayings and doings to have been "false representations, and by which you were greatly injured!" So, then, those regular baptists and presbyterians, of different shades, did not open their meeting-houses, their pulpits, and their purses, because of their much affection for me as a defender of their faith, but because of my greatly injuring you by false representations! This was the case, or you add another lie to the long list. In fact, you would make it appear, that they never opened their meeting-houses, their pulpits, or their purses, for me until I began to greatly injure you by false representations -- which is, notoriously, another lie; for their meeting-houses were as much opened to me before I knew you, as they have ever been since. As the purses of presbyterians and baptists having been __________ * Here, then, is the very Goliah of slander against me, testifying, that I have been a devoted defender of the faith of regular baptists, and of presbyterians! that is of the faith avowed in their formulas! Such I have been to this day! Therefore, purses having been opened for me, the most soul-harrowing opposition and abuse have I sustained from them -- (here and there an individual exception;) because I would not succumb to their traditions and inventions. 16 opened * to us, you are not to be believed by any honest-minded man, until you state the when and where, with good endorsement. The object of your expressing yourself on this point so ambiguously was, to escape, if possible, detection in a literal lie, though conscious of being guilty of a lie virtually, or morally. YOur design is to give your readers an idea, that streams of money have flowed in upon me, from baptists and presbyterians, in all directions; and then, if you are pushed to the wall, and made to answer distinctly as to what you mean -- O, then, you only meant that some of their purses had been opened to me; but as to what amount they gave me, you don't pretend to say; you don't know that they gave me any thing, or that there was any thing in their purses to give! So you exemplify the "ad captandum vulgus" -- so you ensnare the vulgar -- so conscientious are you at times, lest you should literally lie: like some chaste and faithful wives, who, to avoid dishonoring their husbands' beds, take special care to occupy some others with their paramours! I know and understand you, au fond, to the bottom! A likely story, indeed, that the baptist and presbyterian churches would not open their meeting-houses and pulpits of me, as an object of their affection, on account of defending their faith -- "esteeming me very highly in love for what they conceived to be the truth's sake" -- and yet open them, and their purses too, for abusing and falsifying you! Truly, you move a 'pas de geant' -- with a giant's stride. You will soon be elevated as high as the apex of Pompey's pillar or Cleopatra's needle, as a truth-telling editor, and enabled to exclaim -- "Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii!" Yield, ye Roman, and also ye Greek writers. Surely my gratitude is due to you for having published me in your pearly pages as being, or having been, a regular baptist, of high Calvinian stamp, and a zealous champion for, (what you most philosophically denominate,) metaphysical regeneration. Ah yes, I have been a very decided and unfaultering contender for the doctrine of slavation from power, pollution, and love of sin, by and "through the sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth," in contra-distinction to the doctrine of believing the truth for the sanctification of the Spirit. The Spirit agent -- instrument the word! I have testified, that __________ * So a balderdash proselyte of your's (A. H. F. Payne, of Ky.) said on board of a steamboat, some few weks since. Among other things he affirmed, that we had been cordially received and hospitably entertained by a Mrs. Marshall, of Washington, Mason co. Ky. and that she had liberally donated money to us, when we never had been in her house, had never sen a picc-une of her money, and nevr had spoken to her only once, (from her carriage,) when she requested to be introduced to me! Mrs. M. was a presbyterian. 17 God, the Spirit's, is the perogative, and his only, to "bring a clean thing out of an unclean" -- (2 Thess. 2, 13, and Job. 14, 4:) that it is the Spirit that quickeneth: the flesh, (moral, intellectual, and physical powers of man,) profiteth, or availeth, nothing therein -- (John 6, 63:) that God gives a new heart, takes away the heart of stone, and gives a heart of flesh: puts his Spirit within men, and causes them to walk in his statutes, to remember their own evil ways and their own doings, and to LOATHE themsleves in their own sight, for their iniquities: and thus the Lord cleanseth them from all their iniquities -- (Ezek. 36, 26 to 33.) This constitutes the washing of regeneration; that washing that the Psalmist implores at the hands of God; and which Jesus refers to when he says -- "If I was thee not, thou hast no part with me;" and that the apostle speaks of when he says -- "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and BY the SPIRIT of God" -- (luke 13, 8 -- Psalm 51, 2 -- Titus 3, 5 -- 1 Cor. 6, 11.) We have testified, that no man can come unto Jesus, except the Father, by that Spirit, draws him: 1 that no man can call Jesus Christ, Lord, but by the Holy Ghost: 2 that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty: 3 that it is the Spirit of adoption, by which the sons of God, the elect, call him Father: 4 that it is the Spirit of sanctification, 5 of union to Christ; 6 the Spirit of strength; 7 the Spirit of prayer and supplication; 8 the Spirit of witness, 9 of love, and a sound mind; 10 the Spirit of repentance and faith; the Spirit of glory; 11 resting on and preparing the vessels of mercy for an exceeding great and eternal weight of glory; and that, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his -- though he may have the Bethany, and a thousand copies of a hundred other editions of the New Testament -- and make a hundred thousand dollars in bald, disjointed, syllabub commentaries on them! So we have believed, and so we have preached; and if this be metaphysical regeneration, we glory in it as a constituent of the doctrine of the Bible. And why not? Because you have enacted the part of an Iscariot to, (kissed and betrayed,) that constituent of gospel doctrine, as well as other constituents -- such as the triplicity of moral distinction, or personal subsistence, in the divine nature; the sovereignty of Jehovah Aleim; the purposes of God; the personal, particular, and eternal election of the subjects of salvation; the speciality of the atonement as to nature and application; the perserverance of the saints to glory, through the alone righteousness of Christ; is it, I say, because you, finding that such doctrine would neither multiply your converts, or fill your purse, or the "measure of your earthly glory," that you have apostatized therefrom, that others are to abandon and deride it as being metaphysical? Cannot your vain, money-loving, muck-rake soul, conceive it possible, that there are those who can estimate the truth of the gospel, just in proportion as they make sacrifices for it, as much or more than you do in making a hundred thousand dollars by it, and getting the fame of a reformer? No -- ame de boue -- thou soul of mud -- no such conceptions can enter the heart of such a theological petit maitre! With you, 'gain is godliness;' and the clink of Mammon's box sweeter music than the symphony of the spheres, or the diapason of heaven. More of this anon. Do you ever read your printed theology of former years, and ere you set up trade, or opened a sort of Cario slop-shop of theology for yourself? Perhaps not. I will therefore stir up your PURE mind to a few reminiscences on the subject. But I would not have you suppose, that I attach any more value __________ (1) John 6, 65 -- (2) 1 Cor. 12, 3 -- (3) 2 Cor. 3, 17 -- (4) Gal. 4, 6, and Rom. 8, 16 -- (5) 2 Thess. 2, 13, and 1 Pet. 1, 1,2 -- (6) 2 Cor. 3, 13 -- (7) Ephes. 3, 11 -- (8) Rom. 8, 26 -- (9) 1 John 5, 10 -- (10) Rom. 5, 5 -- (11) 1 Pet. 4, 14. 18 to your profession of the truth, than I do to your hocus pocus one fact and one dipping gospel. In the former case, your profession, at best, amounted to nothing more than Horne Tooke's Jowler's probo Aliter, or Poll Parrot's "Polly, put the kettle on!" and in the latter case, your profession is but argumentum ad crumenam -- an argument to the purse. In your Circular letter of 1817, for instance, you recognize the Trinity in unityas being the "most fundamental doctrine of the christian religion." You add -- "next in order to, and inseparably connected with, the former doctrine, is, the will or purpose of the Most High in creating men and angels, as revealed in the scriptures as the end of all his works" -- (page 1.) You then pronounce the divine purpose to be "ancient as God himself; 2nd -- that they are independent; 3d -- that they are immutable:" (page 2.) You then tell us of the elect angels, of the number of man's months, of his appointed time, of his fixed habitation. And with respect to the souls and eternal state of all men, you say, "the same language runs through the divine oracles: hence we read of some appointed unto wrath, and some appointed unto salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ: hence we read of some ordained to eternal life, and of some ordained to condemnation; of some vessels of mercy afore prepared unto glory, and some vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:" (page 3.) On page 7, you say -- "So, then, if there be no election, there is no salvation." On the same page you affirm -- "The testimony of God reveals the achievements of Jesus Christ as the means, and the alone means, of salvation." ==> Not the belief of the one fact, and being immersed, do you there recognize as the means of salvation! You add -- "So, then, if there be no revelation, there are no means of salvation. From this it appears obvious, that none but those born from above," (not of water! that's from beneath!) "can use the means of salvation; and such only are exhorted to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling." "All the promises," you say, "are addressed to men as believers, and not as unbelievers." You add -- "When the Holy Spirit accompanies this word, then, and then only, is it effectual: no man can profit from the scriptures, but as he is taught by the Spirit that indited them; which gift of the Spirit is as sovereogn as the sending of Christ into the world." (Pages 7 and 8.) In a word, in that letter are the doctrines of Trinity in unity, of Jehovah's sovereignty, predestination, personal election, unfrustratable vocation, regeneration by the Spirit's direct influence, alias metaphysical regeneration, special atonement, justification by Christ's righteousness, and the final perseverance of the saints, the elect, from grace to glory. In reference to these truths, and kindred ones, you remark -- "When our minds are ecercised in the consideration of this great subject, in the light of revelation, we would scarcely suppose that an objection could exist against it: but, alas! the scripture plainness of any doctrine is no defence against the cavils of poor, blind, deluded man. There is not a truth in the revelation of God, against which the pride and ignorance of man does not object. Some object against one part, some against another. But this doctrine has had a host to oppose it in all ages. From the days of Cain, down to the present age, objections have been urged against it." "But what are the objections? And from what quarter do they come? 'Tis all one whether we take them from the mouth of Cain, the obstinate Jew, the sceptical Greek, the infidel Roman,, or the MODERN ARMINIAN. Their objections are one and the same." (Too metaphysical! aye.) "Moses, in his day, withstood them; Christ silenced them; Paul refuted them; and the saints, in all ages, have testified against them." "The natural man," you say, "cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them. So that this doctrine, instead of being 19 adverse to the salvation of any, it is only in consequence of its being true, that any can be saved. So that except the Lord of hosts had a remnant according to the election of grace, we had all been as Sodom, and perished as the men of Gomorrah. So, then, if there be no election, there is no salvation." (Pages 6 and 7.) This doctrine, then, that you blow like a grampus whale against at this time, deride and sneer at, and publish as metaphysical -- and which your magpie bishops and proselytes are, as your echos, decrying -- you once solemnly professed to believe, as you published them, to be fundamental truths of the word of God. And you pronounced their opponents to be natural men, reprobate to the truth -- Cains, sceptics, infidels, and Arminians! * Then, who, what, and where are you at this time? Are you not evidently one of those poor, blind, deluded men, who, in cavillings against the truth, manifest that the scripture plainness of any doctrine is no defence against pratings and malicious philippics in opposition thereto? In the spirit of all apostates, your happiness and glory lie in seducing or persecuting into defection from the truth as many others as you possibly can; while you are exaperated at disappointment in proportion to the ability and prominence, as advocates for truth, of those you essay to reform. There are some, no doubt, whom you might reform, if you could guarantee to them a moiety, or a fourth, of the mammon of unrighteousness that you have secured to yourself from your reformation. But few there are whose CAPACITY can be compared to your's, in the illustration of the art, science, or craft, incident to the 'Aurum e stercore,' or bringing gold From Dung! Common justice, however, requires us to concede, that if your life exemplifies the vivere rapto, or that you live by diverse plunderings, including that of robbing heccatombs of their good name, your marvellous writings, and tweedledum, tweedledee proselytes, have no less evinced that 'vocem comoedia tollit' -- comedy carries the day.
LAWRENCE GREATRAKE.
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Sir -- As we progress in our Lights and Shades of your eventful life, you may begin to feel, that though tiger-hunting is a delightful recreation, while you hunt the tiger, that it is not quite so agreeable when the tiger takes it into his head to hunt you. I have already suggested, that any champion for that doctrine which you, in your circular of 1817, represent as embracing the fundamental truths of the gospel -- the Trinity in unity -- sovereignty, election, &c. † -- such a champion you dread, and shrink aghast from, as Milton's Satan shrunk from the __________ * Publish that circular of yours! ah, publish it! publish it as a monument of your ministerial knavery, or of your religious ignorance or apostacy, or of ALL! † We perceive that the "Old School General Assembly Presbyterians," are beginning once more to "awake, and arise from the Pelagian Arminian" (Arminians are but the varnished offspring of Pelagians!) "dead." It is time that they were aroused; for that seductive, treacherous Delilah, had well nigh shorn them of their strength -- bound them hand and foot, and delivered them to 'the dogs without' -- the uncircumcised and unclean. Their's was nearly an Ichabod state. No one will realize more heart-felt satisfaction than we shall, on witnessing them redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, 20 wand of Ithuriel. There is no such man, of whom you stand in dread as a past or prospective antagonist but what you studiously, artfully, or insolently attempt to degrade, to the end, that you may have an appearance of plausible pretence for not accepting his challenge; and from the same politic considerations, you sneer at those truths, including regeneration by the afflative influences of the Spirit, as metaphysical, mystical, and a mere bag of moon-shine. This is an easy way of achieving a conquest -- as much so as that of Caligula's of Briton, or Domitian's of the Catti! No, you will never, never meet a champion for those fundamental truths of the word of God, the gospel of Israel's salvation: or if you should have the temerity to resolve to do so, you shall never want an antagonist, while life and ordinary health are continued to your atheist, LAWRENCE GREATRAKE! as, for the sake of demonstrating how great is truth, and how insignificant you are, as an opponent thereof, I will engage to become your opponent myself -- and so far do violence to my feelings, as to controvert with one whom I conceive to be a living sepulchre of moral duplicity and mental prostitution -- with one whom I have found to be the most malicious liar, and audacious slanderer, of all the hundreds of thousands of human beings with whom I have been acquainted. I shall, in that event, pluck The feathers from the daw, or tear the lion's skin from an assine biped. Not only so, but at the same time I would engage to demonstrate, that all the more prominent passages of scripture that you refer to for the support of your "chaos and old night" theology, are no authority at all therefor, the subject of baptism excepted! ==> Could you anticipate the quid pro quo -- as many thousand dollars from the publication of a debate on those truths, as you have realized from your debates, or either of your debates, with McCalla and Owen, on the, mere externals of religion, you might be goaded to embrace it. At all events, avarice and apprehension would produce an effervescence in your breast, like the union of alkali and acid; and develope emotions that the pencil of Hogarth would be baffled in depicting. But to return to the extract. You there represent me as being, or having been, a militant preacher of the popular doctrine. High Calvinian doctrine popular! Well, we thought that that was the doctrine against which the vox populi mutters forth the diabolo, Tiberio, tetrior of an opponent of old; and which the multitude of professed Christians in this day, in volcanic-like rage, proclaim to be 'a cursed doctrine!' We thought that FREE WILL was still, amor et delicae humani generis, corrupted nature's deformed darling, and that it found open hearts and arms, for its adulterous embraces, in every direction. And if we thought correctly, you must have falsified in the premises; and we will prove that you knew better, and that you lied in the case wittingly! You shall be witness against yourself! In your circular letter of 1817, you say, in reference to this high Calviniait doctrine -- (including what you now call __________ as a church: to see them unfurl once more the banner of that glorious gospel, from whence they derive the blessed fundamentals of their "sound speech," their "good confession" -- and rallying beneath its resplendent living STARS and STRIPES * -- and wielding the "sword of the Spirit" against the countless hosts of Pelagian, Arminian, Socinian, Sabellian, &c. errorists, that now swarm our country, would indeed be to make one's soul as the chariots of Aminidab -- to exclaim with one of old, "How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel! Strong is thy dwelling place; and thou puttest thy nest in a rock." For our own part, we feel no interest in, or value a snuff, all that transpires on earth in the name of the gospel, and of the church, or of religion, but the promulgation of the doctrine of sovereign, discriminating, unfrustrable, reigning and triumphant grace! All else is lie and delusion, and will and must work desolation on earth. * Rev. 12, 1 -- Isaiah 53, 5 -- 1 Pet. 2, 24. 21 metaphysical regeneration!) "But alas! the scripture plainness of any doctrine is no defence against the cavils of poor, blind, deluded man. There is not a truth in the revelation of God, against which the pride and ignorance of man does (do) not object. Some object to one part, some against another, But "this doctrine," (high Calvinian doctrine,) "has had a host to oppose it in all ages." ==> How you must have lied then for how impudently you lie now! Happy, enviable man, to have such a choice! But happier stuff to have such spiritual gifts! You know, that almost all professors of religion, of all denominations5 including your own amphibious sect, vaunt of, and affect, at least, to triumph in the assurance, of that doctrine soon becoming extinct from the face of the earth; as you may know, that not one out of twenty of those who profess to be Calvinian preachers, are more or better than mongrel at best -- half Ashdod, half Hebrew -- wool and hominy; having their sermons larded or honeyed with terms and conditions, offers and proffers of salvation -- sermons, the Calvinism of which is as the size of an ostrich's head, and the Arminianism thereof as the size of its body; and by all of which they catch or make proselytes without number, and who, as 'dead flies,' cause the apothecary's ointment tg send forth a stinking savour. Your ipse dixit makes me a militant or fighting preacher! Well, from such authority there is no appeal! Whatever of retrospective falsehood there may be in representing me as a fighting preacher, I should opine that there was something prophetically true in the representation, did I not know you to be the basest of poltroons -- a miscreant who would butcher a thousand of your species to secure your ill-begotten wealth, or to revenge your wounded vanity, if you could do it with impunity: at the same time you would forswear all, rather than jeopardize your craven existence. As to polemic fighting in defence of high Calviniun doctrine, I have had none of that, and for this simple reason, I have never met with any reformer, or other Arminian or Fullerite champion, that would dare to meet me as an antagonist. They know that they would have to fall before truth, as Dagon before the ark; that they would be demonstrated to be nothing, essentially, better or more thau baptized infidels! In such a case you know that you would prove yourself to be a mere theological puff-ball, a flask of cucumber sun-beams, or a bag of moonshine! Hence you will never dare to meet such an opponent; but will rather resort to any vile lies, or base subterfuge, to avoid it! to excuse yourself! But if you had meant by my fighting, that I have had to collar half dozens of reformers at one meeting, to overcome their attempts to prevent me from getting into a meeting-house, and to battle with them as Paul did with similar beasts at Ephesus, (I Cor. 15, 32,) and to drive them from me as so many filthy, jabbering ourang-outangs -- and to expose their lies and calumnies, as I am now exposing their POPE'S -- if by this, I say, as well as similar rencounters with many others of the pie-bald Arminian and pseudo Calvinistic sects of the present day, you mean to say I am a militant preacber -- then you for once tell the truth: so, it is said, pearls are sometimes found in toads' heads' But more particularly in reference to what you call my false representations of you, would I now remark. If those representations have existed, or do exist, they must be found in the letters I wrote to you and published in 1824, or they are nowhere to be found. I have already made it manifest, that you did not dare to go to Caesar's tribunal to prove, or attempt to prove, those falsehoods, though you solemnly pledged yourself to go to and to prove at that tribunal, that there were those falsehoods in those letters, if my real name was given to you. You got my name on that pledge; but you took care not to go to Caesar's tribunal! What's the inference? Why, that no such false representations were made of you!! while the violation of your solemn'pledge, in connection 22 with the base object you had in getting my real name, is a lasting monument of infamy to you. I shall recapitulate every prominent representation of mine concerning you and your proselytes in those letters; and that recapitulation I find in the last of those letters, and which in substance is as follows. "Sir -- In recurrence to what I have written, you will perceive, that I mean to be understood as saying, that you never gave the baptist denomination any evidence whatever, that your becoming professedly a baptist was the 'answer of a good conscience:' on the contrary, there is much reason to say of you, in reference to conscience, as the poet said of women -- 23 baptist would ever cast in his lot among a people, of whose religious character he was to judge by your's: no, though he was never to have any connexion with the church militant. So, then, all that we can intelligently calculate upon of proselytism by you is, of those from whom we had much better be separated. 24 derive great satisfaction in reading the bible; to have much, peace and joy in their attainments of knowledge. Now, the truth is that in every stage of their profession of religion, the pride of their minds, the vanity of their hearts being gratified, is the sole cause of their satisfaction. Indeed, the whole of your fraternity, from first to last, including yourself, sir, are flaterers of each other. They say that there is no teacher like you: you respond, there are no people so intelligent and well instructed as them. * You recollect, I presume, who 'obtained a kingdom by flatteries.' Bear in mind also, that it is written on good authority, 'he that speaketh flattery to his friends, even. the eyes of his children shall fail;' and that the characteristic of a gospel minister is, I not to use flattering words;' for that is to set down, as 'a cloak of covetousness,' after fame or emolument, or both -- as in your case. Now, it is not my wish to be understood as disapproving of all possible devotedness to the perusal of the scriptures; but I wish to be understood as saying, that, generally, they read, for no other object, and to no other end, than to grow wise in their own conceit: and you know it is written, that 'there is more hope of fools,' than of such characters." Here, then, is the substance of what I wrote to and concerning you in my letters of 1824, addressed to you over the signature of "A Regular Baptist:" or if there was any thing more predicated of you, it is found in the declaration, that you designed to "dissolve, if possible, all existing connexions between pastors and churches; and thus to efect the first step towards making the latter your followers, or proselytes to your system of theology, under the direction of your agents; and in thus doing, consummate the measure of Your fame, by becoming the acknowledged head of some new, though yet nameless, sect." You professed to be bent on destroying a swarming generation of ravening clergy; but it was only that your own more ravening ministers might get the loaves and fishes of the former! If what we then predicated and predicted concerning you, and your bamboozled followers, are not now notoriously stubborn facts, and matter of history, then the Berkley philosophy is true, and there is nothing real; all is merely imaginary, that lives, and moves, and has its being, under the heavens! We have some variety and no little amount of addenda, to attach to our former reflections on your vanity and avarice, and the general characteristics of your proselytes. For the present we will comniend our clemency by giving you a momentary respite from the thumb-screws which we are about to add to the knout; and by which we shall illustrate in your person, if it was ever exemplified, the Hic niger est; hunc tu Romane caveto † -- of Horace. __________ * Most fully were all these characteristics developed in the BAMBOOZLER'S church in Pittsburgh, under the co-pastorship of Sidney Rigdon, (now a Mormonite bishop!) and Walter Scott. But it is Fuit Illium -- "Troy was"-- with this, as with a large proportion of the Campbellite churches - they rise and fall like toad-stools. † That man is of a black character: do you, Roman, beware of him. 25
Letter 7th,
Sir - I would add, in reference to the general characteristics of your amphibious disciples, and after seeing them in thousands as individuals, and scores as churches, that no sooner do men and women, boys and girls, become reformers, than their tongues begin to go like the pendulum of a clock, and with as much noise almost as the machinery of a steam engine: they appear bipeds filled with buck-eyes or young clover -- distending with wind that threatens to burst them, if it finds not vent -- or an inflammable gas, that forebodes spontaneous combustion, unless let off through the condenser or safety valve of reformation hocus pocus. At all times, almost, by day and by night, are they heard clamoring, about the belief of the one fact and being immersed, like flocks of sea-gulls in a storm. It is to be observed, that the most of your proselytes are those who have been members of some one of the several denominations of baptists. Hence, those who become reformers, are generally apostates from a prior profession, or faith: and if fiell furnishes a mischievous, subtle, malevolent, corrupt and corrupting church materiale on earth, it is found in such apostate professors. To account for our getting so much of such materiale, we are to refer to the spirit of proselytism that has been abroad in the baptist church for the last 30 or 35 years. This rampant, lawless spirit, began to operate among the baptists in the large cities, where it was expedient, or thought to be expedient, that the ministers should occupy what, in fashionable parlance, are denominated genteel, respectable circumstances; and to that end, those ministers must have liberal salaries; and to realize liberal salaries, it became absolutely necessary that they should have multitudes of proselytes, and large congregations. To realize these, every device was but into requisition, including fine, or even splendid meeting-houses, the witchery, and salvage soothing power of music, together with a corrupt, consequently popular, alias, Arminian gospel. These things enabled, as they still enable, those baptist ministers to make christians, or to find the saints of the Most High, the elect of God, in all business prospering, money making communities, from those of the magnitude of Boston, N. York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, down to those of Erie, Cleaveland, and Massillon!! Hence it is settled, to demonstration, with such ministers, that where they cannot go for money, or with money, there are no christians to be made, no souls to be saved, no people for the Lord! This spirit of proselytism soon began to spread throughout the country, like fire in the prairies -- rather, like the crackling, noisy fire in a cane-brake -- until thousands of baptist ministers, from the dignity of D. D.'s, down to old granny imbecility and ignorance, were putting forth every effort, art, and artifice, to rival each other in the work of proselyting, converting, or making baptists, of blue, black and grey devils, in the form of men, women and children. The D. D.'s, and other ministers of the higher order, had a subsistence -- respectable circumstances in life -- together with the gratification of their vanity, to realize from their proselyting; while the imbecile, ignorant, and OLD GRANNY part Of those ministers had, comparatively, only their vanity to stimulate and propel them: but that vanity was a very steam power. The natural consequence of these things was, that what were called baptist churches, were made up, or almost universally incrustated, with 'wood, hay and stubble,' and were obnoxious to be set on fire, when the devil might please to throw his BRANDS among them. A vast majority of those called regular baptists, never had believed in the doctrine of the faith of that church, and secretly hated it as bitterly as Jew 26 ever hated Samaritan; at the same time, they conceived of baptism (immersion) as a positive pre-requisite to becoming members of any ostensible and visible church; so that they were, in fact and essentially, reformers -- nothing more or less than Waterites, ere your APOSTLESHIP began. And experience abundantly demonstrates, treat this sort of baptists are wont to estimate variety in religious notions and professions, as being the spice of godliness! They are as fond of change, as women are of dress or gew-gaws, or as children are of toys and sports. Under these circumstances, then, you were THROWN into the religious arena, "set on fire of hell." The baptists, baptist churches, and baptist ministers, among whom you made your debut as a baptist minister, were not only of the character of materiale that we have,just described, but among them obtained an unusual extent and diversity of mere natural CLANSHIP and family influence, and by which a great deal of profession as baptists obtained, and consequent corruption in their churches, and those churches' Association! You wrote that Association a very Calvinian Circular letter, by way of allaying suspicion; and then you and your father commenced going from county to county, from neighborbood to neighborhood, from house to house, to "win golden opinions" in favor of your embryon reformation. In achieving this, never did two men exemplify, in bolder relief, the language of an apostle, in 2 Tim. 3, 6, 9 -- and of another apostle, in 2 Pet. 2, 1 to 3 -- than did Thomas and Alex'r Campbell. Truly, ye were industrious to make proselytes. You applied yourselves to particular persons; visited them in their houses, not daring at that time to appear openly. You crept into houses, to insinuate yourselves into the affections, (mere natural affections,) and good opinion of the people, and so to draw them over to your system of things. Those that you succeeded with best, were silly women and weak men, and such as were ladened with sins, (of lying, tattling, slandering) -- led away with divers lusts -- lusting after what was strange and new. A foolish head, and a filthy heart, make persons, especially women, an easy prey to seducers. Well, as soon as ever those pseudo regular baptists, among whom you began your operations, found an avenue to escape by, from their 'first faith,' they commenced aiding you to produce open schism and anarchy in every church within the bounds of the Redstone Association; and to betray, decry, insult, falsify and slander down, all who opposed your 'unfruitful works of darkness;' while that clanship, and that family influence, we have adverted to, were especially serviceable to you as a midwife, in bringing forth your incestuous progeny, your bell-hound spawn. In this manner has your REFORMATION, your primitive faith and manners, exemplified themselves; thus they have spread like lurid exhalations from bogs or quagmires -- or like crackling thorns and briers, a noisy blaze, and soon over: while you and your maniac-like proselytes become exasperated, like so many foaming demoniacs, as you witness the evanescent existence of your synagogues, called churches -- and as time proclaims you to he a knave, and them fools, in the predictions and promises that you have published, and they echoed, of the triumphs of your reformation, and of its being destined to embrace all Christendom in a few years! To these exacerbated feelings is to be referred your rccent nefarious and fiend-like publication concerning me. Fully understanding you, from the beginning of your ecclesiastical jugglery, theological humbug, and religious pantomimes, I drew you to life; I made the canvass breathe with all you were then, and have since been; and in the hour of your mortified pride, and wounded vanity, you would spit the whole of your toad-like venom on me, in revenge for what disservice I did you then -- 'greatly injured' you, as you say. Poor fool! Where was the occasion for your 27 publishing that! Don't you perceive, that it will not only be a satisfaction to your opponents to know that, but it will encourage others to aim similar blows at you; at the same time that it proclaims, that, out of malice, to glut your revenge, you published what you have published concerning me? Ah, your shilly shally, canting, hypocritical exordium, proves, that from such a principle you wrote. one might conclude that you were FUDDLED, in no small degree, when you made that statement. Well, I freely avow, that I do not consider you to have injured me by any thing you have published concerning me; to be dispraised by you is no small praise! Therefore, I write, to benefit others, by giving them due estimation of, and confidence in you, as, 'Facile princeps,' the admitted chief, of all reformers; and that from personal experience I may know, 'Felix qui nihil debet' -- happy is the man who OWES nothing! After all -- "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid;" for you will make from sixty to a hundred thousand dollars by your reformation -- your primitive faith and manners -- even if that PANTOMIME should vanish, like the baseless fabric of a vision; and that sum will be, latter-day glory, and millennial reign, and primitive faith and manners, and glorious reformation enough, for one such modest and temperate Worshipper of the mammon of unrighteousness as you are. You will be able still to say and sing, with Horace's miser -- Ipse domi, simulac nummos contemplor in arca." "The populace hiss me; but I applaud myself at home, when I contemplate the money in my chest." There is another satisfaction which you must enjoy in a supreme degree, and that is, the assurance, that whatever lies and slanders you may or shall publish, or have published, concerning any prominent opponent, your proselytes will prove very hounds, (I speak of them, generally -- there are exceptions!) in yelping them out in, every part of the country where we have met them, and have been a stranger, we have had them thus bow wowing against us -- from your Bentlys down to your crazy Tate. Often have we had occasion to predicate of them, as synagogues or churches, as Milton speaks of the progeny of sin and death. Endandering often, of those lusts beget These yelling monsters, that, with ceaseless cry, Surround us, For when they list into the wombs That bred them, they return, and howl and gnaw. Then bursting forth Afresh, with conscious terrors vex us round, That rest or intermission find we none: Before our eyes in opposition sit Their demon priests, our foes, who set them on." In sooth, yourself, gifted and ocean like as you are in CAPACITY, are but a degree or two in advance of many of your Reubenite bishops and their precocious converts, in the science of falsehood and traducement. You may excel them in invention, but they equal you in invention, but they equal you in impudence! Like yourself, too, they have no wish for truth, or thought of decency; they are without care of any reputation, but that of stubborn adherence to their fee-faw-fum reformation, alias, your 'primitive faith and manners.' Like you, they carry on the same 28 tenor of representation, through all the changes of right and wrong: endorsing and publishing each other's lies and calumnies; neither depressed by detection, nor abashed by confutation, proud of their houry increase of infamy, and ready not only to boast of all the contumelies that their incessant falsehoods may bring upon them, as new proofs of their zeal and fidelity; but to predicate increased claim to the character of reformers, to primitive faith and manners, upon increased demonstration of their capacity to make, and their love for and devotion to lies. If your proselytes are not apostates from some other profession of religion, they are, generally speaking, the canaille, the mere dregs of society; and with many of them, nothing has prevented them from enacting, or attempting to enact, the part of assassins on our own person, but physical cowardice. No clerical demagogue and followers ever constituted a more entire unit in every execrable attribute, than what your kaliedescope reformation embraces: and no wonder, when we remember the sources from whence its materiale is derived, These Letters can scarce fail to be "velitu in speculum" to you -- a mirror in which you shall behold your enchanting loveliness; and, like Adonis, dissolve in tears of delicious rapture, in the contemplation thereof; though some may conceive, that those letters are like the arrow that pierced Philoctetes' foot; and that you SMELL not more sweet than did that Grecian warrior, when wounded and left on the island of Lemnos! Alas! you will never find a Machaon; you will continue wounded -- continue to stink -- the most while living. If not, 'twould be pestilence and plague to live near your sepulchre.
LAWRENCE GREATRAKE.
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Sir -- We have already briefly noticed what you have said concerning the pulpits and purses of baptists and Presbyterians, of different shades, having been largely and liberally opened to us; as we have, in connexion therewith, just glanced at your own intense devotion at the altar of the mammon of unrighteousness -- the god of this world. We shall now enlarge our remarks on those points; and in so doing, you, no doubt, will sensibly realize, that nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as rough truths. You then publish us as having had the purses of baptists and Presbyterians, of different shades, largely and liberally opened in contribution to us. This, sir, is a LIE, second only to your representation of us as having denounced Jesus Christ as an impostor, or your on dit of our having become a professed atheist! So, you may remember, that in 1824, you published us as having been hired by the 1st Baptist Church of Pittsburgh as their minister -- getting a salary from them for preaching to them, when that church publicly declared, that we Were many scores of dollars out of pocket in our service for them. Here is their testimony. "At the request of Elder L. Greatrake, the Church took into consideration the following assertions of Alexander Campbell in his 'Christian Baptist' No. 2, vol. 2, in reference to this church, and the said Elder L. Greatrake -- to wit: 'This gentleman, (meaning our pastor,) is at present hired by a party who were excluded from a regular baptist church, at least by a church that was recognized, at the time of their exclusion, as such.' Wherefore, resolved, that 29 this church utterly disavow having hired the said Elder L. Greatrake to be their pastor: on the contrary, this church do authorize their Elder, if he thinks proper, to say publicly, that we feel confident, that be, our pastor, is many scores of dollars out of pocket, in attempting to do us service in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And furthermore, we utterly deny the latter assertion of Alexander Campbell, in which he says, that we are an 'excluded party from a regular baptist church.' On the contrary, we have the best of testimonials to prove the reverse: and we do authorize our pastor, to make use of any part of the testimonials he may deem proper, for the purpose of publicly refuting the statements of Alexander Campbell. C E R T I F I C A T E. "Whereas, a request by certain individuals of the Baptist Church in Pittsburgh, according to a resolution of the Association, for a committee of five neighboring churches to meet at Pittsburgh, on the 11th October, 1823, to consult on certain points of doctrine, which have occasioned misunderstanding between the members -- We, the undersigned, do agree, that there is just ground of complaint against the doctrines protested against by certain members of this church; and that all the members who adhere to the doctrine on which this church was first constituted, be considered by us the existing Regular Baptist Church in Pittsburgh." So, then, four Baptist ministers, and nine laymen, or ministers and members from five Baptist churches, proclaim you by their decision, (a decision that had been known to you nearly a year,) a liar and calumniator, in representing this people as an excluded party; as they proclaim you to have been a slanderer of myself as the pastor of an excluded party, when I was pastor of an orderly baptist church: and that church proclaims you to have been a liar in representing me as an hireling. In 1824, you did quite respectably in your vocation; but in 1836, you can out Herod Herod, and flidg your former self into the back ground. Those you would have represented as the Regular Baptist church of Pittsburgh, and the excluders of that party, were Reformers, or Waterites -- made so by you and Sidney Rigdon. Hence, what a wool-dyed scoundrel would that man prove himself to be, who, as a fortune hunting traitor to his own country, should dare to report and publish those who abhorred his treason, and resisted his subtle and impudent emissaries, as 30 being themselves traitors -- outlaws! Truly parallel was your conduct in the foregoing instance, as it has been parallel in many other instances! Such bold and high-handed measures, you have found to be like flaming granites poured from a volcano among your opponents; and they constitute the fundamentals of your primitive faith and manners. Truly they are indicative of 'gabier de potence' -- garne for the gallows - or a Newgate bird! Purses opened to me! No, sir -- I have been 14 years in the ministry -- travelled 80,000 miles -- and never asked a cent from saint or sinner -- while all that I have ever realized of contribution was spontaneous, and in amount not more than would pay for my horse-flesh, or provide suitably for me in sicknesses incident to my exposures in all seasons and climates. But you, like myriads of others, will consider these declarations apocryphal! And why? Because, judging from your own sordid souls, and knowing that such disinterested ministerial labors are of themselves sure to solicit the most malign persecutions of such gospel speculators and stock-jobbers as yourselves, from the circumstance of their being a rebuke to your individual avarice -- hateful, if not as appalling, as the memorable TEKEL - 'thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.' But thus to labor, and thus to sacrifice, were nothing, and less than nothing, when compared with the incessant Norway billows of abuse, and Euroclydon of lies, beating upon us at every point of the compass, from the hundreds of thousands of devil-possessed men and women, girls and boys, which you, and others like you, in selfishness and knavery, cajoled or frightened into a profession of Christianity, to gratify your vanities, and make merchandise of, as hood-winked and zealous proselytes! But our storm is nearly over, and there is no Gabhaim -- HIGH ONES on the throne of the universe -- if your and those kindred speculators' storm is not brooding for another and eternal world. You may then find your money to be not only aurum potabile -- drinkable gold -- but molten also. You represent me as having been, up to the time of my openly renouncing Jesus Christ as an impostor,' a 'regular baptist minister, of high Calvinian stamp:' well, you will not dare to say now, that in all my ministry, I have ever "asked leave of any Board of Missions, nor their support; but confiding in the power and faithfulness of Him that called me, I have looked up to heaven for every provision, protection, and support, by land and sea, necessary for safe conduct thither: and also for success when I arrived." * For 14 years, and to the extent of 86,000 miles, I have thus made 'proof of my ministry.' Do you know another man in the United States that has gone and done likewise? No -- you do not! JAMES OSBORNE, (a high Calvinian baptist,) comes nearest to it. He, too, has in some good degree been independent, fearless and faithful, as an apostle; spurning and trampling upon, and abhorring, the use of, mere sectarian pride, pomp, vanity, jealousies, and rivalry. Well, let any such man, holy and intellectual, if possible, as an angel, fulfil THE COMMISSION, (Mark 16, 15,) in the same way; and he will find all the Camphellites, and all other open and disguised Arminians and traditionizers, nineteen-twentieths of these called christians, enacting the part of incarnate fiends towards him. He will then know how much hristians esteem a man very highly in love for the truth's sake; he will find himself as poverty-stricked and destitute, as the Captain of salvation himself, who had not where to lay his bead, and who had by a miracle to furnish himself with money to pay his _________ * So wrote Campbell in 1823 -- see 'Christian Baptist,' vol. 1, page 203. But he never did it! He has more confidence in a hundred dollar note, than in all the promises of the I have done it, and he publishes me a bacchanalin and atheist!!! 31 taxes to Caesar, instead of Caesar's pouring into his coffers millions per annum!! He will find that every sacrifice, every privation, every act of disinterestedness, that characterize his ministry, will be transmuted to crimes by such wretches as yourself; and that the bewildered brains of carnal professors, and the mud-puddle affections and sympathies of mere fleshly, natural men and women, will constitute the tribunal at which he will be arraigned, tried, judged, and executed. The mere screams of vultures like yourself, and echos (proselytes) of vultures driven from their prey, will Constitute the trumpet of his fame, 'Millennial Harbingers!' In view of these naked facts, who would have supposed that any man would publish high Calvinian doctrine as being popular! But your RESOURCES are equal to any demand or emergency. You well remember how you were once wont, in your "orations on the Christian religion," to blow like a grampus whale in a north-east storm, against all milkings of the goats, and fleecings of the sheep. Turn to your 'Christian Baptist,' vol. 1, pages 26, 31,32, 35, 177, 179, 203, 226, for specimens of your bulls, decretals, and fulminas, against all money making in the form of ministerial salaries, or otherwise, by, through, in, or from the use of the gospel of God! Fiercely, too, did you reprobate and denounce the use of any other writings than the scriptures, as necessary to, or authority, for faitb and practice. Vehemently did you declaim against the multiplication and existence of ministers: they were, in your estimation, superfluous, unwanted: every man, woman and child, having the scriptures in their hands, i. e. New Testament scriptures, was capable of being his, or her own teacher, preacher, minister and bishop. Your writings, from the year '23 to '25, teem with such philippics and declamations; though we know that such is your capacity, that you are as likely as not to deny any such things were ever published by you. Well, such is the text! What, in 1836, is the commentary? Why, your sect's ministers are more numerous, three to one, than those of any other christain society, relative numbers considered! They multiply, frequently, with the rapidity of lice; and become as bishops, grandfathers,in 24 hours! and rush forward officially, vociferting, hureka! hureka! hureka! I have found it! I have found it! I have found it! And then they comnience to paw, and to prance, and to snort, in imitation, as it were, of Job or Jeremiah's war horses, about the belief of the one fact and being immersed! Of the most of them it may be truly said, Slips through the cracks and zigzags of their head." And truly it is ludicrous to witness their frog-swelling efforts at times, to exemplify the 'sublimi feriam sidera vertice' -- and To prove that one and one make two." But I forbear -- as it is to be remembered, that you are the subject of a father's pride and vanity; and will esteem your own offspring as the loveliest of all the 'fowls of the air' (see Matth. 13, 4,) though they were to combine the characters of the jack-daw and owl in their own individual persons. In respect to the Bible, more particularly the New Testament, one and indivisible, being the Shadai, ALL SUFFICIENT, as a source of instruction in divine and spiritual things -- your fourteen years' writings and publications, amounting to about FORTY VOLUMES, each as large as the New Testament -- is an imposing conmmentary!! Forty pages to explain, one! Whew! We opine your reformation is in a circle, and not in progression - and that you and your bishops, &c. are like ships in a whirlpool, or tabbies running round to catch their own tails! Multum in parvo. 32 I scarce need to reiterate, that you have made more money by your services in the name of religion, than any other man in the United States, for and during the time you have been editorially engaged; but then it was not made by preaching! No -- that's true; for you know no more about preaching the gospel, than a mole does of the lunar circle, or a mule of algebra. You might as well attempt to extract oil from a flint, or blood from a turnip, as to attempt to preach the gospel: but so far as making merchandise of the gospel is concerned -- or the love of money, or covetousness, or speculations broad, deep, noon-day, unblushing speculation, in its name, or by your use of it, is concerned, you may triumphantly boast of being a very Saul -- head and shoulders above any individual among your pious contemporaries, not excepting FREY, the converted Jew, who made a hundred thousand dollars by it; but then Frey exposed himself to every vicissitude of climate, encountered years of laborious itinerancy, with all its attendant privations -- while you have been subjected to nothing of that sort. Your money making, merchandise use of the gospel -- your milkings of the goats, and fleecings of the sheep, are now too notorious for even you, in all your matchless effrontery, to deny! This accounts for our no longer dealing out anathemas against others, for their mercantile use of the gospel, in tolerating their crimes, you do but feel for your own! As an instance of your pious speculation, take your debate with Owen. What thousands of dollars you made by that! It is well understood by men of penetration, that Owen knew your ruling passion; that he agreed to let you make merchandise of the debate, for your own exclusive emolument. You agreed to play the Achilles, and he consented to be the Hector. You got an ephemeral triumph, a chaplet of jimson leaf, if not of laurel; while Owen, adroit and skilful as a Napoleon, made use of you as a kite to carry abroad to thousands his scepticism, (through your publication of that debate,) where one would not have known any thing concerning it, had it not been for your insatiable avarice, and rampant vanity. Yes -- your printing office has been, and is, your sanctuary; your writing desk, your pulpit; your ledger, your bible; your subscription book, your psalms and hymns; your churches, your exchanges; gold is your god; and you have no faith in any thing but the mammon of unrightousness!! Truly, you are destined to illustrate, beautifully and forcibly the "Mihi cura futuri -- my CARE is for the FUTURE, LIFE!"
LAWRENCE GREATRAKE.
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Sir - You, it appears, have been indefatigably engaged in resuscitating the |