Members of the Essex South Conference. A Review of "The Result of an Ecclesiastical Council Convened at Salem, Mass., December 4, 1849.". Boston: Press of T. R. Marvin, 1850. First Edition. [12364]
Removed, no wrapper, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, 140 pp. Good. Disbound.
The Howard Street Church, in Salem, Massachusetts, existed from 1803 to 1864. It was notorious for ultra-abolitionism and temperance activism; two of her pastors, Rev. George Barrell Cheever and the Rev. Charles Turner Torrey, were punished with jail terms, with Torrey dying in 1846 at the Maryland State Penitentiary after being convicted of acting as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
The controversies examined and discussed in these 140 pages revolve around the propriety of the act of dissolution of the Howard Street congregation, the complaints and ecclesiastical standing of a Mr. Goss, and the views and principles of the original Fathers of the New England churches.
"Our examination of the views of the late Council, as it respects the proceedings of the Tabernacle Church, and the right of a majority to disband a particular local Church, has occupied more space than we anticipated...We feel that we have been injuriously treated, and really aspersed. We have been held up to the public, as 'radical reformers'; as inventors of 'a new instrument of destruction' to the Churches, - and as advocating 'the right of a majority not only to destroy their own rights, but also to PLUNDER OTHERS OF THEIRS.'...we think we have effectually shown, that, upon the admissions of the Result of the late Council, all objections which they have urged against our claim of right for majorities, and which are of any weight whatever, lie with equal force against the method of extinguishing a Church, which they themselves consider the only proper method, according to our Congregational system. We assent to their method of causing a Church to cease, as being strictly Congregational; but we also maintain, that it is equally Congregational for a majority to dissolve a Church. We contend, nay more, we do know, that the former method is no more prescribed in the Platform, or in any 'Ratio Disciplinae,' than is the latter." - pp. 125-26.
