Excerpt from Statement of the Causes Which Led to the Dissolution of the Late Berwickshire Auxiliary Bible Society 3? Reply to Dr. Porteous, p. 29. This was written in 1800, after the adoption of the new light principles, and was considered as expressing the sentiments of the Synod. It is plain, therefore, that at this time they still believed in the scriptural warrant for Ecclesiastical Establishments, whatever may be the sentiments which a majority of their ministers have recently embraced. We know that one of their ministers, not fifty miles from Dunse, declared little more than two years ago, that he had not then made up his mind on the question of Establishments: The Rev. Dr. Mitchell, one of their Professors of Divinity, the Rev. Dr. Belfrage, one of their most excellent ministers, with a few other clergyman, form ing a small but respectable minority, still approve of Establishments. The Rev. Dr. Edgar, too, and the whole' of their brethren in Ireland, though new-light Seceders, must be friendly to endowments, for they ac cept of a yearly allowance from government, called the Regiam -donnm, in consequence of which, when any of their chapels happen to become vacant it is speedily filled. And if there be any truth in what was mentioned in the Guardian a year and a half ago, (and it has never been contradicted), namely, that some of the leading ministers of the Seces sion applied to Sir Robert Peel, before he last went out of office, for an annual grant to their bodv of L.10,000, it proved that at that time they must have been favourable to endowments, though they now represent them as the source of the greatest evils.
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