Right And Wrong in Massachusetts

rch, in consequence of such an effort as the one made by this Convention, was greater than some who had fancied themselves abolitionists were able to bear. Compelled to choose between their pro-slavery brethren of the church and ministry and their brethren of the abolition cause, they shrunk from the latter. Their efforts to justify themselves in cramping the cause, that they might avoid its reproach, constitute an era in its progress, known as the " Boston Controversy." The plan originated with five clergymen of Boston and vicinity, the Rev.Messrs.Charles Fitch, Joseph H. Towne, Jonas Perkins, David Sandford, and William Cornell. When the ecclesiastical tumult swelled high, their hearts were stirred up with it, as the water of inland wells is said to rise and fall with the ebb and flow of the bitter ocean tide without. Their appeal commenced with an acknowledgment of the sins of their brethren, in the use of harsh language, and an accusation of the most prominent abolitionists, of an unkind, improper and unchristian course, as such, assuming as one of the principles of action in the cause, that it must not be presented in a " brother's pulpit," when by so doing a brother might be aggrieved. This last assumption was in direct contradiction to the motto of every pulpit, as well as in defiance of the professed principles of every Christian minister to "cry aloud and spare not " in the promulgation of truth, and "to show the people their transgressions," ? "...