prayed the general prayer; the Rev. Joseph Fletcher, M.A. of London, preached to the people; and the Rev. Mr. Grey, Baptist minister of Northampton, closed the service with prayer. The congregation assembled again in the evening, when a discourse was delivered by the Rev. Mr. Scott, of Rowell. The next day the Congregational ministers of Northamptonshire held their half-yearly meeting in the same place; in the morning a sermon was preached by the Rev. Mr. Pinkerton, of Weedon; in the afternoon the usual business was transacted, and in the evening a sermon was delivered by the Rev. Charles Hyatt, of London. On Wednesday, the 26th September, the Rev. Edward Leighton, late of Rotherham College, was ordained over the congregational church, Wigton, Cumberland, when the following ministers were engaged :--The Rev. S. Peel, Workington, commenced the services by reading the Scriptures and prayer; the Rev. T. Woodrow, Carlisle, delivered the introductory discourse; the Rev. Jos. Mather, Cockermouth, proposed the questions, which were answered by the Rev. E. Leighton; the Rev. John Walton, Blennerhasset, Mr. L.'s predecessor, offered the ordination prayer: the Rev. T. Raffles, LL. D. Liverpool, delivered the charge; the Rev. Archibald Jack, Whitehaven, addressed the church; and the Rev. G. Nettleship, Penrith, closed the service.-In the evening of the same day, the Rev. Dr. Raffles preached to the congregation. On few, even of such, occasions has there been a higher degree of spiritual enjoy ment, than was experienced at these services, which seemed to produce the impression on every mind, that "showers of blessing" will be poured out upon this long neglected but promising place. NOTICES, REMOVALS, &C. The Rev. Ebenezer Miller, M. A., who bas, for several years, filled the office of Classical Tutor in the Blackburn Theological Academy, has accepted the invitation of the church assembling at Old Gravel Lane, London, to become their pastor, in the room of the late Rev. John Hooper, M.A. Mr. M. intends entering upon his new sphere of labour on the first Sabbath of January next. The Rev. Samuel Ellis, late of Settle, has accepted a unanimous invitation from the church and congregation assembling in Duke's Alley Chapel, Bolton le Moors, Lancashire, and commenced his stated services there on the first Sabbath ia October. We rejoice to announce that the Lord Provost and Town Council of Edinburgh have appointed Dr. Chalmers to the office of Professor of Theology in the Univer sity of Edinburgh, vacant by the death of the Rev. Dr. Ritchie. This event, we trust, will contribute in no small degree to the advancement of evangelical religion in the Church of Scotland, and opens to the worthy Doctor an appropriate sphere for the exercise of his brilliant powers. The Rev. J. Snelgar, late of Hampstead, has accepted the unanimous invitation of the church at Green Street, Cambridge, to become their pastor. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND MINOR CORRESPONDENCE. COMMUNICATIONS have been received during the last Month from the Rev. Messrs. Henry Roper-J. Sibree-E. Morley--R. Ivy-Archibald Jack-- C. N. Davies--E. James--Thomas Lake--G. Smith--W. Vint, jun.--C. Hyatt-Thomas Weaver George Redford-W. Roberts --T. G. Guyer -- Edward Leighton-E.' Miller J. Bass--Thomas Scales--J. Shaw--J. Bulmer. Thomas Hutton--W. Vint-R. Gibbs-J. Gawthorn. Also from Messrs. B. Hanbury--W. Upcott--S. Woodhouse--J. Read--George Anderson J. Gallion-W Ellerby--A Constant Reader--Y.--R. L. S.-A Congregationalist-Vigilans--Condiscipulus--Candidus-Dissentiens Senex. We are much pleased with the valuable letter furnished by our Correspondent at Teignmouth, and shall feel obliged if he will forward two or three more of the interesting series, as we hope to give them in our January number. Mr. Anderson is informed that Herefordshire is the county described in the paper to which be alludes. Whilst we regret that the Missionaries officially engaged in the ceremonial to which Mr. Reed refers, yet we think no valuable purpose would be answered by entering, at this late period, upon the discussion of the subject, particularly in the way he has proposed. We beg respectfully to urge those Correspondents who have not sent their corrections of our List of Congregational Churches, to forward them without delay, as we intend to publish a double Number in December, which will include our Supplement. A NARRATIVE OF THE FORMATION OF A CHURCH ON CONGREGATIONAL PRINCIPLES, IN THE TOWN OF STEWARTON, AYRSHIRE. WILLIAM CUNINGHAME, Esq. of Lainshaw, the well known author of a Dissertation on the Apocalypse, &c., having been the chief instrument in effecting a separation from the communion of the National Church of Scotland, in the Town of Stewarton, has felt it his duty to submit to his fellow Christians of all denominations a concise narrative of the conduct and principles which he and his friends adopted on that occasion, and although the theological opinions of their infant church do not fully accord with our own, yet we are persuaded that our readers will feel much pleasure in the perusal of the extracts we are about to make from the narrative, and which will put them in possession of the leading circumstances of this interesting transaction. In the preface Mr. C. has given to the public the following account of the state of his mind for the last twenty-five years, on the subject of ecclesiastical establishments, and which we believe is descriptive of the views of many pious and intelligent individuals, who at the present moment rank amongst the firmest friends of the church establishment on each side of the Tweed. of Christ, who were, in principle as well as practice, Dissenters from all Churches established by law, and connected with the state. As I was much indebted to these excellent persons in my religious inquiries, it very naturally happened, that some degree of doubt with respect to the tendency of human establishments, was coeval, in my mind, with my first impressions of spiritual religion. I was afterwards, however, for a time placed near the metropolis of British India, and under the ministry of two eminent clergymen of the Church of England;* and found that I was not less nourished by the deeply spiritual liturgy and services of that church, than by the saving truths that formed the subject of their ministrations. This change of circumstances probably gave a new turn to my mind on the above subject, and the recollection of the benefits I then received, has had the effect of making me cherish ever since a high veneration for the Church of England. "Shortly before leaving India, at the end of the year 1802, I met with Hartley's Work on Man, which occupied much of my time during the voyage home. The Proposition in his second volume, "In early life I was, in the pro-It is probable, that the present vidence of God, led into the soThe Rev. D. Brown, and Claudius ciety of men eminent in the Church Buchanan, of Calcutta. N. S. No. 36. 4 L The corrupt governors of the several churches, will ever oppose the true Gospel, and in so doing, will bring ruin upon themselves.' forms of Church Government will be dissolved,' could not fail to arrest my attention, connected as it was on the one hand with the doubts or impressions of former years, and on the other with the strong bias which I already felt towards prophetic inquiries. As Hartley's book is now rarely to be met with, it may not be unacceptable to the reader that I should place before him a part of his reasoning on the above subject. "This proposition follows from the foregoing. The civil and ecclesiastical powers are so interwoven and cemented together in all the countries of Christendom, that if the first fall, the last must fall also. But there are many prophecies which declare the fall of the ecclesiastical powers of the Christian world; and though each church seems to flatter itself with the hopes of being exempted, yet it is very plain that the prophetical characters belong to all. They have all left the true, pure, simple religion, and teach for doctrines, the commandments of men. They are all merchants of the earth, and have set up a kingdom of this world, abounding in riches, temporal power, and external pomp. They have all a dogmatizing spirit, and persecute such as do not receive their own mark, and worship the image which they have set up.' It is very true that the Church of Rome is Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and of the abominations of the earth. But all the rest have copied her example more or less. They have all received money, like Gehazi, and therefore the leprosy of Naaman will cleave to them and their seed for ever. And this impurity may be considered not only as justifying the application of the prophecies to all the Christian churches, but as a natural cause for their downfall. The foregoing proposition is, It is pro bable that all the present civil Governments will be overturned. "While I could not but acquiesce in the truth of Hartley's reasoning, which seemed to me so entirely to harmonize with the declarations of the prophetic Scriptures, I was also satisfied that any general conclusion of this nature, with respect to the end awaiting the present religious establishments, is by no means decisive as to the line of duty of a Christian, in any country where they exist. Hartley himself thought so; for after all his arguments to show the probable downfall of the present forms of church government, he thus reasons on the duty of Christians : "It follows from these considerations, that good men ought to submit to the ecclesiastical powers that be for conscience-sake, as well as to the civil ones.'-' It is probable that these who shall hereafter procure the downfall of the forms of church government, will not do this from pure love and Christian charity, but from the most corrupt motives, and by consequence bring upon themselves in the end, the severest chastisements. It is, therefore, the duty of all good Christians, to obey both the civil and ecclesiastical powers under which they were born, i. e. provided disobedience to God be not enjoined, which is seldom the case, to promote subjection and obedience in others; gently to reform and rectify, and to pray for the peace and prosperity of their own Jerusalem.' "Upon the general principles maintained by Hartley, I therefore continued during the period of twenty-three years after my return to my native country to at It seems probable, that Hartley intended only the Protestant ecclesiastical powers in this clause. The circumstances which awoke the slumbering principles of nonconformity in the mind of Mr. Cuninghame, and which eventually led to the adoption of that system of church order, the advantages of which he so happily describes, appear to have been briefly as follows: tend the worship of the Established the kingdom of God in my own Church of Scotland; and though heart and those of my brethren," when offered an eldership in that church nearly twenty years ago, I found it necessary on conscientious grounds to decline it, I yet had no design or wish to leave its worship or communion. Nor do I think it probable that arguments founded on considerations simply of church order or discipline, would have induced me to take that step. In making this remark I wish to be understood simply as stating the fact, without entering into the question, whether my determination was right or wrong. I can, however, add, that I do not even now regret the line of conduct which I have followed during the years that are passed. "Having at length, however, for reasons of a higher nature, (involving in them the vindication of the great Protestant principle, that the Bible only is the standard of doctrinal truth; and the very existence of the right of individual judgment in its interpretation; and the entire rejection of all human authority over conscience,) been compelled to depart from the Church of Scotland; I will freely confess that the inquiries of my earlier years have enabled me to execute the resolution of separation without any difficulty. I have left nothing that I believe destined to be permanent, and much that I conceive to be contrary to Scripture-and though I do not think that the order of any of the present dissenting churches appertains to, or is to exist in that new dispensation, which I believe to be near at hand, yet I already experience, in the entire freedom from the yoke of human systems, and the simplicity of a church order altogether severed from political associations, that I have made an exchange pregnant with present peace, and tending to the advancement of Mr. Cuninghame is the patron and principal manager of a Sabbath School in Stewarton, which included, amongst its teachers, two members of the Wesleyan Methodist connexion. Some of the theological opinions of that Society appear to have been adopted and unhesitatingly avowed by all the parties connected with the school. They, however, worshipped in the parish kirk, and determined to commune with their fellow Christians at the approaching celebration of the Lord's Supper, early in the autumn of 1826. As it was known that the manager and teachers of the Sabbath School did not believe that the Westminster Confession, and the two Catechisms, contained unmixed truth, it was rumoured in the neighbourhood that the intended applicants would not be admitted to the communion table without first answering for their doctrinal errors before the Kirk Session. This rumour was confirmed by a notice from the pulpit by the parish minister, "That as it was understood that some Dissenters from the Established Church wished to join the church at the approaching communion, they were desired to attend the Kirk Session at three o'clock the following day, to give their reasons for having left the church, and again desiring to return to its communion.". They felt it expedient, therefore, to make their application by letter, in which they candidly gave their views of Scripture truth. This communication produced Chillingworth to our individual from the Kirk Session a refusal of circumstances, it is only necessary the two Wesleyan Methodists, as to observe, that if once the Concommunicants, at the approaching fession and Catechisms of the celebration of the Supper, which, Scottish Church be erected into of course, led the whole party to judges of faith, and an unqualified some grave consideration con- subjection to them be made a concerning their duty for the future. dition of communion; it is manifest "When we held our first meet- that in principle they become idening," says Mr. Cuninghame, "to tified with the traditions and deficonsider the situation in which we nitions of the Church of Rome, were placed by the act of the Kirk and the same reasons which justiSession, we were unanimously of tified our forefathers in separating opinion, that if no redress were from the Church of Rome, seem afforded, our final and entire sepa- evidently to require those Protesration from the church was the tants, who do not believe the line of duty. If the reasons for Westminster Confession to contain this determination be sought for, unmixed truth, to depart from any I am willing, so far as I am indi- church which demands the recepvidually concerned, that the fol- tion of it as a badge of disciplelowing passage from the contro- ship, thus erecting it into an idol, versy of the illustrious Chilling- rivalling in authority the word of worth with the Papists, shall be the living God. Now the act of received as a sufficient declaration the Kirk Session of Stewarton last of them:year had the direct effect of investing the above Confession with such authority, in as much as it proceeded upon the principle, that no person who denies the truth of any one of the doctrines embodied therein, or avows any doctrinal sentiments inconsistent therewith, can be admitted to the table of the Lord within the pale of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. I have moreover been informed, that all the young persons who have recently been received into the communion of the church in this parish, have been specially required, in the face of the congregation, to acknowledge the Westminster Confession and the two Catechisms as the standards of their faith. It will, therefore, be seen that no person who holds any sentiments contrary to these standards, can in such a state of things approach the table of the Lord, without professing a lie before God and the congregation; and that to those who dare not, in order to please man, incur this awful guilt, no choice is left, but either to depart from the communion of the "He,' says Chillingworth, that would usurp an absolute lordship and tyranny over any people, need not put himself to the trouble and difficulty of abrogating and disannulling the laws made to maintain the common liberty; for he may frustrate their intent, and compass his own design as well if he can get the power and authority to interpret them as he pleases, and add to them what he pleases, and to have his interpretations and additions stand for laws, if he can rule his people by his laws, and his laws by his lawyers. So the Church of Rome, to establish her authority over men's consciences, needed not either to abolish or corrupt the Holy Scriptures, the pillars and supporters of Christian liberty, but the more expedite way, and therefore more likely to be successful, was to gain the opinion and esteem of being the public and authorised expounder of them, and the authority of adding to them what doctrine she pleased, under the title of Traditions and Definitions.' "In applying this reasoning of |