10-4-32FW B PREFACE. THE publication of the following facts and documents, is not an object of choice, but an imperious duty. Not long since, a printed sheet appeared before the public (and was distributed with uncommon zeal and industry by some, who, as judges, in the cause still pending, have thereby sullied the purity of their moral characters as men, and as professing Christians) which contained some of the "Decisions of the Presbytery of Philadelphia relative to the "Third Presbyterian Church, UNACCOMPANIED by the Peti"tions, Process, and EVIDENCE." It seems to have been the design of that publication, to prejudice the public mind, and especially, two Ecclesiastical Judicatories, before whom the cause may yet be argued and tried. The WHOLE TRUTH ought therefore to be promulgated, that the candid may judge for themselves. The importance of the religious principles and privileges involved in the dispute, of which the following pages are a faithful history; the necessity of correcting injurious mis-statements, occasioned by the recent publication of a part of the subjoined documents, by some partial person; the desire to exonerate from all suspicions of turbulence, a much injured and much abused congregation; and the duty of defending an active and useful, but greatly persecuted minister of the Gospel; are the only motives which have induced the present publication. It is, indeed, but little more than a collection of documents, connected by just so much narrative as will cause them to be distinctly understood: the whole of which can be proved on oath. JNO. STEELE,/ WM. M CORKLF |