, in a way competent to them, some
parts, both of the constitutional law and administration of the Reformed
Presbyterian Synod and Church in America. For a series of years, and
chiefly through the influence of leaders in that faction which separated
from the body in 1833, high-handed measures of tyranny had transpired:
and some of the subjects of that tyranny were yet writhing under a sense
of accumulated wrongs; others had, by death, been released from this
species of persecution. Some thought it dutiful to call Synod's
attention to these matters, and a _petition_ was laid before them, from
Rev. Robert Lusk, requesting that certain cases of discipline, which the
petitioner specified, be reviewed; and especially asking, that "the term
_testimony_ be restored to its former ecclesiastical use." As this was,
in our deliberate opinion, the most important measure brought under the
cognizance of the church representative in America, during the current
of the nineteenth century, it was thought the court would take the
matter under deliberate consideration. Whether through ignorance of the
matter proposed, or that sectional interests engrossed the attention of
parties, or that the prevailing majority desired to be untrammeled in
their future course, the petition was smuggled through and shuffled by,
under the cognomen of a "letter," which a member of Synod answered on
behalf of the court, as though it were a matter of the smallest
importance imaginable! We solemnly testify against this manner of
disposing of a weighty matter at that time, whether through inattention
or design. We protest also against the violent conduct of those
ministers, and others on the same occasion, who made the place of solemn
worship and judicial deliberation, a scene of confusion, by
vociferations, gesticulations and physical force, in violation of God's
law, ordination vows, and the first principle of Presbyterian church
government.

5. Here we can advert only to a tithe of the fruits of darkness, which
had been increasing in quantity and bitterness, since the meeting of
Synod in New York, 1838. To carry out measures of worldly policy, in
1840, diligent electioneering was carried on during the intermediate
time, that the court might be what is technically called a _packed
Synod_. That court was chiefly composed of such ministers and elders as
were known to favor innovations; and some who were known to be disposed
to resist defection, were excluded fro