The works of the Rev. William Thom, late minister ... - waughfamily.ca

0.86 LETTLR?, TRACTS, cfV.of the city ; and fome who converfed and difputedwith none but five or fix perfons who lived next totheir (hops. All the above forts of people had thisremarkable ingredient in their chara£ler, that wheneveran ill thing was faid of any man, they, withoutany examination, immediately, and thoroughly, anditubbornly believed it, hovv'cver improbable it mightappear : Befides, all this body of people I now fpcakcf\ were, in their religious ideas, entirely guided bythe lower prefbyters, which feem to have been a kind ^of demagogues in that age and place. By the greatactivity of the profeflbrs, a few of thefe leaders liadbeen gained, and fome kind of alarm began at laft torife in the city. Though the expreflions utteredwere no ctiier than I have m.fntioned, the report ofthe ftudent's lax principks being once fet on foot,^he was, by degrees, painted out in blacker and blackercolours j and from the- above exprefiions, thrown outat random, came at lall to be fufpe^led by fome ofthe loweit inhabitants of Clutha, of Socinianifm, ofDeifm, and even of infidelity ; fome of which tejims,ai he was fo young, he ^lad probably never heard of vand no reafonable perfon did imagine that any ofthefe perverfe ways of ^thinking had ever entered in- '^to his head.Chap. 15. Such was the fituation of things at Clutha,when the college came to the fatal refolution ofgiving an indictment : The ftudent was alarmed ; theheft part of the citizens eager to fup^port him ; theprofeflbrs ftill more eager to profecute him ; and themeaner part of the citizens imagining, by this time,that he had fome wrong principles, were fome ofthem indifferent, forne of them content, fome defirous,and others zealous to liave him condemned,and expelled the college. Simple expulfion would indeedhave been no cenfure or punifliment at all ; forat this time the college of Clutha was in a very forryand pitiable fituation : Not above one or two of its