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JOHN H. HOPKINS, D. D.,

BISHOP OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH
FOR THE DIOCESE OF VERMONT :

OCCASIONED BY

HIS LECTURE IN OPPOSITION

TO THE

TEMPERANCE SOCIETY.

BY AN EPISCOPALIAN.

WINDSOR:

PRINTED AT THE CHRONICLE PRESS.

1836.

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The following LETTERS appeared first i ZION'S HERALD, published in Boston. The are by one of the most popular writers o Temperance in this or any country,-the a thor of the well-known "TEMPERANCE TALES. They are now re-printed in this form with h consent, and at the expense of a few individ als, as a means of counteracting the infl ence of the Bishop's Lecture.

BHS
Gift of

The Heirs of

George C. Dempsey)

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RIGHT REVEREND SIR,-You have published a Lecture, avowedly in opposition to Temperance Societies. I have read that lecture with increasing mortification and surprise, from the commencement to the close. I am grieved, Right Reverend sir, that a Bishop of that denomination of Christians, to which I have the happiness to belong, should select a position so very unenviable as that which you have chosen and I am equally surprised, that, with such abundant means of information as have been scattered among the remotest hills and valleys of our country, you should manifest such unaccountable ignorance of the subject which you have undertaken to discuss. It will not be a very oppressive task to demonstrate, that you have not studied the great leading principles of the reformation, as they are laid down in the constitution of the Amer

ican Temperance Society, and presented, again and again, before the world, upon the pages of innumerable reports, journals, and magazines. You are strangely ignorant of the very term of its existence; and the want of such needful information can never be supplied by a mere profluvium of words. You say, indeed, that your opinions are "the result of a long and anxious examination." It may have been long and anxious, but it must have been a very careless and unskilful examination, Right Reverend sir; and, if we can show that you have wholly misrepresented the fundamental principles of the Temperance Society, it will not vary the measure of your accountability here and hereafter, that your errors were those of ignorance, if the means of true knowledge were fairly within your reach, but wholly disregarded, at

the time.

Your private motives for such a spirited tourney against all temperance societies, might have remained forever within the limits of your own Episcopate, perhaps within the chaneel of your own bosom, had not the same presiding genius which prompted you to this labor of supererogation, induced you, at the same time, to apprize the world of your personal relation to the temperance cause. You say of the subject which you have attempted to examine, that

it is an "exciting subject." For some reason or other, which is not of universal application to thorough-going cold-water men, it is very apt to be so with the enemies of the reformation. You speak of "the reckless spirit of slander, which presumes to declare that no one can have any objection to the Temperance Society, unless he be himself an intemperate man.” You are also pleased to say, that you have not "selected this topic on account of any personal feeling;" and you beg that it may not be supposed that you have. Such a course very naturally leads us to suspect, that you are more than ordinarily apprehensive of the charge of personal feeling, in your own diocese.

But you finally remove all doubts by these words: "To the censure so liberally bestowed upon myself, for not thinking fit to join the Temperance Society, I am so long and thoroughly accustomed, that it costs me nothing to bear it with good humor." It may possibly be So, but truly, Right Reverend sir, you have a very uncommon way of showing it. Over the whole breadth and length of the Evangelists, it is not possible to find a drop of that gall, which is so abundantly shed abroad, we say not in your heart, but over the whole surface of your lecture. Taunting ridicule and bitter sarcasm are the vehicles of your good humor!

But the

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