Walleyites alleging that his refusal to receive them as church members in regular standing brought him “under ye censure of shutting up ye Kingdom of Heaven against men.”  To this, calm answer is given by a review of the whole controversy in the Bolton Church, closing thus:  “Mr. Moderator, as I esteemed the Proceedings of these Brethren at Bolton Disorderly and Schismatical, and as the Apostle hath given Direction to mark those who cause Divisions and Offences and avoid them, I thought it my Duty to bear Testimony against ye Conduct of both ye People at Bolton, and those who were active in settling a Pastor over them in the Manner Specified, and I still retain ye sentiment, and this not to shut the Kingdom of Heaven against them, but to recover them from their wanderings to the Order of the Gospel and to the direct way to the Kingdom of Heaven.  And I still approve and think them just.”

The second charge, in full, was as follows:—­

“It appears to us that his conduct hath ye greatest Tendency to subvert our religious Constitution and ye Faith of these churches.—­In his saying that the Quebeck Bill was just—­and that he would have done the same had he been one of ye Parliament—­and also saying that he was in charity with a professed Roman Catholick, whose Principles are so contrary to the Faith of these churches,—­That for a man to be in charity with them we conceive that it is impossible that he should be in Charity with professed New England Churches.  It therefore appears to us that it would be no better than mockery for him to pretend to stand as Pastor to one of these churches.”  To this Mr. Harrington first replies by the pointed question:  “Is not Liberty of Conscience and ye right of judging for themselves in the matters of Religion, one grand professed Principle in ye New England Churches; and one Corner Stone in their Foundation?” He then explicitly states his abhorrence of “the anti-Christian tenets of Popery,” adding:  “However on the other hand they receive all the articles of the Athanasian Creed—­and of consequence in their present Constitution they have some Gold, Silver, and precious stones as well as much wood, hay, and stubble.”  He characterizes the accusation in this pithy paragraph:  “Too much Charity is the Charge here brought against me,—­would to God I had still more of it in ye most important sense.  Instead of a Disqualification, it would be a most enviable accomplishment in ye Pastor of a Protestant New England Church.”  A sharp argumentum ad hominem, for the benefit of the ultra-radical accuser closes this division of his defence.  “But, Mr. Moderator, if my charity toward some Roman Catholicks disqualified me for a Protestant Minister, what, what must we think of ye honorable Congress attending Mass in a Body in ye Roman Catholic Chappel at Philadelphia?  Must it not be equal mockery in them to pretend to represent and act for the United Protestant States?” ...