This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852. Excerpt: ... THE CONTEST WITH ROME. My Reverend Brethren, How shall I speak to you, what shall I say to you, at this our Annual Meeting? How shall I discharge what on such occasions I have always deemed the duty of my office, to call your attention to the principal events whereby our Church has been affected, whether beneficially or hurtfully, in the preceding year, and to offer you such help as I can toward forming a calm and right judgement upon them, and determining the line of conduct which they seem especially to demand from us. I have been compelled, as you are aware, by illness, to defer this Visitation to a later season than usual; and I am afraid this may have been inconvenient to some of you, and still more perhaps to some of the Churchwardens, who are summoned along with you to give account of the condition of their parishes. Should this be so, I must beg those who feel this inconvenience, to excuse a delay which has in no degree been caused by my will. As soon as my health, under God's blessing, was sufficiently restored for me to indulge the hope of being able to meet you, my first act was to fix on the earliest day for our Meeting. For I felt that it was of more than ordinary importance this year, that all who are entrusted with any office of exhortation or teaching in our Church, should be diligent in saying B and doing whatever the Spirit of God may enable them to say and do, in order to clear up and disperse those dismal delusions, under the influence of which so many members of our Church, nay, so many of her ministers, have been forsaking her in the last eighteen months, and have been throwing themselves into the arms of Rome. As in a time of danger, when the enemy is drawing near, every officer will long to be at his post, and will be doubly distre...