GAZETTE SELECTIONS. CHURCH in Virginia.-Virginia, 22d Dec. 1797. SIR, In all free countries the prefs ought to be the chief cenforial power, in all cafes of perfect or imperfect obligation, above the reach and penalties of law. It gives me, as a citizen of the United States, as a lover of order and government, of morality and religion, great complacency to obferve, that nothing of turpitude, whether it be the act of the individual, or the legislature, whether proximate or remote, escapes your cenfure. I am led to this opinion more ftrongly than I ever before entertained it, from noticing in your paper of the 13th of November, your ftrictures on the refolutions of the last Affembly in refpect to the property called churchlands or glebes, which have been for ages, by the most facred laws, fecured to the clergy of our epifcopal church: I perceive too, in a subsequent Gazette of this month, you have detected the false reasoning they contain, and expofed to contempt the author of fuch a flimfy production. If you think it worthy of attention, you may publish the enclosed Reprefentation. The defence of our fociety will stand on arguments fimilar to those which are herein urged. When the Convention met in Richmond, the 6th of this month, they entered into refolutions, in the fpirit of this Representation, and left a Committee to fupport, B 2 fupport, with arguments irrefutable, the cause of the church: but, Sir, what avail arguments however found, however ably enforced, against power, above all fhame, without fear and without remorfe? Reprefentation." Refolved, That a representation be prefented to the delegates in Affembly, moft refpetfully to reprefent, that this meeting of the biinop, clergy, and laymen of the Proteftant epifcopal church is agitated with concern and grief, that there are, and have been annually fome members of your honourable Houfe, who feem to have at heart the confifcation of the property of the church, to the great injury of this fociety of religionists, in derogation of their rights as citizens and Proteftant epifcopalians, in oppofition to all the principles of civil fociety, and in direct repugnance to the laws of the land, especially that paffed October 7th, 1776, that enacted, that there fhall, in all time coming, be saved and reserved, to the use of the church by law established, the feveral tracts of glebe land already purchased, churches, chapels, &c.' "To reprefent that this fociety has not read with indifference certain refolutions offered to the House of Delegates laft feflion, which have no other tendency, from the manifeft and ftudied fophiftry in which they are framed, than to delude the Houfe into an opinion, that this meditated confifcation of our properties, enfured to us by the very principles on which civil fociety, that inftitution of beneficence, exifts, and ascertained to us by law, which is only beneficence acting by a rule; would be an act of meritorious liberality; an act of impartiality altogether confonant to the principles of religious freedom, and to thofe of our conftitution. They proceed in an artful tiffue of falte premifes and conclufions, which it is not to our purpofe feriatim to expose, and in a ftyle of quibble that would confer no dignity on the pleadings of the loweft courts, to embarrass and confound |