[286] preaching has sunk deeply into the hearts of many members of the Free Church, and you are aware, perhaps, that he advocates ‘perfectionism’ as alone constituting Christianity. He has just published a book on this subject, which I like as far as I have read it, and which will, in due time, cause some sensation among holy sinners and evangelical rebels.1 About 1500 subscribers are all, I understand, that have been obtained as yet, for the Abolitionist, notwithstanding the deep hostility that is cherished toward the Liberator, and notwithstanding all the efforts of St. Clair, Phelps, Stanton, Wise, Torrey, backed up by the orthodox clergy. Not less than 5000 subscribers will be necessary to defray its expenses. These, perhaps, may be obtained, in time. I have just received another letter from Boyle, equal if not superior to his first, and about twice as long.2 It will make a sensation when it is published. I shall publish it entire in the Non-Resistant, and nearly all of it in the Liberator.3 It is the
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1 “Scripture Doctrine of Christian Perfection; with other kindred subjects, illustrated and confirmed in a series of Discourses, designed to throw light on the way of holiness. By Rev. Asa Mahan, President of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute” (Lib. 9: 48). In December, 1839, an anonymous contributor to the Liberator is permitted to print a dialogue intended to overcome in detail the ‘prejudice and misrepresentation’ of which the editor was the object. We read: ‘But some say he is a Perfectionist, and believe that, let him do what he will, it is no sin.—That is false. His views on the subject of holiness are in unison with those of Mr. Mahan, whom you have heard and liked’ (Lib. 9: 207).
2 The Rev. James Boyle—a native of Lower Canada, born and bred a Catholic; afterwards, turned Protestant, a prominent revivalist preacher in Vermont, and in 1834 temporarily supplying the Free Church at Hartford, Conn. (being succeeded by Charles Fitch); finally, a New Haven Perfectionist in intimate relations with J. H. Noyes—addressed a letter to Mr. Garrison touching the Clerical Appeal, Sectarianism, and True Holiness, from Rome, Ohio, which was printed in the Liberator for March 23, 1838 (8: 45). It was a very intense and able production—‘one of the most powerful epistles ever written by man,’ it seemed to the recipient (Lib. 8.47), who published it again in pamphlet form, with a preface and his poem ‘Christian Rest’—and well calculated to inflame the hostility of the clergy to Mr. Garrison. For example: The American slaveholder ‘has thrown around him a rampart of spongy priests who, like bales of cotton, extract the momentum from the balls that are levelled at his callous heart.’ ‘I look upon abolition as the greatest moral school, instituted of God, now existing’—the John the Baptist of Christ's advent.
3 In the Liberator, 9: 52, in the Non-Resistant of April 6, 1839; in both, under the caption, ‘On Non-Resistance,—The “Powers that be,” Civil, Judicial and Ecclesiastical,—Holiness.’ It was dated Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 24, 1839.
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