Every word, every syllable in this sentence is untrue. No1 such convention has been held. I am as strongly opposed to “infidelity” (as that term is commonly understood) as I am to priestcraft and slavery. My religious sentiments (excepting as they relate to certain outward forms and observances, and respecting these I entertain the views of ‘Friends’), are as rigid and uncompromising as those promulgated by Christ himself. The standard which he has erected is one that I reverence and advocate. In a true estimate of the divine authority of the Scriptures, no one can go beyond me. They are my text-book, and worth all other books in the universe. My trust is in God, my aim to walk in the footsteps of his Son, my rejoicing to be crucified to the world, and the world to me. So much for the charge of “ infidelity.”Here we must take leave of the subject of poisoning2 the English mind against Mr. Garrison—an operation in which Birney and Stanton,3 after his departure, had been active, with the zealous cooperation of Captain4 Stuart, who renewed his warfare on the old organization in the persons of Collins and Remond.5
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We need not follow Mr. Garrison through all his exposure of Colver's romancing.
Enough to cite here his comment on the allegation that ‘Garrison has just headed an infidel convention’:
2 Ms. Nov. 9, Dec. [10], 1840, E. Pease to Collins.
3 ‘Mr. Birney returned in the Great Western, a few days since. I see that he and Stanton have taken a pretty extensive tour through England, Scotland and Ireland; and I am glad that they have been so well received as American abolitionists’ (Ms. Dec. 1, 1840, W. L. G. to E. Pease).
4 Ms. Nov. —, 6, Collins to Stuart; Nov. 7, Stuart to Collins.
5 Stuart, brought to book by John Murray, specified these grounds of his present hostility to his old friend Garrison: ‘He is an abolitionist when he can get others to adopt his woman-rights notions; but until then, the rights (as he conscientiously deems them) of woman drown in his ear the cry of the slave—witness his conduct at the London Convention. He is an abolitionist; but he does all that he can to discredit or destroy one of the most dutiful and powerful means for the deliverance of the slave, i. e., faithfulness to duty at the elections—thereby giving over the Government completely to the hands of the slave party. By his plan the Government is left secured in all its evils, and shorn of all its good, in these emergencies when its interference is most vitally needed. . . . But he has developed two other features as new, or as unknown formerly, as the above; both of which my whole soul utterly condemns. These are his rejection of the Christian Sabbath, as commonly held in the churches; and his rejection of a regularly educated and supported ministry’ (Ms. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nov. 15, 1840, copied by Murray in a letter to Collins, Bowling Bay, Dec. 23, 1840). See, for Mr. Garrison's views of the clerical office, which were not those of Friends, Lib. 11: 26.
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