The Story of My Life. Egerton Ryerson

do not stand in the relation, of Dissenters from either the Church of England or of Scotland, but are the ministers of distinct and independent Churches, who had numerous congregations in various parts of the Province, before the ministerial labours of any ecclesiastical establishment were, to any considerable extent, known or felt.

      Jan. 20th, 1831.—As an evidence that the views put forth by Dr. Ryerson, in the Guardian, against an established Church in Upper Canada, were acceptable outside of his own denomination, I give the following letter, addressed to him at this date from Perth, by the Rev. Wm. Bell, Presbyterian:

      Though differing from you in many particulars, yet in some we agree. Your endeavours to advance the cause of civil and religious liberty have generally met my approbation. Some of your writings that I have seen discover both good sense and Christian feeling. The liberality, too, you have discovered, both in regard to myself and in regard of my brethren, has not escaped my observation. Be not discouraged by the malice of the enemies of religion. Your Guardian I have seldom seen, but from this time I intend to take it regularly. Consider me one of your "constant readers." The matters in which we differ are nothing in comparison of those in which we agree.

      Feb. 9th.—Some members of the Church of England in the Province evinced a good deal of hostility to the Methodists of this period, chiefly from the fact that they had been connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, and that the Canada Conference had formed one of the Annual Conferences of that Church, presided over by an American Bishop. As an evidence of this hostility, Dr. Ryerson stated in the Guardian of this date, that Donald Bethune, Esq., and others, of Kingston, had petitioned the House of Assembly:—

      To prohibit any exercise of the functions of a priest, or exhorter, or elder of any denomination in the Province except by British subjects; 2nd, to prevent any religious society connected with any foreign religious body to assemble in Conference; 3rd, to prevent the raising of money by any religious person or body for objects which are not strictly British, etc.

The Legislature appointed a Committee on the subject, and Dr. Ryerson, as representing the Methodists, Rev. Mr. Harris the Presbyterians, and Rev. Mr. Stewart the Baptists, were summoned to attend this Committee with a view to give evidence on the subject. This Dr. Ryerson did at length, (as did also these gentlemen). Dr. Ryerson traced the history of the Methodist body in Canada, and showed that, three years before this time, the Canada Conference had taken steps to sever its connection with the American General Conference, and had done so in a friendly manner.[31]

      The petition was aimed at the Methodists, as they alone answered the description of the parties referred to by the petitioners. The petition was also a covert re-statement of the often disproved charge of disloyalty, etc., on the part of the Methodists. The House very properly came to the conclusion—

      "That it was inconsistent with the benign and tolerant principles of the British Constitution to restrain by penal enactment any denomination of Christians, whether subjects or foreigners," etc.

      This, however, was a sample of the favourite mode of attack, and the system of persecution to which the early Methodists were exposed in this Province. At the same session of Parliament in 1831, the Marriage Bill, which had been before the House each year for six successive years, was finally passed. This Bill gave to the Methodists and to other non-Episcopal ministers the right for the first time to solemnize matrimony in Upper Canada.

Feb. 19th.—Sir John Colborne, the Lieutenant-Governor, having nominated an Episcopal chaplain to the House of Assembly, the question, "Is the Church of England an established church in Upper Canada?" was again debated in the House of Assembly and discussed in the newspapers. With a view to a calm, dispassionate, and historical refutation of the claims set up by the Episcopal Church on the subject, Dr. Ryerson reprinted in the Guardian of this day, the sixth of a series of letters which he had addressed from Cobourg to Archdeacon Strachan, in May and June, 1828. It covered the whole ground in dispute.[32]

      Nov. 6th, 1832.—Archdeacon Strachan, in his sermon, preached at the visitation of the Bishop of Quebec at York, on the 5th of September, speaking of the Methodists, said that he would—

      Speak of them with praise, notwithstanding their departure from the Apostolic ordinance, and the hostility long manifested against us by some of their leading members.

      In reply to this statement, Dr. Ryerson wrote from St. Catharines to the Editor of the Guardian. He pointed out that:—

      It was not until after Archdeacon Strachan's sermon on the death of the former Bishop of Quebec was published, in 1826, that a single word was written, and then to refute his slanders. In that sermon, when accounting for the few who attend the Church of England, the Archdeacon said that their attendance discouraged the minister, and that—

His influence is frequently broken or injured by numbers of uneducated, itinerant preachers, who, leaving their steady employment, betake themselves to preaching the Gospel from idleness, or a zeal without knowledge … and to teach what they do not know, and which from their pride they disdain to learn.[33]

      Again, in May, 1827, Archdeacon Strachan sent an "Ecclesiastical Chart" to the Colonial Office, and in the letter accompanying it stated that:—

      The Methodist teachers are subject to the orders of the United States of America, and it is manifest that the Colonial Government neither has, nor can have any other control over them, or prevent them from gradually rendering a large portion of the population, by their influence and instructions, hostile to our institutions, civil and religious, than by increasing the number of the Established Clergy.

      Who then [Dr. Ryerson asked] was the author of contention? Who was the aggressor? Who provoked hostilities? The slanders in the Chart were published in Canada, and in England, by Dr. Strachan before a single effort was made by a member of any denomination to counteract his hostile measures, or a single word was said on the subject.

      Nov. 19th, 1834.—In connection with this subject I insert here the following reply (containing several historical facts) to a singularly pretentious letter which Dr. Ryerson had inserted in the Guardian of this date, denouncing the opposition of a certain "sect called Methodists" to the claims of the Church of England as an established church in the Colony. The reply was inserted in order to afford strangers and new settlers in Upper Canada correct information on the subject, and to disprove the statement of the writer of the letter, Dr. Ryerson mentioned the following facts:—

The pretensions of the Episcopal clergy began to be disputed by the clergy of the Church of Scotland as soon as it was known that the former had got themselves erected into a corporation. This was, I believe, in 1820.[34] The subject was brought before the House of Assembly in 1824, and the House in 1824, '25, '26, '27, passed resolutions remonstrating against the exclusive claims of the Episcopal clergy. From 1822 to 1827 several pamphlets were published on both sides of the question, and much was said in the House of Assembly; but during this period not one word was written by any minister or member of the Methodist Church, nor did the Methodists take any part in it, though their ministers were not even allowed to solemnize matrimony—a privilege then enjoyed by Calvinistic ministers—and though individual ministers had been most maliciously and cruelly persecuted, under the sanction of judicial authority. … But in the statements drawn up for the Imperial Government by the Episcopal clergy during the years mentioned, the extirpation of the Methodists was made one principal ground of appeal by the Episcopal clergy for the exclusive countenance and patronage of His Majesty's Government. Some of these documents at length came before the Canadian public; and in 1827 a defence of the Methodists and other religious denominations was put forth by the writer of these remarks in the form of a "Review of a Sermon preached by the Archdeacon of York." Up to this time not one word was said on "the church question" by the Methodists. But it was so warmly agitated by others, that in the early part of 1827