Cordiner. He was
much gratified, and would gladly have accepted the appointment. He liked
the place--his native town; thought highly of the respectability of the
congregation; but there was one objection, which to him was insuperable.
The congregation had for some time been Episcopal only in name, and it
went against Mr. Ramsay's conscience to minister in a church calling
itself Episcopal, but without the communion or discipline of a bishop.
He explained to the managers his objection, and thought for a time it
might be overcome by a union with the Scotch Episcopal churches in the
diocese. He had yet to learn the strength, of the Scotch prejudice
against bishops; perhaps to learn that the more shadowy the grounds of
dispute, so much the more keenly are ecclesiastical squabbles fought.
Worthy Bishop Skinner would have been glad to have Ramsay a
fellow-labourer in his city upon whatever conditions. Yet he could not
contradict his younger friend's honest and temperate adherence to his
principles and to Episcopacy. The correspondence all round, which I have
before me, is quite decorous; but after Ramsay had stated his objection,
and that it was insuperable, the managers wrote to him, 1st October
1822, that "a unanimous election would follow if he accepted the
situation under the present establishment." It would have been easy to
divide the congregation, but this did not suit Ramsay's feelings or
nature, and he courteously bowed to the decision of the managers, and
returned to Frome, where his income from both curacies was L100 a
year,--a poverty the more irksome to a man of culture and
refined tastes.
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