The hostile attitude that the Federalist clergy took toward the Democratic Societies gave special irritation to the editors of the _Independent Chronicle_. Because he ventured in his thanksgiving sermon of November 20 (1794) to denounce all Constitutional Societies, the rector of the Episcopal congregation in Boston was held up to ridicule in the columns of the _Chronicle_ as a “_ci-devant_ lawyer” and “a certain Episcopalian ‘thumper of the pulpit drum,’” whose pastoral care many of his substantial members had already renounced because of his injection of political discussion into the sacred sphere of the pulpit; while others had given evidence of their disposition to follow the example of the more courageous members of the flock, “if virulence is to take the place of religion.”[247] But the Reverend David Osgood, Medford’s “monk,” on account of his more extended and violent treatment of the Democratic Societies in his thanksgiving day sermon,[248] gave much deeper offence. That he should have represented these organizations as controlled by the same principles as the incendiary French Jacobin Clubs, and as set to watch the Federal government and plot its overthrow through the support of pernicious and inveterate faction, was more than ardent democratic patriots could endure. “A Friend to the Clergy and an Enemy to Ecclesiastical Presumption,” together with “A Friend of Decency and Free Inquiry,” sought entrance to the willing columns of the _Chronicle_ in order to express their contempt for “a Rev. gentleman” who could lend himself to the peddling of such illiberal sentiments and could show himself capable of acting in a manner unbecoming the character of a Christian and a gentleman, and also in order to draw conclusions derogatory to his reputation as a scholar.[249] The castigations of “Stentor” were not less caustic. The red-hot anathemas of the Reverend Parson Osgood, whining preacher of politics that he was, had no other effect than to singe and sear the reputation of their author. “On the Constitutional Society their influence has been as small as though they had been issued in the form of a BULL from the Chancery of the Pope.”[250]