It is astonishing that these men should not have been aware that on the abolition platform their own sect stood but on a level with others, and that Sabbatarian or Anti-Sabbatarian, man or woman, clergyman or layman, voter or non-voter, warrior or non-resistant, must be measured by their consistency and energy in applying each his own religious views, to effect the abolition of slavery. But they had yielded to that fear of man that bringeth a snare, and suffered themselves to be overcome by pro-slavery influence, scantily disguised as sectarian zeal. This pro-slavery influence was wielded by the leaders of the sect to which the appellants belonged, with a skill and industry which the Anti-Slavery party would have done well to imitate. This pretended zeal, stimulated as it was by the hope of securing the approbation of wealthy and influential men of business, who sustained the double character of panders of slavery and pillars of churches, was not without its reward. The leading commercial and religious journals played into each others’ hands, and, from the daily and weekly press of that period, it appears that great numbers of clergymen, of known hostility to the cause, had contrived to signify that some movement of this kind would afford them a pretence for joining it, while, at the same time, such a movement would operate as an assurance that the cause should no longer be urged forward with the speed and effect that rouses the spirit of persecution. Men who had dreaded suffering, and felt mortification at the idea of becoming followers (so they understood it) of the bold, plain, uncompromising, untitled Garrison, hoped, by means of this stepping-stone, to escape the reproach of their consciences, without sacrificing their parishes or their pride. The active appellants were but _two_ in number; but from time to time they kept the public informed of the encouragement they received. One, who entered into their feelings with the most ardent sympathy, was the Rev. Charles T. Torrey, then of Providence. He declared that “their appeal gave him unmingled satisfaction--that it would be sustained by others;”--and bade them “thank God and take courage, in view of the Liberator’s abuse.”