The General Baptists at first met in a disused Wesleyan meeting-house, called “The Tabernacle,” which has long since been pulled down. In 1799 they built themselves a place in Stoney-street. In 1817 a quarrel arose between Mr. Smith, the senior pastor, and his junior, of whose pulpit talents he was said to be jealous. The congregation dismissed them both, and appointed a Mr. George. On Sunday, the 3rd of August, in the same year, there was a personal conflict after the Donnybrook manner, between the partisans of Smith and George. The friends of Smith being beaten drew off, and built themselves a meeting-house in Broad-street. In 1850 there was another secession from Stoney-street, who built themselves a meeting-house on the Mansfield-road. The Particular Baptists originally occupied an ancient meeting-house in Park-street: but in 1815 they built themselves a larger place in George-street. In 1847 there was a secession of extra-Particulars. These met first in a room in Clinton-street, then in an old building which had been disused by the Quakers, and finally, in a splendid gothic edifice, which they built for themselves on Derby-road. The old meeting-house in Park-street fell into the hands of a congregation of the Scotch variety of the sect, whose peace has only been disturbed by the Bethesdians, who joined them in 1828, until they decided upon setting up for themselves. Thus it will be seen that of the nine new congregations enumerated above, not one was originated without a quarrel—a quarrel, too, of the worst kind, a personal one. Nobody can study the history of religious polemics without perceiving that the root of all that bitterness which has made the _odium theologicum_ a proverb, is to be found in the tendency there is in men to transfer the indignation they might reasonably feel against error, from the error itself to those who hold it. If people would only consent to forget history and would conduct the argument upon purely abstract principles, even the Roman controversy might be made instructive and edifying; but somehow, before long, the debate wanders away from the truth or falsehood of the creed under discussion to that most irrelevant of all issues, the virtues or failings of those by whom it is professed. What shall we say, then, of a system which gives rise to controversies which, from their commencement to their close, are purely personal? Lest it should be supposed that the case of Nottingham is an isolated instance, here is an extract on which the writer stumbled the other day in a tract written in praise of Congregationalism, and stated on the title page to be “commended by J. Bennett, D.D.” It appears to be quoted from a work called “The Library of Ecclesiastical Knowledge,” and the scene of the incident is stated to be “one of the principal cities of the United States:”—