the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

[102] and more zeal than discretion. Most men in such a situation, associated with three colleagues, all of them greatly his superiors in years, in learning, in character, and reputation, would have been contented to remain quietly in the background. Mr. Lavington soon shewed that this was far from being his intention; the less so, as he was intimately connected with some ministers of the neighbourhood, narrow-minded and bigoted men, who encouraged him to thwart and oppose his colleagues, and availed themselves to the full extent of the opportunity which these troubles afforded them to exercise an inquisitorial influence in the concerns of other religious societies. In the general meeting of ministers called the ‘Assembly,’ which was held twice a year, in May and September, the old forms of Presbyterian Church government were at that time retained to a greater extent in Devonshire than in any other part of the country; and though they were not in themselves connected with any considerable ecclesiastical power, at least not in ordinary times, yet at a period of popular excitement or alarm, when disputes like those which at this time prevailed at Exeter increased the violence of party-spirit and sectarian animosity, they afforded facilities for the display of an illiberal bigotry, which, though it was happily disarmed of its more formidable attributes, had still power to light up the flames of civil discord, to set a man at variance against his brother, and to drive its victims from honourable stations which they had filled with credit and usefulness.

Mr. Peirce himself, however, had rather high notions of church authority; and in his estimation