Modern British Heresy

  Rev. Nathan Rouse was a Methodist minister, ordained in 1834. He served in Cambridge from 1836 and in Brigg, near Hull, in 1838 ( Dictionary of Methodism ). He was described as “ a literary man, and an excellent preacher, cultured and lovable.” (George Lester, Grimsby Methodism and the Wesleys in Lincolnshire , Archive.org )  A letter to Rev. George Steward In 1854 the Wesleyan Methodist Penny Magazine (April, p.51, here ) noticed Rouses’ publication A letter to the Rev. George Steward containing an examination of some of the statements and arguments of his recently published work. The author assumed most of its readers did not know who Rouse was and the review was sardonic and unenthusiastic, citing Swift’s maxim “Blessed is the man that expecteth nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”(p52), and ending “... we feel that the insolence, bigotry, and folly of a Rouse leave all former absurdity floundering far behind.” ( ibid. p54 col.2) Contesting Archbishop Ussher’s ...

Robert Imrie MA was the second minister of Kinkell in the Secession Church. He had been ordained on the 11th April 1792 and arrived in Kinkell in 1798. McKerrow, in his History of the Secession Church, repeated a comment that “so long as he contented himself with simply preaching the gospel and attending to his pastoral duties, he had around him an attached congregation. But this was not to continue…” (Small, p. 608) . The case is not especially significant for the miscellaneous content of Imrie’s heresy, but it is outstanding for the number of years and sessions of Synod it took to come to a final conclusion. 1801 In 1801 Imrie’s congregation brought 13 charges against him in the Presbytery of Perth. The complaint asserted that Imrie “... was accustomed, in his public ministrations, to employ modes of expression that were novel and unguarded, and calculated to unsettle the minds of his hearers with regard to some of the fundamental articles of the Christian faith.” (McKerrow, p484.)...