OF THE REV. JACOB GRUBER, MINISTER IN THE Methodist Episcopal Church, At the March Term, 1819, in the Frederick county FOR A MISDEMEANOR. BY DAVID MARTIN, MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL. "Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; 'But our rulers can have authority over such natu- to our God.-JEFFERSON." FREDERICKTOWN, Md. Geo. Kolb, printer, (Gruber) District of Maryland, ss. BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the twenty-seventh day of August, in the forty-fourth year of the independence of the United States of America, David Martin, of the said district, hath deposited in this office the title of a book, the right whereof he claims as author, in the words following, to wit: "Trial of the Rev. Jacob Gruber, minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, at March Term, 1819, in the Frede rick county court, Md. for a misdemeanor. By David Martin, minister of the gospel. "Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity; who whet their tongues like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words.Psalms. But our rulers can have authority over such na tural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted to them, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.-Jet ferson." In conformity to an act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, "an act for the encouragement of learning by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned;" and also to the act, entitled, "an ac supplementary to the act, entitled, an act for the encourage ment of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned, and extending the be nefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving and etching historical and other prints." PHILIP MOORE, Clerk of the District of Maryland FLYORK PREFACE. BEYOND question, the circumstance that produced the following accusation and trial, involving, as it does, an interference with the rights of conscience in the charge made against the individual indicted is of the very greatest moment in point of principle, and the whole proceeding growing out of it the reader will find of more novelty and interest than any other case determined in the Maryland courts of law since the revolution. On the sixteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighteen, a Camp-meeting was held in Washington county, Maryland, under the management of the clergy and laity of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The meeting was not appointed by the accused, and the discourse preached by him, which contained the supposed crime, was delivered on sunday evening of the meeting wholly by accident, without the least premeditation or concert with any individual, black or white, and after he had laboured with great solicitude, but without success, with one of his brethren to prech in his place. He being Presiding Elder of the District, it became his duty to preach, as no substitute could be procured. "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people" was his text; and in his commentary he was, of course, led to remarks upon national as well as individual sins: and A |