The following is the report of the Committee to whom the above memorial was referred. And notwithstanding Mr. Wilks had only asked that this report be made " as public as the charge had been"—not one line of which "charge" had ever been published—the report was immediately spread before the receivers of the New Church in America through the columns of both the Convention's organs. Whether the eagerness and speed with which this report was printed and circulated, arose from the fact that its obvious aim and tendency were to screen Mr. Wilks from even a suspicion of wrong, and to damage the reputation, and destroy the influence of Mr. Barrett, I leave for others to decide.
"The Committee to whom was referred the request of Mr. Wilks, asking to be admitted a member of the Convention, and for investigation of the charges preferred by Mr. Barrett against him, have attended to the duty assigned them, and would respectfully report,—That, from the evidence laid before them from Mr. Barrett, and the testimony produced by Mr. Wilks, the Committee are of the opinion that Mr. Barrett labored under a mistaken impression concerning the agency which Mr. Wilks had in the matter of his grievances, and that, under the influence of this impression, he erroneously charged Mr. Wilks with injuring his character as a man and minister of the church.[1] The Committee are also unanimously in the opinion, that Mr. Wilks has satisfactorily established his innocence of the charges made by Mr. Barrett, and that he should sustain no loss of the confidence of his brethren, or of his character and standding as a minister of the New Church, on that account.
"The Committee, in conclusion, would respectfully call attention to what appears to be a want of conformity to true order, on the part of the two brethren that have been involved in the difficulty in question, in not seeking to be guided by the divine law in settling the same between themselves at first; and it is be- ↑ The reader should bear in mind that I had never publicly preferred the specific charge here alleged by this Committee. I had simply stated, under the constraining circumstances already narrated, that my grand objection to the Executive Committee’s bestowing upon Mr. Wilks any office in the gift of the Convention, was, that he had been guilty of a cruel-slander, and one which had never to my knowledge been repented of. So that all which, this Committee here say about Mr. B.'s charging Mr. W. "with injuring character as a man and minister of the New Church," is entirely gratuitous.
