Rev. Sir:—
I received yours of the 13th inst yesterday, in which I am accused of setting in circulation a cruel and malignant slander about you. Of this charge I am perfectly guiltless. If your friend, Mr. Miller, busies himself in going about from one person to another, scraping up all he can, putting his own construction upon it, and then dealing it out to others in his own way, you should charge him with the circulation of the report, and not me. As far as I can understand, all that has been said upon this subject has been solely through Mr. Miller.
You ask me what I intend to do in the premises. I answer, nothing—inasmuch as I have had nothing to do with the circulation of any report.
Very Respectfully Yours, Thomas Wilks.
Not satisfied to leave the matter so, and feeling that a man who was capable of doing so great a wrong as it appeared that Mr. Wilks had done, was unworthy the office of a Christian minister, and wishing to afford him a full and fair opportunity of vindicating his innocence, I next submitted to him, through two of my New York brethren, the following
Proposition. (No. IV.)
"Whereas, Mr. Thomas S. Miller, of New York City, has sent me in writing a statement made to him by the Rev. Thomas Wilks, touching a transaction between Mr. Wilks and myself; and whereas I am informed that Mr Wilks has since acknowledged Mr. Miller’s report of his statement to be substantially correct; and whereas I must pronounce Mr. Wilks’ statement to Mr. Miller as reported to me (which statement I am informed he has made to others also) to be false in every essential particular, and calumnious in the highest degree; and whereas Mr. Wilks in attempting to exculpate himself, has (if correctly reported by Mr. Miller) told some ten or twelve additional falsehoods; and whereas I have pursued towards Mr. W. such a course as the laws of charity seem to me to require—giving him every opportunity to make amends for his wrong—and he has positively refused to do anything in the premises, alleging that he is 'perfectly guiltless’ of having set any report in circulation about me; and whereas I am obliged, as the matter now stands, to regard Mr. Wilks as a man destitute of moral principle—as a base and wilful slanderer, and as such, unfit for the Christian ministry, and unworthy the respect and confidence of the members of the New Church; and whereas it is painful to me to regard and speak of Mr. Wilks in this manner, having no desire to condemn or injure him, therefore I hereby propose to the Rev. Thomas Wilks, as an amicable and peaceful mode of adjusting this difficulty, and of proving his innocence of the thing charged upon him, if proof of it there be—that the whole affair be submitted for investigation to an ecclesiastical court, consisting of the New Church ministers east of the Allegany Mountains, to be held in the
