A Report of the Trial of the Rev. Theodore Clapp, Before the.

New Orleans, 1833. Religious Liberty and the Tyranny of the Mississippi Presbytery [Trial]. Clapp, Theodore [1792-1866], Defendant. [Channing, William Ellery (1780-1842)]. A Report of the Trial of the Rev. Theodore Clapp, Before the Mississippi Presbytery, At Their Sessions in May and December, 1832. New Orleans: Printed and Published by Hotchkiss & Co., 1833. xiv, 374 pp. Octavo (9-1/4" x 5-1/4"). Publisher's quarter cloth over plain boards, printed paper title label to spine. Light soiling and a few minor stains to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities with some wear to spine ends and corners, which are bumped, chipping to spine label. Some toning to text, occasional light foxing, brief early annotations in pencil to a few leaves. Ex-library. Location label to foot of spine, bookplate to front pastedown, small embossed stamp to title page. $500. * Only edition. Clapp paid a heavy price for his gradual rejection of Calvinist views and embrace of Unitarian principles. He spent seven stormy years at the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, affiliated with the Mississippi Presbytery, which finally convicted him of heresy in 1832. This record of his trial is preceded by a reprint of a sermon concerning the trial, "On the Subject of Religious Liberty," by William Ellery Channing, the foremost Unitarian preacher and theologian of the early nineteenth century. It warns of the evils of religion when it turns into "tyranny," as exemplified by the Mississippi Presbytery. Indeed, says the introduction, "no Presbytery in the United States ever before had the moral turpitude, the hardihood, the utter recklessness of justice, evinced by the Mississippi Presbytery" (xiv). OCLC locates 2 copies in North American law libraries (Harvard, Social Law). Jumonville, Bibliography of New Orleans Imprints 790.