GLAS'SITES, a religious sect, which sprung up in Scotland about 1730, when it's founder, John Glas, a native of AuclitermuchtY, in Fife, and minister of the parish of Tenting, near Dundee, was deposed by thet.leneral assembly of the church of Scotland, chiefly on account of views which he had adopted and published concerning the nature of the kingdom of Christ. In his Testimony of the King of Martyrs concerning his Kingdom, founded on the words of our Savior, recorded in John xviii. 36, 37, Mr. Glas maintained that all national establishments of religion are inconsistent with the true nature of the church of Christ, and was thus probably the first assertor of the voluntary principle in Scotland. He also advocated a system of church-government essentially independent or congregational. After his deposition by the general assembly, he became the pastor of a congregation. He died at Dundee in 1773. His worth and piety were acknowledged even by the most strenuous opponents of lii4 peculiar opinions. A number of small congregations or churches were soon formed on Glassite principles, not only in Scotland, but in England and America; but both in England and America, the name of a follower of Glas, Robert Sandeman, prevailed over his own, and the sect received the name of Sandemanians. Sandeman, a native of Pefth, is chiefly known from his advo cacy of certain views respecting the nature of saving faith, now commonly designated Sandemanian, essentially consisting in representing faith as "a bare belief of the bare truth," which belief, however, both Glas and Sandeman, with at least their immediate adherents, regarded as the fruit of divine grace and the work of the Holy Spirit. The
Glassites have. since the beginning of the 19th c., decreased in numbers. In 1851 there were only six Glassite churches in Scotland, none of which contained very many members; and at the same date only six Sandemanian churches existed in England. The Glassites maintain the necessity of a plurality of teaching elders in every church, but do not require any special education for this office or separation from secular employments; 'they hold a second marriage a disqualification for it; they deem it unlawful to join in prayer with any one who is not a brother or sister in Christ; they observe the Lord's supper weekly; they maintain or dinners between morning and afternoon services, at which it is incumbent on every member of the church Co be present; they are rigid in abstain ing from things strangled and from blood; and in general hold by the most literal inter pretation of other Scripture rules, as concerning the kiss of charity, and the washing of the feet of fellow-disciples; they disapprove of games of chance, and of all use of the lot except for sacred purposes. Their charity, both to their own poor and to the poor of other denominations, is said to be exemplary.