The remainder of this volume is carried on under the head of "Conclusion," which is in a great measure a repetition and enlargement of the three propositions. There is one thing which has occurred to me in noticing this little work, and that is, that Mr. Soame Jenyns has not noticed or. mentioned the popular notion of hell, that essential in the Christian religion, that necessary companion to heaven. Hell is frequently noticed in the New Testament, and cannot fairly be omitted by any defender of the Christian religion as founded on that book, Mr. Soame Jenyns is not the man to make proselytes to the Christian religion. Christian converts are only to be made by terror, and not by persuasion or argument. (To be continued.) CHINESE CHRISTIAN, An Anecdote. This monstrous brute could be affable to none but his soldiers, with whom he would converse and carouse with great familiarity. He put the king of Ching-tu-fu of the metropolis of Se-chwn to death, though he was a prince of the last Chinese dynasty; and wherever he conquered he governed with such a tyrannic sway, that if any man committed a fault, though ever so small, he caused him and all the people that lived in the same place to be put to death. He caused 5000 eunuchs to be murdered, because one of them refused to give him the title of emperor. A little after, he caused double the number of literati, whom he pretended to consult about some affairs, to be likewise butchered, on pretence that they, by their sophistry and subtleties, stirred up the people to rebel. Being about to depart from Chingtu-fu, he ordered all the inhabitants to be led out of the city in chains, and to be massacred in the fields, to the number of 60,000, and did not leave that province till he had burnt its capital, and several other considrable cities. He was no less cruel to his own troops, ordering them to kill their wives because they were an incumbrance in time of war, and set the example by cutting the throats of 300 of his own, reserving only 20 to wait on the 3 queens. As he pretended to be a great friend to Christianity, he boasted to some of the missionaries that he had destroyed 20,000 Bonzes, on account of one of that order having raised a persecution against them, telling some of those fathers, that the Lord of heaven had sent him to punish those miscreants, who had intended to take away their lives. The same author adds, that he professed such a veneration for the law of Christ, that he promised, when he came to be Emperor, to erect a magnificent temple to God, for this he hath been represented by a late ingenious writer as a person of Jewish extraction, for claiming a commission from God for all the murders and villainies which he committed. LETTER TO THE PROSECUTORS OF RICHARD CARLILE. The common law is praised for its antiquity. How far this quality adds to its credit on this occasion may be learned by the knowledge, that when Constantine made Christianity a state appendage, bishops were prominent agents of royalty-that in our own country the bishop presided with the sheriff in the county courts, and that churchmen were frequently supreme judges in Westminster Hall. Thus we see why extra Christianity became, by common law, part of the law of the land. And mark, I pray you, the kindly nature of this common law; it was so ductile in the hands of power, that it was wise and salutary alike when acting for Papists, or for Protestants, or for Puritans. It killed to day in God's name, and divinely avenged by murder the assassination of yesterday. The common law was a great enemy to witches and sorcerers, and long after the reformation many witches were burned by its authority, and we should continue-not to burn them, but to prosecute them, and imprison them, and fine them, if any order in the state were to receive stipends in furtherance of that faith. Witchery has been withdrawn tardidly from our murderous code by a statute. The higher the antiquity of the common law in respect to supernatural sanctions is carried, the more intensely are ignorance and barbarity brought against civi lized society and the improvements of science. This common law, which originated when the bible was locked up in unknown languages more effectually to prevent all enquiry, is now employed to stifle also inquiry, and the same reason is given now as formerly-the good of the ig norant, the benefit of the people. Sir R. Gifford says, such productions cannot affect the divinity of religion, cannot undermine the religious principles of reasonable thinking men, but they may (he said) lessen the faith and undermine the principles of those who have not leisure, or are unwilling to dive into the evidences of Christianity, and particularly that part of the community to whom religion is of the utmost importance, not only for their temporal, but their eternal welfare: I mean the common people. It was for their protection that the prosecution was instituted, to preserve their morals, &c. Wonderful affection! Ministers regard the morals of the people! witness the lotteries, the gin-shops, ale-houses. Ministers regard the temporal welfare of the people. Aye, and exemplify their kindness by the corn laws, and the last three millions imposed on the necessaries of life. Sir R. Gifford, if you and your employers love the people if you regard religion and morality, and would have them believed and practised, you must pursue a different course. The people, your beloved people, care little for arguments about mysteries, they are prone to credulity, they think little of Moses and Mahomet, but they begin to think that religion and morality cannot influence very powerfully stipendiary lawyers, who argue vehemently on either side for a guinea--particularly him who was a whig and became a tory, who was a unitarian and became they know not what. The people do not dive into mysteries truly, but they feel that while their wages have lessened, the salaries of ministers, and princes have increased. They hear that religion requires special kindness to the pooryet the ministers of that religion exact a pittance from the destitute; these very men who declare at consecration to the higher offices that they are called to the ministry by the holy ghost to preach a religion not of this world, are notoriously worldly, time-serving, ambitious, insatiable, greedy as the grave, and so negligent of their duty, that considerably more than half of the benificed clergy in England are strangers to their charge. These are the practical arguments against the truth of religion which affect the people, which deprave their morals and infect them pestilentially. The people feel that the system is a cheat, a combination to rob them under various pretences secular and episcopal of their liberties, and the fruits of their industry. The London clergy subscribed and promoted the distribution of bibles, psalters, &c. but they petitioned for an increase of salary, and who on the disclosure of these griping pluralists, could doubt their intention in distributing bibles; it had no source but selfishness, and sordidness, and imposture. This is the evil; not Paine's or Palmer's tracts. There are no prosecutions in France against Mirabaud, nor Volney, nor Parny, nor their publishers, nor, as I have said, in America; Paine and Palmer have been repeatedly published in the United States, and yet the crime committed in England equals and exceeds all those committed in both France and America. The more that these productions are investigated, the more perverse they will appear, as many of the leading men who sanction them also authorize attempts against the religions of other countries-but then christianity is so moralizing and yet the Rev. James Bryce in a sermon preached in Calcutta, March 1818, says, “I appeal to every one who hears me, if the christianized Hindu is not a term of reproach alike with the native and European population of the country." These insidious attempts against national creeds by men who will not admit reasoning against the state religion in England, are excessive and prodigious, The Esquimaux are to be christianized; and the Quarterly Review cannot refrain from mentioning, that "Saccheous who said Elephant more sense me,' was unaffectedly pious, and being early instructed in the christian faith, continued to derive support and consolation from this source to the last hour of his life." Hindoos, Esquimaux, Chinese, are to be christianized-their language has been studied principally for that purpose, and missionaries hang on the frontiers of the Chinese empire to obtrude their books and smuggle these opinions into that country, contrary to the decrees of a legitimate monarch. Yet these same persons prosecute for what they call crimes against the national religion, while they establish treasuries, educate professors of languages, hire apostles to unsettle the faith of a people incomparably superior to their own in numbers if not in virtue, and these fanatics rage against all others of a dif ferent persuasion from themselves for wishing to promul gate their opinions at home; for they alone must be right, and should monopolize all zeal and all sincerity. We come now to the immediate result of these prosecutions, a verdict has been gained for the crown,—that is, the judge told the jury that the truth of religion is not to be questioned by common law, and they believed him as he believed it, and Carlile was found guilty. What then ! the verdict in no way directly or indirectly proves or presumed to prove the truth of the subject in debate. The court awards it, and the law doth give it.' But thus the prosecution does prove that a million conferred on religion to build new churches, that 100,000 granted annually to the poorer clergy by parliament, that fifty thousand bishops, priests, or deacons, who receive millions by tithes, &c. no, nor the dispersion of milHons of bibles and religious tracts, are sufficient to defend the establishment against Painc. and Palmer, and Carli'cs nay, that the word of God revealed miraculously, and upheld by standing miracles, so they say, is menaced by one' who was a staymaker, by a second who dictated in blindness, by a third who is a printer and publisher. They are these men whom you pity, despise, and traduce, mightier in a court of law than Satan and all his host in Milton's poetry. You consider them at once pigmies and giants, and while you hold them lower then reptiles, you, by talking of dissolution of society in consequence of these preductions, recal the memory of the mighty who threatens with the centre to confound the poles. Go on, let silence reign, consecrate the sins of the clergy, and continue to substitute the common law for common sense. By these achievements you shall not learn the march of the public mind, nor the means of accommodating antiquated institations to the progressive improvement of opinions, till you are overwhelmed. It is the fate of all your tribe, for infatuation precedes perdition. Dublin, Oct. 26. 1819. SEMPER IDEM. TO THE EDITOR, OF THE REPUBLICAN. SIR, You will I doubt not favour me, by inserting the following reference to a work now in the press, and which will be ready for delivery on the 15th instant, entitled, AN APOLOGY, FOR DEISM Or A REFUTATION OF MODERN 142, Fetter-Lane. Printed and Published by T. Davison, 10, Duke-street, Smithfield. |