Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

These are the saints, these the meritorious works on which the catholic votaries trust. But now turn the tables, let protestants take the liberty of doing what St. Laurence did, and lo! all the cathedral shifts about like the weathercock on the top: Selfinterest is the pivot on which all turns. Old songs

But flattery could not make him show.
Nor punishment prevail to know

Who kept the church's pockets.

The martyr safe and sound sustains
The most excruciating pains :

And thus befools the emperor.

This deacon who supplied the poor
Gave his tormentors thanks moreo'er,

And came off more than conqueror.

The Governor then with rage ran mad,
And clapped him on a gridiron bed,

To roast him for his errors.

The martyr in an agony groans,

In hopes of those rewards and crowns

Promised to faithful soldiers.

St. Laurence (if tales be true) was deacon of the church at Rome in the reign of Decius, under the prefecture of Cornelius Secularis, and was put to death for refusing to give the emperor an account of the money intrusted with him by the church for the use of the poor. If every thing else was credible in this story; the first magistrate in Rome roasting a man on a gridiron (a kind of punishment unknown to the romans) passes all belief. Blessed be God, subscription to this, either as an article of truth, or as an article of peace, is not required now in England. Time was when it would have been heresy to have doubted it. The reason of some, and the rhyme of others, have long ago banished these absurdities.

are suspended or forgotten, new ones composed, and all the burly monks swell their cheeks to the tune of

Sublimi in cathedra

Apostlolorum sede,
Fulgida lampada

Tribus et linguas judicantia.*

Even protestants take the same method. And (without diving now into these mysteries of sophistry,) it may be truly said that all mankind plead rationally for an exemption from persecution themselves, and that the same reasons conclude with equal strength for other people.

As to the holy scriptures, the man who pretends to derive persecution from them offers such an insult on the nature of religion in general, on the doctrines and examples of Christ and his apostles

To expose these legendary lies all hands were aloft at the reformation: nor was even the gravity of the venerable John Fox the martyrologist ashamed to expose the dreams of the monks thus,

St. Dunstan's harp hard by a wall,
Fast on a pin did hang-a;

Without man's help, with lies and áll,
And of itself did twang-a.

Even the great Mr. Addison proposed to help forward the extirpation of popery, by putting upon the country girls fans, a concourse of people paying their respects to a rusty tenpenny nail.

* The meaning is, that those illustrious persons, who succeed the apostles in the government of the church, have the power of of judging all nations, languages and people.

in particular, on the common sense of the reader, and on the inspiration of the writers, that he deserves no reply. Indeed could it be proved that compel them to come in means any compulsion but that of evidence, it would be no hard matter to disprove the divinity, and destroy the authority of all the christian religion. It must be owned that many called deists are men of great learning and sense, but really nothing makes it so doubtful as the paltry way in which they attack the gospel. What signifies nibbling off the edges of a text with your criticisms Gentlemen? Take one, and the same truth is in an hundred more. What avails cavilling at the jagged edges of one poor period, which ought, you say, to be smooth and round? What good can you do by rumbling with rules of syntax? You may talk for ever about elucidation, and interpolation, and canons of interpretation. Alas! The people are prejudiced in favor of this religion, they think it a good one, and they are not frightened by all your learned labour. True, they no more examine this religion than they do your lucubrations; but however, now and then on a Sunday, when their cousins visit them, they hear their children read a scripture-lesson: Let all bitterness, and wrath, and clamour, and evil-speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And

be ye kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's-sake hath forgiven you. They do not practise this themselves indeed, but they wish the squire, and the parson, and the overseers would mind St. Paul:

They are sure times would be better if they did. Would you then lay the ar gentlemen to the root of the tree? Take a new method, prove that this religion teaches men to kill one another for conscience sake. Come, distil the redeemers doctrine, 'extract from his sermons faction, and passion, and rigour, and murder; expunge benevolence from his book, and persuasion from his lips; make Paul an inquisitor, and his master a pope, and then you will catch infidels by shoals. You won't angle, patiently angle as you do now, for now and then one disappointed scholar, your arguments will be popular, and will easily entangle all that have not eradicated the tender feelings of humanity. But if this cannot be done, if every boy that can read can discover that christianity establisheth liberty and love, one will chase a thousand of you, and two put ten thousand to flight. Persecuting chris-. tians caress religion as Delilah Samson, without knowing where its great strength lays.

If reason and scripture are against you, what says history? You may abridge the matter, and having surveyed the rise, the reign, and the ruin of persecution, you may briefly conclude that it is the greatest absurdity, the most egregious folly, the most preposterous crime that man ever inserted in his list of extravagancies. Did it ever answer the persecutor's end? Has it diminished the number of disputable points? Does it embellish the writings of its amanuensis? Are there not many errors that owe their being now wholly to their san

guinary prohibitions? If there be a piece of salutary advice deducible from history it is Let them alone, for if the device be human it will come to nought. Yes, heresy may address you in the language of Job, Are not my days few? Cease then and let me alone. I shall be carried from the womb to the grave, I shall go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness, and the shadow of death.

It may seem ungenerous to urge experience at this time of day, when nobody is hurt for conscience-sake. But let not so unkind an imputation be cast on hearts filled with unspotted loyalty, and profoundly devoted to the spirit of the present government. The truth is, the laws do not comport with the spirit of the legislators, and all that the late petitioners plead for, is to have the former harmonize with the latter.

An extensive acquaintance with the men authorizes the assertion, they are most conscientiously and intirely attached to the government. They are enthusiasts in praising his late majesty for declaring in Dr. Doddridge's case that he would not suf fer the shadow of persecution in his reign. They applaud in the highest strains the lenity of his present majesty, and all they want is the total extinction of those penal laws which the government never use, and declare they never will. Is he an enemy to the house who would exchange some old fashioned lumber, some rusty swords, and clumsey blunderbusses, for furniture in the modern taste? Government, like a house, is fabricate

df

« ZurückWeiter »