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the last day of preaching at the meeting-house, the minister went with the tenant of the house, to the churchwarden, in order to endeavour to repossess themselves of the house; when the churchwarden told them that there should be no preaching there, and that murder would be committed if it were ever attempted again. The next was William Moore, a farmer in the neighbourhood, who encouraged the mob by cries of "burn them;" and was the person who threatened a pressgang. The next was John Culpeck, a shoemaker, living next door to the meeting-house, who wore a cockade, who was the performer upon the gong, and the person who cried from the window of the meeting-house, " a Pogram," &c. The next two were James She!drake and William Gurling, who entered the meeting-house, and being afterwards taken by the constables in the act of rioting, effected their escape, with the assistance of William Benton and Charles Bunn, who were the next two moved against; but as a bill of indictment had been found against these first two for the disturbance, though not for the conspiracy, their names were, at the recommendation of the court, struck out. Benton was a wheelwright, who disguised himself as a butcher: he struck at the meeting-house door, and offered to fight the constables. Bunn (yeoman) followed one of the ministers on the road, and assaulted him, shouting "No Pogram." Edmund Hewitt, who was the next, assisted in the rescue and disturbance. The next two were Tuffield and Clow, who came into the meeting-house with the insignia of the riot, bearing with them a basket of stinking sprats, which they threw over the congregation. The last was William Cooke (yeoman), who struck the constable, and assisted in Sheldrake and Gurling's rescue by knocking him down.

The court granted a rule to shew cause against the following six per

sons, who had assisted in the dis turbance, and against whom no proceedings were depending, viz

Churchyard, Benton, Garrard William Hewitt, Culpeck, Tuffield, and Clow.

Mr. Garrow made it understood to the court, that there had been attempts to proceed in the ordinary course of justice, by indictment, against all these persons, but the grand jury had thrown out the bills.

Since the violent opposition to the early Methodists, I do not recollect that a tumult connected with religion, in any degree so systematically and perseveringly conducted as the above, has been heard of throughout the empire. You may indeed remind me of the riots in 1780. I look upon them, however, and upon some subsequent disturbances, as having been the consequences of a politico-religious question, first agitated among men in power, and then brought down to the concep tions of the vulgar, in the shape of watchwords, and popular aphorisms, (which, in all great convulsions, are expressly made for the occasion, and are well known-Mirabeau would support me-to be most potent engines of sedition), and issuing in acts of sensuality and cruelty. Such acts are perpetrated in any insurrection whatever, when the passions of the populace get the better of their fears; no matter whether they cry No Popery, or No Pograms.

In the Suffolk case, as in most cases, which in my judgment, with some correctness, come now under the description of persecution, the object of resentment is an individual, or individuals, personally known to the assailant; whose enmity is excited by actually seeing and hearing the man who exhorts him to forsake a wicked life. As he hates the light which shews him his own character, he hates the bearer of the light. Hatred soon kindles into practical revenge, and is specifically directed against the supposed injurer. Now

whatever insults and formal acts of resentment follow, solely from this feeling of hatred, I deem to be properly persecution, and nothing better.

As far as we are yet informed, the proceedings in Suffolk certainly were of a peculiarly offensive character. That a mob, consisting of from one to three thousand, regy. larly organized, led on by men in masquerade, encouraged by the gratuitous distribution of bread, supported by promises of pecuniary aid at a vestry, inflamed even to acts of house-breaking,-all this for three months—and finally receiving the virtual countenance of a grand jury;-that such an elaborate and steady course of opposition to a religious society, under the protection of the law, should be pursued, is really astonishing. When the matter is farther investigated, I have o doubt but that the delinquents, in case of their being unable to meet so serious a charge, will be convinced, that the laws of this country are eminently favourable to religious liberty, and are designed to cut off from ill-disposed men the opportunity of offending.

With regard to myself, I feel a peculiar degree of interest in the reult of the trial, on account of having pleaded, in my last paper, that, in the present state of the world, "there is properly no persecution." Should, however, the clients of Mr. Garrow prove their point, and should the court refuse their protection I am supposing the very worst-my plea must be reversed. On the contrary, should the court grant their protection, and punish the defendauts, the sentiments I have advanced will be strengthened. The matter may be decided before this address reaches its destination. Whatever the decision be, it may be advisable to record the above report in your valuable miscellany; as a striking instance of the energy and perseverance with which the human mind opposes a fact, or a person, connected with the expostulations of a ter

rified conscience, and which our abject nature hates in exact proportion to the advantages we might otherwise receive.

TUUM EST.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. I UNDERSTAND that Mr. Faber thinks the subversion of Popery will synchronize with the downfall of Mohammedanism; and that when he discerns the evident approach of the latter event, he will be able to ascertain certain dates most intimately connected with the general fulfilment of prophecy. He also expects that Mohammedanism will sink gradually.

The Wahabees entered Mecca on the 27th of April, 1803; levelled eighty of the tombs belonging to the descendants of Mohammed, and the tomb also of his wife Kadiza ; plundered the holy places; but left the Caaba. Mecca, however, was afterwards repossessed by its sherriffe. In 1804, Medina, the second city in Arabia, was taken by the Wahabees; who plundered all the treasures, which had been accumulating there for ages, by the contributions of the faithful. The tomb of the prophet himself was destroyed. The Arabs will soon be united under one master. Arabia is for ever lost to the Sultaun; who, consequently, is no longer head of the Mohammedan religion. Месса cannot again be visited by pilgrims, according to the order of the Prophet. The mighty fabric of Islamism must be considered as having passed away when Suad entered Mecca in 1803.

The facts and inferences in the above paragraph, are taken from the second volume of Lord Valentia's Travels. There is some inconsistency in what the noble authors says aftewards; namely, that he met some pilgrims on their road to Mecca. This perhaps may be explained.

I have nothing farther to add

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160

Farmer Blunt's Caution to Religious Magazines.

except a wish, that Mr. Faber, or any other competent investigator of the difficulties of prophecy, would compare with them these facts and inferences; and, with your permission, oblige your readers with the result.

[MARCH,

duty to watch more particularly the publications on these subjects, proceeding from what is called the religious world, and to warn that class of our timid, but often wellmeaning countrymen, in the esta blished church and amongst the OROZO. various denominations of dissenters, who are too apt to resign their judgments to the direction of priests, or to men of a priestly disposition, against the fatal errors,--that an indifference to the rights given them by the great Creator, and confirmed to them by the constitution of their country, is to be considered a mark of vital Christianity,---that servility, corruption, bribery, the love of war, pillage, conflagration, and wholesale massacre, are to be apologised for, under the wretched pretence that our common parent has created us all radically, and to the heart's core, utterly vitiated; and that an iudulgence of public vices at least, may be allowed, pleaded for, and covered, under the cloak of an evangelical profession."

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. VERILY, Mr. Observer, I wish that you and your brother reviewers would keep a sharp look out after your publishers, and not allow them to undo on the outside of your works all the good you are so laudably trying to do within. Your publisher, I grant, is more discreet in this way than many of his brethren; but I sometimes catch him inserting an advertisement in the blue cover of your work, which is not quite the thing. However, as I said before, he is so comparatively innocent in this respect, that I have very little fault to find with him. He never inserts any thing about Dr. Solomon, or the lottery. But there is another religious publication, which I forbear to name: what does the publisher do this month, but stitch at the end of it Ben Flower's Address to the Pub. lic, in recommendation of his "Political Review and Monthly Miscellany." Lest this address should have escaped your notice, I send it you, having indignantly torn it out of the place where the publisher had stitched it, inadvertently I hope, and not as a substitute for the Address of his employers. That your readers may not think my displeasure to have been misplaced, I beg you will favour them with the following specimens: The parliamentary debates, unhappily, on account of the low estimation in which the public characters of the majority of the debaters in administration and opposition are held by the public, exciting, comparatively speaking, but little interest, will therefore be discontinued." Again: "We frankly inform our readers, that we shall deem it an im-nt part of our

And again: "Such is the state of degeneracy, in which the majority of all parties in the state and in the church appear to be sunk, that we have very slender hopes that peace able reformation will be the happy lot of this country."

I am a plain man, and do not well understand how such mischiev ous trash can be even indirectly propagated by any one, much more by a work, which challenges to be beneficially committed into the hands of youth, and which the wise and good are to recommend without scruple.

My advice to you reviewers, Mr. Observer, is to look to your outposts as well as to your citadel. For be your citadel ever so well guarded at present, if you suffer your out-posts to be quietly occupied by the enemy, your citadel too will soon be in his possession.

Feb. 15, 1811.

FARMER BLUNT.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer,

By one of the articles in the treaty lately concluded with the court of Brazils, it is stipulated both that the Portugueze slave trade shall be confined within narrow limits, and that the Inquisition shall be abolished at Goa, and shall not be established in the Brazils. The benefits arising to the cause of humanity from any limitation of the slave trade are now, perhaps, well understood and properly appreciated in this country. I question, however, whether the British public are sufficiently aware of the triumph which the same cause has obtained by the annihilation of the power of the Inquisition in both the Indies. I have been induced, sir, by a desire of impressing this point more strongly on the minds of your readers, to transmit to you for insertion an authentic account of an Auto-da-Fè, taken from Fox's Book of Martyrs, and to which I understand there have been several shocking parallels at Goa, even since that place has been under our protection, and garrisoned by our troops.

"The officers of the Inquisition, preceded by trumpets, kettle-drums, and their banner, marched on the 30th of May, in cavalcade, to the palace of the Great Square, where they declared by proclamation, that on the 30th of June the sentence of the prisoners would be put in execution.

"Now there had not been a spectacle of this kind at Madrid for several years before, for which reason it was expected by the inhabitants with as much impatience as a day of the greatest festivity and triumph. "When the day appointed arrived, a prodigious number of people appeared dressed as splendidly as their respective circumstances would admit. In the Great Square was raised a high scaffold; and thither, from seven in the morning till the evening, were brought criminals CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 111.

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of both sexes;-all the inquisitions in the kingdom send their prisoners to Madrid.

Twenty men and women out of these prisoners, with one renegado Mahometan, were ordered to be burned: fifty Jews and Jewesses, having never before been imprisoned, and repenting of their crimes, were sentenced to a long confinement, and to wear a yellow cap; and ten others, indicted for bigamy, witchcraft, and other crimes, were sentenced to be whipped and to be sent to the galleys. These last wore large pasteboard caps, with inscriptions on them, having a halter about their necks, and torches in their hands.

"On this solemn occasion, the whole court of Spain was present. The grand inquisitor's chair was placed in a sort of tribunal far above that of the king. The nobles here acted the part of the sheriff's officers in England, leading such criminals as were to be burned, and holding them when fast bound with thick cords; the rest of the criminals were conducted by the familiars of the inquisition."

The account of the Mass follows, with the reading of the sentence of condemnation.

"Next followed the burning of the twenty-one men and women, whose intrepidity in suffering that horrid death was truly astonishing. Some thrust their hands and feet into the flames with the most dauntless fortitude; and all of them yielded to their fate, with such resolution, that many of the amazed spectators lamented that such heroic souls had not been more enlightened."

It was by proceedings similar to that which has now been detailed, that the Inquisition at Goa forced a large proportion of the Syrian Christians, on the Malabar coast, to conform to the church of Rome, and the remainder to seek a refuge for their faith the fastnesses of the mountains and in the comparatively

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THE BREVITY OF LIFE.
Swift as an arrow cats its way
Through the soft-yielding air;
Or as the sun's more subtle ray,
Or lightning's sudden glare;
Or as an eagle to the prey,

Or shuttle through the loom;
So haste our fleeting lives away,

So rush we to the tomb.

Like airy bubbles, lo! we rise,

And dance upon life's stream;
Till soon the air that caus'd, destroys
Th' attenuated frame.

Down the swift stream we glide apace,
And carry death within;

Then break, and scarcely leave a trace
To shew that we have been.

The man, the wisest of our kind,

Who length of days had seen;
To birth, and death, a time assigu'd,
But none to life between.
Yet, lo! what consequences close

This transient state below;
Eternal joys, or, missing those,
Interminable woe.

PSALM CXXXVII. PARAPHRASED.
By Babel's streams we sat and wept,

For Zion's woes our hearts did rend:
Our harps, in tune no longer kept,

Upon the willows we suspend.
For there our foes insult us still,

And, taunting, aggravate our wrongs:
"Captives, display your boasted skill;
Come, sing us one of Zion's songs."
The songs of Zion are the Lord's,

And his are all the notes we raise;
We will hot touch the tuneful chords
Till we can sound them in his praise.
While Zion lies in ruin still,

Dare we her dear remembrance leave?
No, first these hands shall lose their skill,

These tongues shall to our palates cleave.
Remember, Lord, how Edom's sons
Proudly contemn'd us in our woes,
Triumph'd o'er Zion's scatter'd stones,
And urg'd to rage her cruel foes.
But God will Babylon destroy,

Her righteous doom shall none retard:
And happy he who sees the day,

When she shall meet her due reward.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

IRELAND'S Paganism and Christia-
nity compared.
(Concluded from p. 117.)
HAVING, in a former article, disposed
of the first subject of inquiry in these
Lectures, we proceed to examine
that which occupies the second part
of them, and which discusses the
still more important question; whe-
ther the deities, who were unable to
bestow temporal prosperity on their
votaries, were the dispensers of hap.
piness in a future states whether the
soul of man was the object of their

care, though his bodily protection might be beneath their dignity, or beyond their capacity.

The fears of St. Augustin, when taking an early view of this subject, in his celebrated work" de Civitate Dei," seem to have led him to apprehend, that the refutation of these latter and more aspiring claims of human wisdom would prove the most difficult part of his task. We' shall be convinced, however, says Dr. Ireland, by an easier inquiry than was suggested by the apprehensions of the pious and learned

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