The expences incurred in warehousing the property and in removing it were totally unnecessary and calculated only to deteriorate the property. I understand that the maxim of law and justice in making a seizure of this kind is, to raise the greatest sum of money possible upon the stock seized, for the benefit of all parties. All kinds of publications grow less valuable as they become stale, and many of those of mine which would have fetched a high price at the time of the seizure, will now only sell for waste paper. Go some morning to the Times Newspaper Office, and seize an impression of their paper, keep them a week only, and see then what you will get for them beyond their value in waste paper. And what I would ask would be the value of the stock of the most extensive publisher in London, if it were sold for waste paper?The Times paper mentioned, that the Chief Justice should say it would be necessary to have Mrs. Carlile before the Court to make any arrangement with either the money or stock. I can only consider this an errror of the reporter, as Mrs. Carlile has no authority whatever over it, in a legal point of view. Mr. Sheriff Rothwell has stepped into the mire, and I wish him well out of it, after I am satisfied. As the "Vice Society" is a secret one, I am ignorant whether you, Sir, are a member or not. From an old list which I have, and which was printed at the origin of the Society in 1802, I find Mr. Justice Bayley was then a member, and also William Morton Pitt, Esq. M. P. for this county, and a visiting magistrate for this goal, so that my judge was also my prosecutor, and after he had done with me, he took care to consign me into the hands of 4 priests and another of my prosecutors: Some of my jurymen might have been members too for what I know, for since this society has begun to incur the public odium, they have shrunk from publishing their names. I have already discovered a Whoring Bishop and a Brothel Keeper amongst them, and I have no doubt, but if their names were published, we should find all the filth of London amongst them. I could say a word or two of another, but I shall defer it for the present. If I can enter into a contract with you, Sir, for warming you with such publications as mine are, I shall be very happy to do it. I will do it on reasonable terms and a moderate profit. But I fear that you will be able to find Bibles at the pawnbroker's shops much cheaper than I can serve you, as printed lies are always to be purchased cheaper than printed truths. I never yet sent a sheet of my publications to sell for waste pa per, which is more than any other publisher in London ear Yours, with Good Humour, P. S. I wrote to the Solicitor of the Treasury, in December or January last, offering to pay my fine by instalments of 1501. per quarter if he would give up the stock seized, but I have heard nothing in answer. TO THE EDITOR OF THE REPUBLICAN. June 8, 1820. SIR, You, having been so much among angels of late in your progress through Genesis, induced me to send you these few remarks, on the difference in the belief of the term angel, between the Trinitarian and Unitarian Christians. There is not a term in all the Bible that has a more pretty embellishing sound than the term angel, nor a prettier embellishment to our churches, than the paintings which represent them. I know the Trinitarians believe them to be a sort of supernatural beings, and they are very necessary to support their scheme, especially, as they make their Jesus to be a God, and to come down from Heaven, to die for them, and then to have ascended to Heaven again ; so that we may suppose them a sort of celestial satellites to him. I have often seen in large Bibles, a picture of Jacob's ladder, with the angels descending, and ascending, and have noticed that they are always represented with wings, in the same manner as the paintings in the churches. Now, if they allowed them wings, why need they a ladder? it is only for the want of wings that we need a ladder. But the most puerile ideas on the subject of angels, are those of the late Bishop of Llandaff, in answer to Mr. Paine, on the Resurrection of Jesus.-He says, "The book of Matthew, you observe, goes on to say, Aud behold there was an earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from Heaven, and come and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it,' . . . . . . . from sitting on the outside he might have entered into the sepulchre, and another angel might have made his appearance; or, from the first there might have been two, one on the outside rolling away the stone, and the other within."- Here is another earthquake! (one having been mentioned at the Crucifixion,) it seems that earthquakes were as necessary to take Jesus out of the world, as dreams were to bring him into it ;-here we are likewise told, the angel, or angels, (for the bishop says there night have been two,) of the Lord descended from Heaven!-to do what?-to roll away the stone from the sepulchre. It is rather curious, that the angels of the Lord could not perform the office of a mason without the aid of an earthquake. It is a pity the bishop had not defined what these angels were, or, at least, he might have given. us his opinion respecting them. It is a pity none of these gentry pay us a visit in our day, that we might ascertain what sort of beings they are. But the Unitarians, and Freethinking Christians, (who call themselves rational Christians,) say, the term angel ought to be translated messenger, and that it only applies to human beings, and that there is nothing supernatural in the case. The writer of an essay, on Angels, in the Freethinking Christian's Magazine, has very curious, and I believe original ideas, about angels, but he says scripture bears him out in his opinion. He supposes that the persons of Enoch, Moses, Elijah, and others, are metamorphosed into angels, and again re-visit this earth; I will here give you a short extract from his essay ;-"The evidence of the real resurrection of Jesus, was his walking, conversing, eating, and drinking, with his disciples; and this is recorded as being decisive of the fact, (Acts, c. x. v. 41. ; 2 Tim. c. 2. v. 5.) And as these are proofs of the man Jesus having risen from the dead, why should not the appearances to Abraham, Gideon, Manoah, from the same evidences, be proved to be dead men raised to life, and acting as the messengers of God to man? Their actions prove them to have been superior to mortal men; but their whole appearance, and their strict performance of every human function, prove them to have been men, human beings, like Moses, Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus; beings, whose mortal bodies were not unclothed, but clothed upon, and whose mortality was swallowed up of life." I should like to ask this writer, (on his own scheme) who it was that was metamorphosed into the angel, that drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise, and guarded it with a flaming sword, when there is no account that any had previously died; it is worth remarking, to see what shifts men are putto in order to palliate and bolster up an absurdity, they have assented to, when they want it to support their scheme. I have often heard the doctrine of angels discussed at the Freethinking Christians Meeting-house, but never recollect their saying any thing about those that were at the resurrection of Jesus, as mentioned by Matthew, in the last chapter. The belief of the resurrection of Jesus, as a proof of their own resurrection, is the chief dogma of the Freethinking Christians, and this being the only account of the resurrection of Jesus, they are necessitated to agree with it, though the story about angels, (with the earthquakes) so ill accords with their notions of human beings, that I suppose they cannot reconcile them; for if they were only human beings, the following objections might be made to their hypothesis: If they were only human beings, or messengers, (for the bishop says there might have been two,) who, or what were they, or who sent them? If they were only human beings, what need there be an earthquake VOL. III. No. 10. to enable them to roll the stone from the sepulchre, seeing that Joseph did not have an earthquake to assist him in placing it on ?—I leave out the absurdity of human beings descending from Heaven, neither will I now enquire what or where is Heaven. I admit that human beings might have had white raiment on, but am totally at a loss to discover how their countenances could be like lightning. If they were only human beings, what sort of keepers must they have been to become "dead with fear," at the sight of some of their own species? St. Mark, calls it a young man ; Luke, says there were two; John, says there were two angels;—but angels or men, they seem to have excited only fear. If they were Enoch, Moses, Elijah, or any others that had previously died, why had they not made themselves known? as it would have been impossible for the then Jews to have known them: or, if they were deputed as messengers from Heaven, why not make that one message known? but no: they only came to roll away the stone (with the aid of an earthquake) from the sepulchre, and to tell the disciples, that Jesus had risen and would go before them into Galilee, the very same as Jesus is made to say himself in the 10 verses. It appears to me, that the persons who wrote the New Testament, had swallowed the account of angels, mentioned in the Old Testament; and that, if we find the multitude credulous enough to believe in their existence now, how can we wonder at the credulity of the people, when Christianity was first planted, for at that time they were ignorant enough to believe any thing. Brick Lane, Whitechapel. I am, Sir, with respect, T. R. BAYLEY POTTS, We insert the following letter, which is much out of date, because it was sent to the press for the 13 No. of the last volume, but the number being full without having room for it, it was set aside, for a cause before stated, and has been mislaid until the present; we beg leave to say, that we cannot in future afford any space in the Republican, for theological subjects, whilst the commentary on the Bible continues. We shall be happy to receive hints and ideas for our own instruction, EDITOR. TO THE EDITOR OF THE REPUBLICAN. MR. EDITOR,-According to the scheme of religion, founded on the Bible, it appears, that after the Jewish revelations had been ou earth above 4000 years, that Jehovah their God fell out with them, and determined to give another, not to the Jews alone, but to the whole world. This revelation was to be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, the founder of christianity, and according to the trinitarian scheme was God himself, who was to take the sins of, and to die for the whole world. The idea of a second revelation after a lapse of 4000 years, necessarily implies the inefficacy of the first, and destroys at once the prescience of the Jewish God. The Christians say, that Christianity is derived from the Jewish revelations, and that the Jewish prophets, had foretold the coming of this person, as the Messiah, but the Jews deny it, they rejected him; and still to this day expect their Messiah, or deliverer; had it been true, the Jews of all people on earth would have received him. But how, I would ask, could that be a true revelation to the Jews, when they all along expected a temporal prince, or a deliverer, and when Jesus Christ came he was a spiritual one? Suppose at any future time, the Jews should gain an ascendancy over the people, to whom they are now subject, and some great man should rise up among them, similar to what they say they expect from the predictions of their prophets, and once more establish them as a nation, would it not invalidate the story of Jesus Christ, and every circumstance connected with it, relative to his being the person predicted by the Jewish prophets in the bible? The Christians, however, from the time christianity was first planted, to the present, believe him to have been predicted by the Jewish prophets, for Dr. Rudge says "On the death of Moses, these written communications continued to be made, and a succession of prophets, from time to time was raised, to whom was intrusted by God the commission of adding the written word, of enforcing it by fresh sanctions and warnings, and of predicting distant and future events, and the trust committed to them, was discharged with exemplary zeal and fidelity, till the fuluess of time came, when the great prophet of God was manifest in the flesh,-then a fuller and more glorious dispensation was revealed in the will and counsels of Almighty God; and life and immortality, of which but a slight glimmering had been seen, and indistinct notions had heretofore been entertained, were brought to light on the publication of the gospel, and on the preaching of Christ." All this is indicative that the Jewish prophets had predicted the coming of Jesus Christ, as the Messiah, and that the first revelation to the Jews, was as I before stated, ineffective, for Dr. Rudge acknowledges that " a fuller and more glorious dispensation was then revealed;" so that the poor Jews, after enjoying their revelations, and being under the immediate superintendance and controul of their God for 4000 years, had still but "a slight glimmering," and "indistinct notions of life and immortality, which was brought to light ou the publication of the gospel, and preaching of Christ." Before Dr. |