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size over mankind. The deism of to ies why, then, cut off their legs; and also, is pitiful and ba e. As if sensible of its of eatin, the sacramental bread; well, ugliness, its face is always in a mask proceed, and pluck out their teeth, or Its approaches are insidious; its voice is rather fo low the custom of David's hypocritical; it is the twin siste of su- time and break their jawbone. Thi is perstition; a prostitute to priesteraft. strictly following up the no-reading pian, It is the father of the vile brood of i,no- because reading has been abused or rance, prejudice, bigot y, delusion, and rather regarded in a wrong liht. Compersecution. We have seen the monster mon sense is all the while forgotten, in various shapes and places, with all its which says, if a man read the bible foul retinue at its heels. We have heard without study, "let him study;" if he it hallooing and chee ing dogs in their read it wi hout understanding it, "let bloody onset on the noblest of ani- him read it till he does understand it;" mals, and men, as brutal as dogs, in if he mistake the end of reading, "let their attempts to acerate and maim, and him read on and he will row wiser." draw vital lood from, each other. We 3. That the Bible, if universally have heard it plead, as if i.fe depended read, would lead to “ nothing short of on it, for the eternity of neg.o-slavery, UNIVERSAL SCHISM," which is now with its bell, its whip, and its corturés. prevented only by ignorance, among the We have heard it blaspheming the name reader of the Bible, of its contents. A of peace, and shouting with diabolical good hint to bishops and priests. Let energy, WAR FOR EVER! meaning by them keep the people ignorant, or they that tremendous yell, not merely ili may not be able to foresee, much less to blood, and strife, hatred and contention, control the consequences. But is this but robbery and murder, the confiagra- writer serious? does he really mean to tion of peaceful unsuspecting cities, and affont the established religion of this the massacre of unarmed men, women country by representing that it is found and children. And having seen and ed in inorance, and ignorance, mind, of heard all this, ought we not to trace the the Bible; and that as soon as men be steps of the fiend, and admonish the come Bible-taught they cease to be good world to beware. churchmen? does he honestly intend the compliment to Methodists and Dissenters that they are such from reading the Bible, and that their being such, is the natural conseq ence of such reading? if so, let the church ook to him; if not so, let him, when he next feels disposed to write about the Bible, look to himself. The sight of Latin is as abominable to him, as the sight of a poor man reading his Bible, else we might say, ne autor, &c. but in plain English "very man to his calling."

The passage given above from obbett is in his u ual manner. It discovers a shrewd knowledge of human nature mixed with stupid prejudice; prejudices which the growing power of reason has, ere thi, exploded even from the lowest ranks of the army. It is a good Bext it does not require a man to be a parson to be able to preach from it.

The text says, 1. that the common people read the bible without understanding, and without saying it. Frue Hence, such ignorance, such error among the vulgar, who conceive religion to be a mystery, and the Bible to be pure.y the Priests' book.

4. The Bible is undeniably a book of MYSTERIES. So said Thomas Paine, only with his usual honesty, he spoke out, and made use of a word more expressive than that of "mysteries," namely "riddles."

But this is not

2. That they superstitiously imagine the reading of the Bible to be mentorius, a work of propitiation; in which undeniable;" it may be denied; it is Bespect the protestant poor are on the here denied. Mysteries the Bible taks same degraded level with Roman Ca- about, but it reveals them, or makes tholic. Another truth and a lamentable them clear; they are secrets which the one! the evi wants to be remedied; Bible tells. The Bibe is a book of how shall this be done? Take away their history, with inferences from that his Bibles, or which is the same thing tory called doctrines, or, commandinents. give them not the power of using them, A child may understand it; but the says Cobbett; but let him not stop here. child must have eyes, and not be like The common people make an equal some men, who pretend to see a long merit of walking to church on a Sunday; way, and who are at the same time,

wilfully, and it is to be feared, incurably blind. Mysteries, truly an objection to the Bible! why, it denounces some mysteries of iniquity, and even them it explains. For instance, it foretels that in the last days PERILOUS TIMEs shall come. The Weekly Register says, and seems to rejoice, that they are come. But the Bible shews what will bring on and constitute and aggravate, the peril of the times and its description must be perpetually present to the mind of every constant reader of Cobbett's Political Journal; such an agreement is there between the Bible and him! For men, says this mystery-explaining book, shall be BOASTERS, PROUD, WITHOUT NATURAL AFFECTION, TRUCE-BREAKERS, FALSE ACCUSERS, FIERCE, DESPISERS OF THOSE THAT ARE GOOD, TRAITORS, HEADY,

HIGH-MINDED.

would not lead them to place their happiness, where he places it, in merely animal pleasures It would not allow them to curse men, without knowing them, to extol them as soon as known, and then to curse them again when out of sight. It would not lead them to delight in brawling and quarrelling, cudgel-playing and bruising,cock-fighting, and bull-baiting. It would not domesticate them at the alehouse, and make them strangers at their own fire-sides. It would not carry them away from their work, over miles of country, to see the horrid spectacle (acted so often at Botley and the neighbourhood for the amu ement and instruction, it is supposed, of the author's children) of men in health and vigour beating each other over the head with clubs, the blood spouting out, fragments of flesh flying in every direction, and 5. "The Bible is a book for learned out of a dozen persons all except bistorians and profound thinkers to read. one, the conqueror, having their heads No doubt it is, for it knows no distinc- actually broken! Thus the Bible would tion of learning and the contrary, great not PROrir the poor; it would not talents and moderate ones. It puts all make them savages or brutes: and if men on the same level. But thou igno- these practices be manly, it would rant, thou impudent contemner of the in effect unman them. It would make Scriptures, who would'st insinuate, that them meek and quiet, and tendergreat learning and profound thinking are hearted. It would make them connecessary to the right understanding of stant, kind husbands; affectionate, the Bible, to the right understanding of attentive, fathers. It would impel the Proverbs of Solomon, the Psalms of them to regular industry, and make the David, our blessed Lord's Sermon on the mount, his Prayer, or the parable of the Prodigal Son. This writer has no doubt confounded the common prayer book with the Bible, and been ruminating in his "profound" reveries upon the thirty-nine Articles and the forged creed called after Athanasius. Learned bistorians. If this be not, as we suspect, that sort of vulgar language concerning intellectual superiority which has no definite idea attached to it; if it be not sound without sense, it amounts to this, that before a man reads history, he must be a complete historian, using the word in the author's low-lived sense, of one versed in history and not in the ordinary and true sense of historiographer, a writer of his tory. Profound thinkers These only are to read Sir Isaac Newton's Principles, Kant's Transcendental, and the Bible. And the Bible must be thought of before it is known; first understood and then learned.

6. The perusal of such a book as the B ble, would not profit the poor : certainly not in the author's sense of profit. It

yoke of labour light. It would inspire them with contentment, by shewing that all things are wisely arranged by the fatherly hand of the Almighty, that nothing is in itself evil, and that in the end all pains and privations will be made up to the patient and virtuous. It would make every interval from labour valuable, by filling it up with pleasing and useful employment. It would conse. crate the morning and sweeten the repose of night. It would lighten afflic tion, it would abolish the terrors of the grave. But what of this to the author of the P. R. if the man be a coward, if he dare not fight, or will not swear and curse! In the present times, the poor, who are the property of the country, are valuable only as they are ready to be turned into soldiers, and the whole of a soldier's business is, always and every where, to hate whomsoever he is told to hate, and to wound and tear and kill and slay, whomsoever he is told to destroy!

7. The Priest is the proper expounder of the Bible, and the Church is the on

ly place where religion ought to be
learned. Venerable principle! as old as
popery! and happily admitted implicitly
in Old England before Whiggism had
debauched the public mind! For this,
Cobbett, the clergy will pardon many,
if not all, of thy late sins: this, with
thy revilings of the republicans of the
other world, with thy bawlings for the
Sovereignty of the seas, with thy cry-
ings out for the demolition of Copen-
hagen, and thy loud protestings against
Peace, at any time and under any mi-
nister; these things will go nigh to
making thee a favourite with them;
and wouldst thou cease thy eulogiums
of Sir Francis, thy menaces about the
Funds, and thy insinuations about a
ebange, a great change, a radical change,
thou mightest regain thy perihelion of
glory, and be as in former days, the
days of thy now-forgotten favourite,
thy once-darling hero Pitt, be praised
and handed from glass to glass, quoted
and toasted at visitation dinners, and
episcopal and archiepiscopal feasts! The
PEOPLE, then, the unhappy people,
are not to think, not to talk about re-
ligion. They must read the bible
through churchmens' glasses. No mat-
ter what the knowledge, what the cha-
racter of any one of the 10,000 parish
priests in England and Wales, the sen-
tence of every one of them is oracu-
lar, the word of every one of them is
law; and the good people of this coun-
try are to believe precisely what they
say, and to punctually obey all that they
command. This is the doctrine of the
champion of liberty, of the spokesman
of the patriots of Westminster. It is
fitting that such a writer should vilify
MR. Fox. It was natural that such a
cherisher of the dying vermin of monks
and friars should have detested and
calumniated DR. PRIESTLEY. He is
the right man for a N. Popery minis-
tery; a properly qualified agent to
bring forward another Sacheverel, ano-
ther Tory, Oxford Doctor, who shall
make our pulpits resound with passive
obedience and non-resistance. But,
perhaps, after all, this is intended as
irony; and along with hints about
Church Lands may be designed to pave
the way for a proposal to the political
agitators of the day, to vote Priests
useless, and Bishops a nuisance. Such
a vote would not frighten us. Our on-
ly concern is to know how to under-

His se

stand the drift of this writer, that we
may not be taken unawares.
cret insinuations serve to explain, as they
are doubtless explained by, his avowed
doctrines. Some of the French philoso
phers, we remember, inculcated the
most lavish ecclesiastical principles,
till the opportunity arose of exploding
all religious principles as dastardly.
superstitions!

8. And lastly, (for the text though
not exhausted, is too disgusting to be
dwelt on longer than is necessary,)
A capacity of reading would not make
the poor more attentive or docile at
public worship. Not a capacity of read-
ing it is true; but this writer knovos
that that is not what is contended for,
but a babit of reading. A cudgel-play-
er, a brawler, an ale house frequenter,
may have the capacity of reading, aye,
of reading the bible; but what avails
it if he never improves it? Who ever
talked of the beneficial effects of a mere
capacity of working? while every one
knows and asserts the benefits of industry.
A capacity of reading is likely to beget
the habit; and will any man be hardy
enough to maintain, that he who is some-
what acquainted with written language,
will not listen with greater attention,
because with more understanding, to a
public discourse, than one who has
never contemplated the structure of a
single sentence; or that he who has al-
ready learned a little, will not be a bet-
ter scholar than he who has learned
nothing? Why is a man, who is of a
literary turn, more teachable and more
ready to learn than a peasant, or a
common soldie? Why, but because
he knows more? For knowledge, winch
consists in the opening of the eyes, and of
the ears, and of all the senses, naturally
tends to open them stil: wider; and
reading is the great source of know-
ledge.

This political Journalist is a curious instance of a person reading on purpose to find arguments for the inutility of reading; and truly, if reading led all men into his way of thinking, that statesman would deserve a statue to be erected to his memory, who should collect all the books that were ever writ ten, all the paper that was ever manufactured, and all the printing-pre-ses that were ever constructed, and make one joyful bonfire of them all. Around such a bonfire the familiars of the In

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DAVID RICHARDS, a young man, who was a member of the General Baptist congregation under the care of the Rev. Benjamin Philips of St Clear, has lately accepted an invitation from two Unitarian Baptist congregations, one in the town the other in the neighbour hood of Cardigan. to settle with them as their stated minister. In corsequence of this, there was a meeting of minister held there on the 5th of November. The service was begun by Mr. Evan Evans, with reading and prayer; after which Mr. William Thomas preached from 2 Tim. iv. 5; Mr. James David from 2 Cor. xiv 1. and Mr. Benjamin Philips from from 1 Thess. v. 15, who also concluded the meeting. This is the first Unitarian Baptist minister who, as such, has been called to the pastoral charge of a congregation in the princi pality. We understand that Mr. Philips has another young man of promising abilities in his society, for whom he is desirous of procuring some advantages of education for the ministry in the Baptist connexion.

James Fox, than whom he is more fore tunate, in this, that he is placed in a situ ation where he can carry his excellent principles into effect.

The Ministers and Messen ers of the Baptist Churches of North Cavolina having, at their late. Association, presented a congratulatory addres to Mr. Jeffer on, the President returned the following answer :

Wa bington June 24. 1807. "SIR-I have duly received the address signed by your elf on behalf of the ministers and me engers of the se veral Baptist Churche of the North Carolina Chowan Assoc ation. held at Salem, and I proffer my thanks for the favourabl sentiments which it expresses towards myself personally. The happiness which ou country enjoys in the pursuits of peace and industry ought to endear that country to all its citizens, and to kind e their hea ts with gratitude to the BEING under whose Providence these blessings are held We owe to bim especially, thanks for the right we enjoy te worship him, every one in his wn way, and that we have been singled ut, to prove by experience, the innocence of freedom in religious opini ns and exercises, the power of rea on to maintain itself against error, and the comfort of living under laws & bich assure us that, in these things, there is none ubo shall make us afraid."

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I am pe uiarly gratified by the confidence you express that no attempt will ever be made by me to violate the trust reposed in me by my fellow-citizens, or to endanger their happiness. In this confidence you shall never be disappointed. My heart never felt a wish friendly to the general good of my fellow-citizens.

Beo kind as to present my thanks to the Churches of your a sociation, and to as ure them of my prayers for the continuance of every blessing to them now and hereafter; and accept yourself my salutations and assurances of great respect and consideration.

LETTER OF MR. PRESIDENT JEFFERSON'S ON RELICIOUS LIBERTY.-America, by her example shames British intolerance. She is not only free, but she knows and prize her freedom. Her presen chief Magistrate, Mr Jefferson, is a truly great statesman, and the Father of his country. His leading views in government coincide THOMAS JEFFERSON. with those held by the late Charles Mr. George Outlaw.

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In

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Lectures on the Trusy Eminent English Poets. By Percival Stockdale. 2 vols. 8vo. with a Portrait of the Author. Il. Is.

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