have lived too long, and have endured too many conflicts; my consciousness of desert is too well corroborated by the consenting regards of estimable men; to enable such persecutions, on such principles, even to pollute the current, much less to extinguish the source, my consolations.

of

In the mean time, I look forwards with enraptured anticipation to a removal of these unenlightened operations, these vexatious encroachments, of a mistaken policy, by those gentle triumphs of religion and philosophy, which will hereafter bind the whole creation in one indissoluble tie of benevolence and peace: when all attempts to eradicate opinions and produce conviction by oppressive force will be regarded as the very excess, not of injustice only, but of puerile delusion; as an extravagance no less disgraceful to humanity, than contradictory to common sense: and I now appeal, with entire confidence in the purity of my intentions and the intrinsic meritoriousness of my conduct, from rash and inapprehensive ignorance to the sober votaries of philosophy and letters; from the perturbed spirits of my delirious contemporaries to the unalarmed judgments of future generations; from the reversible formularies of transient judicatures to the unswerving tribunal of

"

changeless Truth; from the perishable dispensations of worldly polities to the constitutions of the everlasting Gospel; from the condemning sentence of frail and mistaken men, to the irrevocable decision of an absolving and applauding God.

THE

FIRST SATIRE OF JUVENAL

IMITATED.

1800.

STILL, still shall struggling SPLEEN repress her hand, This spawn of scribblers croaking through the land? See Chalmers urge with persevering page

To doubt and dulness a discerning age?

See Reeves enjoy his pension and applause,

Who Freedom libell'd, and provok'd her laws?

With unindignant apathy pass by

Of Antijacobins the filthy stye?

Wars, murders, their delight; not **'s more;
True priests of Moloch! gorg'd with human gore.
Their social Order, States in ruin hurl'd;

Their Law, CONFUSION stalking through the world:
Their Faith, to bid Good-will and Mercy cease,
And whoop War's hell-hounds at THE PRINCE OF
РЕАСЕ;

Raptur'd to view the ensanguin'd trophies nod
In frowns of horror o'er the shrine of GOD!

How plotting Priestley's grains of powder lie
To blow our Church in atoms to the sky;"

a During the debate in the House of Commons in 1787, on the Repeal of the Test Act, one of the present writers heard Sir William Dolben, Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford, quote the following passage, to which Mr. Wakefield alludes, from Dr. Priestley. " -the silent pro

How crafty Tooke and bawling Thelwall plann'd
To make one mighty Chaos of the land,

To whelm wealth, titles, in Rebellion's flood,

And drench the scaffold with their Sovereign's blood;
How Paine builds equal rights on equal birth
With equal commonage o'er parent Earth;

Not, through the paths of bliss our steps to lead,
The naked clothe, sick cherish, hungry feed;
But, Nero-like, one vast combustion raise

Of Law, Rank, Order; and enjoy the blaze:-
Those countless crimes, which Windham's tongue can

tell,

Of quitted felons, genuine imps of hell:

On such stale themes, to me far better known,
Than house, and wife, and all I name my own,

pagation of the truth will in the end prove efficacious. We are placing, as it were, grain by grain, a train of gunpowder, to which the match will one day be laid to blow up the fabric of error, which can never be again raised upon the same foundation."

The worthy Baronet now displayed his sagacity in detecting the design of the Philosopher, and, as in duty bound, alarmed the House by laying no common emphasis on every grain of the metaphorical combustible. Mr. Courtenay, whose pleasantry has so often relieved the tædium of parliamentary business, undertook to calm the apprehensions of the Representative of the University of Oxford, and reminded him that the deep design, whatever it might be, was only against "the fabric of error," and therefore Sir William must be satisfied that the Church of England could be in no danger.

This subject is treated with all suitable gravity by the late Dr. Geddes, in his "Epistola Macoronica," occasioned by a meeting of the Dissenters, in 1790, to procure the repeal of the Test Act.

Non aderas, Priestley! potior te cura tenebat.

Rure, ubi magna inter centum miracula rerum,
Horslæi caput in rutilantia fulmina forgis;
ulphuris e satagis subtilia grana parare,

Church quibus et churchmen, in cœlum upblowere possis.

Each yelping cur of lurcher placemen barks,
From Pitt and Grenville to their office-clerks.

I too was form'd by pædagogic rules,
Have travers'd all the classic lore of schools;
I too have commerc'd, many a silent hour,
With bard and sage in Academic bower;
Youth, Pleasure, slighted for the Muse's song;
I lov'd her early, and have lov'd her long:
Nor fear'd to brand with bold, indignant pen,
The friends of War as MURDERERS OF MEN.-
"Tis folly, nay, 'tis madness, to forbear!
Shall I that perishable paper spare,

From which e'en G....e his

gross rebukes may shower, Safe in the ermine of judicial pow'r?

Some Lord of Lincoln make his readers nod,
When he would " vindicate the ways of God,"
Reserving, grateful, his best nerve and wit,
To vindicate the PIETY of PITT?b

From which, good Wilberforce can prove, at least,
That PITT, on solemn fasts, abhors a feast;
Too blest! like Lincoln, could he dare to paint
His SABBATH-DUELLIST, a VITAL-SAINT? C

b"You must permit me, sir, to say, that I consider the Dedication of a Work designed to promote the knowledge of the SACRED SCRIPTURES as peculiarly appropriate to you, who have evinced yourself the zealous FRIEND OF RELIGION. But above all, I may state with inexpressible satisfaction, that under the influence of RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE, your conduct has afforded an eminent example of private as well as of public virtue."!!

See Dedication of the " ELEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY." "To the Right Honourable William Pitt, First Lord Commissioner of his Majesty's Treasury, &c. &c. &c." 1799.

· c Mr. Wilberforce, having lamented the notorious contempt of national