No. XXXI.

A LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND IN THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER, FOR SATURDAY, AUGUST 18, 1792. (See supra, p. 502.)

Quos JUPITER vult perdere, prius dementut.

WHOLE nations may become insane, planet-struck, as well as individuals. God Almighty often delivers up whole nations, as well as individuals, to the depravity and flagitiousness of their own vitiated feelings, the greatest calamity that can possibly befal them. Had the French exhibited on the stage of the world no other proof of their having lost their senses, and of their being under the immediate flagillation of Heaven; ('tis God, not man alone, that precipitates the torrent of disasters over France at the present tremendous moment;) had they given no other proof of their insanity but the late public deification of that abandoned, systematical, professional infidel, Voltaire, and the more recent panegyric on Dr. Priestley, of profane and blasphemous memory; the stupendous magnitude of this folly would have demonstrated and justified the propriety of taking out the statute against the whole body of the nation. Who ever made a panegyric on Judas, but Lucifer the father of darkness? What Roman ever praised Catiline, but his colleagues Lentulus and Cethegus? Who ever called the two incendiaries, Tyler and Straw, honest patriots, but Thomas Paine? Who ever thought John the Painter a worthy candidate for fame, but an English Jacobin ? Doubtless there is such a thing as decency, as propriety, as consistency of conduct: was it decent, was it acting like rational beings, to hold up two such callous, dogmatical profligates in opinion, as Voltaire and Priestley, as examples of excellence, as models of wisdom, as patterns to be followed? Why call the one Socrates, and the other Fenelon? Was not this most egregious prostitution of language, most flagrant abuse of words? Socrates and Fenelon were the shining ornaments, the bright luminaries of the age they lived in; they were public blessings; they were the great apostles of virtue, delegated by heaven to instruct and meliorate the world with the salubrious doctrines of truth. They preached nothing but goodness, and universal philanthropy; and were themselves illustrious examples of the important lessons they taught. But what doctrines do our modern philosophers preach? Why, they very gravely tell us, and with a confidence as if they really believed it, that revelation is nothing but a solemn imposture, that the gospel is a fable of the first magnitude, the Saviour a fantastic idol, a phantom of imagination; they maintain and prove it as clear as any proposition in Euclid, (if you will believe them,) that the soul is mortal, that the golden promises of religion are idle dreams, fantastic delusions, to catch weak, unenlightened minds.

These sanguine and laborious emissaries of darkness preach the black creed of infidelity with as much zeal and assiduity as the apostles preached the creed of salvation. The apostles were not more ardent to propagate and disseminate the great truths of Christianity, than these men are strenuous and indefatigable in their

endeavours to abolish them. But with this signal difference, reader; God evidently co-operated with the apostles in the first promulgation of the gospel, and demonstrated their divine mission by signs, wonders, and splendid miracles; but who co-operates with Voltaire and Priestley in their indefatigable efforts to abolish the gospel? Beyond a doubt the great enemy of mankind, the father of sin, is with them tooth and nail. They have likewise most strenuously combating in their cause the whole tribe of ancient and modern unbelievers, the great mass of Atheists, Freethinkers and Libertines existing in the world, the vast herd of recently corrupted and adulterated Socinians; add to these, the whole crew of modern philosophers and metaphysicians (the tarantulated Humes and Rousseaus of the day); all these militate against revelation, litigate the great truths of Christianity, with as much rancour and acrimony as Voltaire and Priestley. They have, moreover, most strenuously combating in their cause, vain presumption, impudent assertion, dogmatical opinion, licentious assumption, unblushing misquotation, wilful misrepresentations of authors; all these co-operate with Voltaire and Priestley in propagating the black creed of Infidelity. Will you praise these men then? Did they make a proper use of the talents God had so pre-eminently gifted them with? No; they prostituted their abilities to the most depraved and most flagitious purposes. They pointed, emulously pointed the great gun of their intellect, the whole artillery, the whole battery of their faculties against the very God who gave it them. They stretched every nerve of their souls to degrade and extirpate the great fundamental truths of religion; they laboured morning, noon, and night most anxiously to persuade the world to cease to be Christian, and once more to become Pagan, to relinquish revelation, and once more adopt the religion of nature. This par nobile fratrum, this indefatigable yoke of Infidels have practised every logical knavery, manoeuvred every subtle literary fraud. They have exhausted the whole proteusism (if we may so speak) of chicane and finesse, in endeavouring to explode and abolish the soothing doctrine of redemption, the grand panacea of the gospel, the only infallible antidote against the common unavoidable ills of life, the noblest cordial in the gift of heaven. This golden nostrum, my countrymen, revealed to you by our Saviour, these lettered bravoes, these fierce insulting Goliaths of argument, these wilful murderers of the repose of the world, want to rob you of. In order to accomplish their infernal purpose, they put the gospel upon the bed of Procrustes; if the text is too short, they lengthen it; if too long, they curtail it; if neither will answer the point, they boldly amputate, totally annihilate, and swear it is spurious. Are these men, then, blessings to the world? Are they of benefit to mankind? No! they are curses of the first magnitude; they are great national calamities, calamities more dreadful than nature's worst calamities, far worse than plague or earthquake; those only kill the body, the perishable part of man, but the doctrines of those men infallibly kill the soul, the immortal part of man, that is, they poison it and prepare it for everlasting perdition. Drink one drop of the Lethe of their creed, and you are lost for ever. You are transmuted-you are changed-you

instantly forget your God-you forget you are a man-you materialize the God, and you brutalize the man-you are lost to every honest glow of the heart, dead to every generous, manly sensation; in short, you are as literally a beast as if really touched with the wand Circean. To lump, accumulate, and concentre every curse in one, you are a Painist in your political, and a Priestleyan in your religious creed. Could heaven, in the plenitude of its ire, inflict a heavier punishment on you?

You, my countrymen, have avoided the rock the French have so miserably split on; you are you are so far from consecrating and embalming books of blasphemy and treason, as the French have done, that you have most signally, and most pointedly, expressed your abhorrence and detestation of both, in reprobating in the most public manner the works of the Paines and Priestleys of the age.— You have demonstrated to all Europe, with a blaze of loyalty almost unexampled in the annals of history, your love and attachment to your king and country. You have stood boldly forward in the face of the day, the strenuous champions of the noblest cause that ever warmed and animated the heart of man. You have demonstrated to all the world, in the most splendid manner, with an effusion of honest zeal that will do honour to your feelings to the latest posterity, that you will no longer suffer your constitution to be defamed, your religion to be blasphemed, nor your king to be calumniated by a gang of impostors, who impudently presume to call themselves Englishmen. Can that man be an Englishman who labours incessantly to destroy the civil and ecclesiastical establishment of the country? It is true, you have shewn most noble, most manly resentment, against the turbulent incendiaries of the times. But remember, my countrymen, Paine and Priestley still live; their works are not yet buried: one rotten sheep, they say, will pollute a whole flock; a little leaven will agitate and ferment a large mass; two turbulent, haranguing soldiers have been known to make a whole army mutiny. Beware of these men, my countrymen! One of them, in spite of the penal statute, will sell you blasphemy enough for two-pence to contaminate and blast a whole county; and the other treason enough for sixpence to convulse and dismember a whole kingdom. What then is to be done with the callous, hardened delinquents? What further marks of public detestation would you wish to fix on them? The Grand Jury of Middlesex, (as was observed in the letter preceding this,) presented the posthumous works of Bolingbroke as public nuisances. Why not then, my countrymen, present the works of Paine and Priestley as public nuisances? Are they not nuisances of the first magnitude, of the most dangerous tendency? Contain they not doctrines declaredly inimical to church and state; declaredly subversive of both? Present them, then, at the next grand inquest of the nation, at every county assize in the kingdom, and insist on their being burnt by the hands of the common hangman, in token of your abhorrence, boldly declaring to the world, as hath been observed before, that you will no longer suffer your constitution to be blackened and reviled, your God to be blasphemed, nor your King to be calumniated with impunity.

Cirencester.

CAUSIDICUS.

It is reported in Eusebius, "that the apostle St. John going one day into a public bath, saw Cerinthus there, one of the first opposers of the Divinity of the Saviour and depravers of the gospel. The apostle instantly retreated at the sight of so abandoned an infidel, with the strongest marks of abhorrence and indignation in his countenance." Dr. Johnson being on a visit to Pembroke College, Priestley's arrival was announced; the moment Johnson saw him enter, he retired with the greatest precipitation, impressed, no doubt, with the same ideas as the apostle at the sight of Cerinthus. On the above anecdotes the following lines are built :

John saw Cerinthus in the bath; he saw

The monster, and lo! instant did withdraw,

Dreading lest heaven should sudden vengeance send,
To crush the wretch who durst the Christ offend;
To crush the wretch who durst the Christ deny,
And God the Father in the Son defy.
Johnson saw Priestley, saw, and big with ire,
Behold! the good old man with speed retire;
Fearing, no doubt, some sad tremendous doom,
With such a rank blasphemer in the room.
Th' apostle and the sage both felt the same;
What honest Christian can their conduct blame?

No. XXXII.

CAUSIDICUS.

Copy of an Advertisement in the Birmingham Newspaper, relating to the Address to Dr. Priestley from the Philosophical Society at Derby, and an Answer by the Society.

(See supra, p. 503.) ADVERTISEMENT.

Derby, Oct. 3, 1791. AN Address to Dr. Priestley having been inserted in Mr. Pearson's paper, as agreed upon at a meeting of the Philosophical Society in Derby, September 3, 1781; it is thought expedient by some of the members who were not privy to the Address, who cannot approve of it, and who think it improper a few individuals should publish their own sentiments as those of the Society at large, to inform the public, that the same was agreed to and fabricated by only five members of the Society out of thirty-seven; and that in consequence thereof, at the General Annual Meeting, on Saturday, October 1st, the following resolution was agreed to: That in future no act of publicity shall be carried into effect, except at an annual meeting, or at a monthly one; a fortnight's previous notice being given of the business, to every member of the Society.

ANSWER.

SIR,-An advertisement, misrepresenting a transaction of the Philosophical Society at Derby, having been inserted in a late newspaper, it is judged proper to refute it by a statement of the following circumstances:

I. That all business of the Society, viz. the electing members, ordering in books, and enacting new laws and regulations, has been constantly, since the first institution of the Society, transacted at the monthly meetings.

II. That of thirty-seven members, thirteen only are resident in the town, and that the Address to Dr. Priestley was voted unanimously at a regular monthly meeting, at which was present the usual number of attending members, and that as it contained no reference to the Doctor's political opinions, and even recommended to him to decline those theological controversies which seem to have provoked the vengeance of his adversaries, it was conceived that no man of a liberal mind would object to the congratulating him on his escape from the violence of an enraged mob; and that there could be no member of a philosophical society who did not regret the demolition of his valuable laboratory and manuscripts; and on that presumption they judged it unnecessary to delay till another month, a measure which, from the relation in which Dr. Priestley stands to all philosophical societies, seemed peculiarly and immediately proper on the present occasion.

III. That at the half-yearly meeting on the 1st of October, Mr. Hope was the only person who expressed a disapprobation of the Address, declaring that his reason for doing it was his differing from Dr. Priestley in political sentiments, adding, that no man could respect the Doctor's religious and philosophical opinions more highly than himself.

IV. That, when the late proposition was made for giving a fortnight's notice previous to all public transactions of the Society, so far from being understood to be a censure on the Address, (as is very disingenuously insinuated in the advertisement referred to,) the gentleman who moved the proposition, prefaced it by declaring that he intended nothing less than a disapprobation of the measure; for so desirous was he of expressing his respect to Dr. Priestley as a philosopher, and his abhorrence of all persecution as a man, that he felt a singular mortification at having been precluded from signing the Address, by not having received previous information of such a circumstance being intended; and that on that account alone he was induced to propose a regulation for similar occasions which might occur in future.

The members of the Philosophical Society, resident in and near Derby, having been summoned to an extraordinary meeting, expressly to take into consideration the advertisement in the Derby newspaper, of which the Rev. Mr. Hope avowed himself to be the author,

It was Resolved unanimously, by ballot,

That the Rev. Mr. Hope having, in defiance of the resolution made at the last general meeting, committed an act of publicity, by printing in the Derby newspaper the resolution of the Society without its knowledge or consent, and having in his advertisement insidiously misrepresented an act of the Society, and Mr. Hope having been this day fully heard upon the subject, and not having explained his conduct to the satisfaction of the meeting: It is the opinion of this meeting, that he be desired to withdraw his name from the list of the Society.