with a persuasion it was lasting; and now, when a few days would be worth a hecatomb of worlds, I cannot flatter myself with a prospect of half a dozen hours. "How despicable is that man who never prays to his God, but in the time of his distress! In what manner can he supplicate that Omnipotent Being in his affliction with reverence, whom, in the tide of his prosperity, he never remembered with dread! Do not brand me with infidelity, when I tell you I am almost ashamed to offer up my petitions to the throne of grace; or of imploring that divine mercy in the next world, which I have so scandalously abused in this. Shall ingratitude to man be looked on as the blackest of crimes, and not ingratitude to God? Shall an insult offered to the king be looked on in the most offensive light; and yet no notice taken when the King of kings is treated with indignity and disrespect? "The companions of my former libertinism would scarcely believe their eyes, were you to shew them this epistle. They would laugh at me as a dreaming enthusiast, or pity me as a timorous wretch, who was shocked at the appearance of futurity. They are more entitled to my pity than my resentment. A future state may very well strike terror into any man who has not acted well in this life; and he must have an uncommon share of courage indeed, who does not shrink at the presence of God. "You see, my dear Doctor, the apprehensions of death will soon bring the most profligate to a proper use of their understanding. I am haunted by remorse, despised by my acquaintance, and, I fear, forsaken by my God. There is nothing so dangerous, my dear Doctor, as extraordinary abilities. I cannot be accused of vanity now, by being sensible that I was once possessed of uncommon qualifications; as I sincerely regret that I was ever blest with any at all My rank in life still made these accomplishments more conspicuous; and, fascinated with the general applause which they procured, I never considered about the proper means by which they should be displayed. Hence, to purchase a smile from a blockhead, whom I despised, I have frequently treated the virtuous with disrespect; and sported with the holy name of heaven, to obtain a laugh from a parcel of fools, who were entitled to nothing but my contempt. "Your men of wit, my dear Doctor, look on themselves as discharged from the duties of religion; and confine the doctrines of the Gospel to people of meaner understandings; and look on that man to be of a narrow genius who studies to be good. What a pity that the holy writings are not made the criterion of true judgment! Favour me, my dear doctor, with a visit as soon as possible. Writing to you gives me some ease. I am of opinion, this is the last visit I shall ever solicit from you. My distemper is powerful. Come and pray for the departing spirit of the unhappy-BUCKINGHAM." COLLECTANEA. THE ST. SIMONIANS.-Some interest has been excited in France, by a Government prosecution of this Society. At the assizes of the Seine on Monday, the 27th of August, Propser Enfantin, a very fine look ing man, the father of the Society, and four others, named Chevalier, Rodrigues, Barrault, and Duveyrier, were charged with having formed an association of more than twenty persons for religious and political objects; and for having published doctrines respecting women of a highly immoral tendency. The four last prisoners defended the principles of the society. Father Enfantin said, that, as he was charged with broaching doctrines of an immoral tendency, he should wish for two women chosen from the family to defend him. They could best speak to the nature of his doctrines. This request was refused by the Court. The father then defended his doctrines relative to woman, who, he said, ought to be free and unbound by any such ties as marriage. He said the enfranchisement of woman occupied all his thoughts. The Saviour had come into the world to save all mankind, but woman was still excluded from the temple, and the St. Simonians would cause them to be admitted, for the moral and intellectual powers of the woman were equal to those of the man. He appealed to the Female Messiah who would come to release woman from slavery and prostitution, and declared that he believed himself to be the precursor of that Messiah as St. John was of Christ. The Jury found the defendants guilty. The Court condemned Enfantin, Duveyrier, and Chevalier to one year's imprisonment, and a fine of 1000 frs.; but sentenced Rodrigues and Barrault only to pay a fine of 50frs. each. The Court also decreed the dissolution of the St. Simonian association. Father Enfantin heard the sentence with great calmness, and entreated "his sons," or disciples, to support with silent resignation and courage this new persecution. STATES OF THE CHURCH-ITALY.-The territories which are at this day immediately subject to the temporal dominion of the Roman Pontiff, have grown into shape, chiefly out of the pious fears or gratitude of his predecessors' princely servitors. Pepin, King of France, having found a ready tool in Pope Stephen the Second, as a reward for his subserviency recognized the prerogative of the Bishop of Rome to expound the Divine will in the distribution of temporal crowns. This was the germ of that temporal authority, to which subsequent Popes laid such lofty claims. After Astolphus' overthrow, in 754, the same monarch bestowed the Exarchate of Ravenna upon his spiritual ally; and his successor, Charlemagne, followed the example by adding Perugia and Spoleto to this donative. Three centuries afterwards, the dukedom of Benevento was presented to the See of Rome by Henry the Third, Emperor of Germany; and its acquisitions were again enriched in the twelfth century, by Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, who made a free-will offering to the celebrated Hildebrand of that portion of the States of the Church, which is denominated the "Patrimony of St. Peter." In 1532, Lewis of Gonzaga acquired by conquest, as leader of Clement the Seventh's forces, the Mark of Ancona and shortly after this, the election of Julius the Second added the dukedom of Urbino to the papal dominions; that dukedom having fallen to him as a family inheritance. The victorious arms of subsequent pontiffs incorporated Orvieto, the dukedom of Castro, and the earldom of Romiglione with the territories of the See of Rome. As a member of the confederacy against revolutionary France, the vengeance of her government fell heavily on Pius' head, in 1796, when his States were converted into a republic. The new order of things did not, however, survive the evacuation of his dominions by the invader; upon whose departure, he was reinstated: and he preserved his temporalities until the year 1808, when Napoleon incorporated them with the kingdom of Italy. Two years afterwards, the conqueror's senate declared them an integral part of the French Empire, but scarcely had another four years revolved, before that empire itself had ceased to exist, and the Pope stood re-possessed of his inheritance. The administrative organization of the States of the Church, under the decree of October 24, 1824, divided them into fourteen provinces, the present population of which may be estimated at 2,700,000 souls, of whom 320,000 belong to the Legation of Bologna which takes precedence of every other province, in number of inhabitants, and 161,500 to the Delegation of Ancona. We possess no classification of that population of a later date than the year 1827; at which time we find the religious portion of the community to have amounted to 53,484 individuals of both sexes; namely, monks and friars, 10,598; ecclesiastics, 34,602; and nuns, 8,284. So far back as 1810, there were 119 monasteries in Rome, in which 1465 members of religious communities were resident, one third of whom belonged to the order of mendicants; at that period likewise there were no less than fifteen cathedral chapters within the walls of the Roman capital: and, beyond them, there were 240 monasteries, with 1755 resident members. In the same year, and it was at a time when the states of the Church formed one of the departments of the French Empire, their ecclesiastical establishment consisted of 3196 Members of Religious Orders, resident in Convents. 9915 On a comparison of the gross numbers at the two periods, 1810 and 1827, the increase will indeed appear to have been most extraordinary. BENEVOLENCE.-What indeed can be more worthy the Prince of Peace and merciful Saviour, than the injunction of that virtue which promotes the welfare of the universe? Benevolence increases good, and lessens evil: with the fortunate it exults, with the afflicted it mourns; it gives food to the hungry, and raiment to the naked; it affords protection to the weak, and counsel to the ignorant; it binds up the wounds of the stranger, and breaks the chain of the captive. Benevolence is a father to the orphan, a husband to the widow, a champion to the oppressed, and a friend to all: it checks the quick reply, and arrests the uplifted arm; its lips distil gentleness, and its hand disseminates joy. Unawed by superstition and untainted by prejudice, it casts an eye of benignity upon every party; disregarding the rules of a narrow policy, it scorns to be confined within the boundaries of a nation; to every kindred and language and people it bears the olive; and wherever it beholds a man, it wel comes a brother. SAMUEL HOOLE. LAW REPORT. No. VIII. ON THE BURIAL OF A DISSENTER BY A CLERGYMAN, AND ON LAY BAPTISM. ARCHES COURT OF CANTERBURY, MICHAELMAS TERM, 1809. KEMP v. WICKES.-(Concluded from p. 644.) By Ir seems by no means proper, however, wholly to pass over the view which may be taken of this subject as affected by the Toleration Act. that act, an important change was worked in the situation of his Majesty's Protestant Dissenting subjects; and the baptisms now administered by Dissenting Ministers stand upon very different grounds from those by mere laymen. There were many laws, both of Church and State, requiring conformity to the Church, creating disabilities, imposing penalties, and denouncing excommunications upon all non-conformity. Now, supposing that during the existence of these disabilities it could be maintained, that in point of law no act of non-conformists could be recognized in a court of justice, and therefore that a baptism administered by such persons could not be noticed at all, either by the Church or by the courts administering the law of the Church, yet could it be maintained now that such a baptism was to be considered as a mere nullity? If such could have been considered as the view of the law before the Toleration Act, yet that act would change the whole shape of the thing: that act removed the disabilities; it allowed Protestant Dissenters publicly to exercise their worship in their own way under certain regulations; it legalized their ministers, it protected them against prosecutions for non-conformity. Now, their ministers and preachers being allowed by law (and so far as that goes they are lawful ministers for the purposes of their own worship), their worship being permitted by law-their non-conformity being tolerated, could it any longer be said, that rites and ceremonies performed by them are not such as the law can recognize in any of his Majesty's Courts of Justice, provided they --- VOL. XIV. NO. XII. are not contrary to, nor defective in, that which the Christian Church universally holds to be essential, that is, provided they are Christians? This appears to be a necessary consequence of the Toleration Act. The manner in which that act has been considered by other Courts is not altogether foreign to the consideration. Its general principle was much canvassed in the famous case of Evans v. The Chamberlain of London. The particular circumstances of that case are foreign to the consideration of this. The case began in a jurisdiction in the city. It was afterwards appealed to a commission of the Judges, and then to the House of Lords; and, in the first of the stages of the appeal, a very eminent judge, Mr. Justice Foster, thus expressed himself in his judgment: "The defendant does not plead the Toleration Act to excuse one offence by another; but to shew that, although the Rubric did require conformity in all things, yet by the Toleration Act the Rubric is taken out of the way, and does not extend to his case. The Act of Toleration is not to be considered merely as an act of connivance; it was made that the public worship of Protestant Dissenters might be legal, and they might be entitled to the public protection." So again Lord Mansfield, in the House of Lords, said, "Conscience is not controllable by human laws, nor amenable to human tribunals; and attempts to force conscience will never produce conviction. Non-conformity is no offence by the common law, and the pains and penalties for non-conformity to the established rites of the Church are repealed by the Act of Toleration." This shews something of the general view taken of that statute by the judges of the common law. Acts of Non-conformists are now legalized; 5 н and they are to be recognized, and were upon that occasion recognized, in Courts of law. Indeed, the Legislature itself (as has been pointed out) has recognized the baptism of Dissenters; for stat. 23 Geo. III. c. 67. which laid a duty upon registers of baptisms by the Church, was extended by stat. 25 Geo. III. c. 75. to the registers of baptism of Protestant Dissenters. Both are now repealed: but the passing of that second statute is a recognition of baptism by Protestant Dissenters. Protestant Dissenters then, being allowed the exercise of their religion, being no longer liable to pains and penalties, their Ministers lawfully exercising their functions,-the rites of that body being allowed by the law, -it can no longer be considered that any acts and rites performed by them are such as the law cannot in the due administration of it take any notice whatever of, or that a baptism performed by them, when attended with what our own Church admits to be the essentials of baptism, is still to be looked upon as a mere nullity, or that infants so baptized are to be rejected from burial as persons unbaptized at all, or in other words (though that has been disavowed by the counsel in the argument) as not being Christians-for the Court finds it difficult not to concur with the learned counsel who spoke last, that unbaptized and not being Christians amount to pretty much the same thing. Having thus examined the law itself, it may seem superfluous to consider what may be the opinions of ecclesiastical writers upon the subject: but they lead to the same conclusion. The opinion of the learned Hooker has been stated: his eminence has been referred to and admitted on all sides, and it cannot be placed in a higher point of view by any observation that would fall from the Court. The very accurate and careful examination of this question by Bishop Fleetwood has been stated. They are both of them decidedly of opinion that lay baptism is legal and valid, according to the law of the Church. Watson's Clergyman's Law, and Bishop Burnet, have also been referred to; and if what has been related of a very eminent and learned prelate of the Church, the late Bishop Warburton, be true, he is another practical authority. The circumstance I allude to was this. A person who had applied for holy orders, but was rejected, went into the country pretending that he was ordained; and he performed various sacred functions, and among others he administered baptism in very many instances. When it was at length discovered that he had not been ordained at all, the parents of the children, who had been baptized by him, felt considerable uneasiness, and wished the Minister of their parish to re-baptize their children. The clergyman of the parish very properly consulted his diocesan, Bishop Warburton: but the Bishop charged him on no account to re-baptize the children; for that the baptism already administered, though performed by a mere layman, was a valid baptism, and that the church did not allow a re-baptization. This fact, if it be true, (and the Court has no reason to doubt it) at the same time that it does honour to this distinguished prelate by shewing how accurately he had studied the law and the constitution of the Church of which he was a ruler, is another authority in opposition to the almost only authority which has been relied upon on the other side, and that is Mr. Wheatley. : Now, if the character and the reputation of the different writers were to be matter of consideration, there could not be any great doubt whether the weight lay with Hooker and Fleetwood and the other persons who have been referred to, or with Mr. Wheatley but if the writings themselves be examined, the difference may perhaps be still more striking. In the former writers, particularly in Hooker and Fleetwood, there are not only great powers of reasoning, but accurate references to legal authority. In the latter, there is a great deal to be found that rests upon assertion, and assertion only. This writer, among other things, maintains that no person is to be buried but those who are baptized by the Established Church: nay, he seems to go further, that no persons are to be buried but those whose baptisms have |