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mena of the moral powers of man were added to the phenomena of the physical powers of matter, and a God formed, which humanized what we call nature, and deified man, so as to form a relation between the power that created and the thing created, and to assert that the creator had created mankind in his own image, or as beings that were to equal him in powers and advantages. This is all a mistake. The whole theory of a God or Gods is a mistake. Design in creation is incomprehensible. The vastness of what we see of matter excludes all idea of a dependence upon that human or animal power which we call design, Intelligence; design, or will, is an animal power, and nowhere discernible in cause or effeet, beyond the actions of animals. It is a weak power in comparison with the material arrangements of a planet or planets. It can guide a plough, turn the stream of a river, level a hill, make a mountain, fill up a valley, navigate the air or ocean, and produce great effects by the joint aid of labour and tools; but it can produce no effects by intelligence, design, or volition, without the joint aid of labour and tools. It can alter some of the minor arrangements of matter on the surface of the earth; but it cannot produce an effect on the motion of a planet. It cannot draw the moon one inch nearer to, nor expel it one inch farther from, the earth. What then is the ephemeral power of design when compared with the matter and motion of the planets of the solar ⚫ystem? A trifle, a bubble, that figures for a moment and bursts. There is nothing lasting in design or intelligence. It cannot produce an effect and guarantee the visibility of it as an identity for a century. We know of nothing that has a relation to that vague word eternity but matter and its motions. Atheism! you may cry. Truth! before any kind of Theism. If religion can only be supported by a lie, ought we to lie to support it? And if we do lie to support it, is not a lie of such magnitude a greater vice than one minor in its effects? O that I could converse with you, Mr. Justice Bailey. As soon as I have my house in order, I must leave you my card.

You have a note on the twenty-second Psalm which calls it a prediction of the history and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I contess the similarity of the two narratives; but finding that the later one is a fable, I find no difficulty to account for its similarity with or relation to the former. You call the first a prediction: I call the second a copy. Let the sensible man determine which is the more probable conclusion of the two.

I see nothing more worthy of notice in your Notes on the Book of Common Prayer. They are neither calculated to moralize nor to instruct mankind. They exhibit devotion to a system of religion, but like all other devotion, it is mental weakness, a disease, a vice.

My letters to you were undertaken under the idea that you were one of my persecutors and as the persecution has ceased,

it may be as well that the letters be carried no farther. I have gained my point: you have lost yours. I have honour; you have disgrace. I have pleasure; you must have pain. I have proved that your religion is not only a system to be impugned; but to be successfully impugned. What have you proved? My letters to you are not the least interesting part of "The Republican:" they are not without originality in matters of ecclesiastical history, of morals, of logic, of philosophy, and of physical science. They are not without wit, and had your Notes on the Book of Common Prayer any sale, I would publish my letters, separately from "The Republican," as a companion. I may do so as it is; but I have many more important things to do before it.

Your Christian Religion has encountered a warfare, from the effects of which it will never recover. Your Vice Society is prostrate on matters of religion. It has mistaken in what vice consisted. What has been called infidelity triumphs and has almost become the fidelity, the orthodox faith of the country. Make haste and come round, or you will be left an infidel. You doubted while a common Barrister; subscribed to the Vice Society, and shewed symptoms of belief or easy faith, when you were made Serjeant at Law; and, like the effects of Lord Byron's fevers, you were fully convinced, when you were seated on the bench of the Court of King's Bench. After these three motions of the spirit, you cannot scruple to change when the orthodoxy of the country changes, and come back to the point at which you honestly started. I can forgive you: can you forgive me, for working this change?

RICHARD CARLILE.

WILLIAM COBBETT.

MR. COBBETT, in his Register for the 15th inst. pays me a few compliments, in his usual way of calling names, where he lacks argument and other means of reply. I am a "monster," a "beast," and have published" infamies" of him. On the last point, the grammarian must have made a mistake; for I have not published my infamies of him; but I have published his infamies. Mr. Cobbett asks, what I will take to go to Blackburn, or Preston, or Bolton, and tell the people who I am. I will take forty shillings per day as travelling expences and pass a day or two in every town in Lanchashire, after sending round the bellman to say I am there. I will carry the proposition farther; I will meet Mr. Cobbett in any town, or in every town, in Lancashire, and allow him to make the first speech to whatever number or class of people he or we can congregate, I will still carry the proposition

farther, and say that I will go at my own expence, on the condition of Mr. Cobbett's meeting me.

The excellent Mr. John Lawless, who last year was about the only Irishman worth Mr. Cobbett's notice, or the last noticed of the catholic association's deputation, has gone the way of all Mr. Cobbett's friends, he has been entered on Mr. Cobbett's black list and sent to that sort of perdition which proves that he is too honest a man to be long the friend or acquaintance of William Cobbett. Sir Thomas Beevor, if he have any independent spirit and highmindedness about him, must expect to share the same fate within a year.

Last week, Mr. Cobbett told us, that he had a remedy for all the evils of the country, and he said:-" I have the details of that remedy down to the minutest provisions, drawn up in the shape of an Act of Parliament." I felt some doubt of the existence of such a document, when Mr. Cobbett said that no one should see it but those of his family. In such a matter, a good man would make the whole country his family. Among other papers, the Editor of the Morning Chronicle has ridiculed the pretensions of Mr. Cobbett on this head, and the great political quack doctor is furiously angry. But in his anger, he beats himself more than his opponent; for he says, that he has not prepared any such a sketch of an act of parliament: after copying his own paragraph, where he says he has such a bill prepared down to the minutest provisions, he contradicts it by saying:-" I will keep on discussing the several subjects connected with these embarrassments and this distress; but, never will I put upon paper the details of any plan, for the cure of these evils, unless I be first placed in Parliament." What is the word of such a man worth? Mr. Cobbett has brought us news to town, and tells us that the Lancashire people think him the cleverest man in England (he should have excepted the Editor of the Bolton Chronicle, who has just pronounced him a shallow bully, a man who blusters but cannot reason, and who is all sound and no sense.) Cleverness applies to trick as well as to good ability. I have known clever liars; but no man who has read William Cobbett can believe him to be the cleverest liar in England; for, if you do not detect and expose him in what he says, to-day, he will do it for himself to

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morrow.

I wish to get rid of this bad subject, thinking it too low for 'The Republican' and doubt if the repetition of the words "monster and beast" will bring forth another notice. However, one of the first things that I shall do, after I have put my house in order, will be to publish the promised larger memoir of William Cobbett. For the present, I can only still wish him an amendment of manners and of character.

RICHARD CARLILE.

MY COMPLIMENTS TO MY OLD PASTOR, THE REV. MR. LLOYD, VICAR OF ST. DUNSTAN'S IN THE WEST, ON RETURNING TO HIS PARISH.

"To question the divine authority of the Scriptures is to doubt. To doubt is to disbelieve. And to disbelieve is to be undone; for he that believeth not shall be damned.—Lloyd's Christian Theology.

DAMNED is a very convenient word. It ranges in definition from the simple act of disapprobation up to an infliction of all the tortures that human cruelty, and what is worse, Christian cruelty, can devise. It was left for a Christian mind to invent eternal torments for the damned.

The above text was given to me by the Rev. Robert Taylor, who preached his maiden sermon in this parish church, and accepted his first Curacy under its Vicar, who had another living at Medhurst, in Sussex. It was suggested as a doctrinal hint, on' reading the note of Mr. Justice Bailey, where he states that he once doubted; but that he examined to conviction. The Rev. Mr. Taylor's orthodoxy is conclusive with that of the Rev. Mr. Lloyd, that penitence, or change of mind, or conviction of error, availeth him not who hath once doubted.

What a comfortable pastor is this of mine! He will send his agent to me for the tithes of the products of my infidelity; but he will not give me the least encouragement to return to his church. I must raise the question in the Courts of Law: whether the products of infidelity are titheable for the support of the law established Christian Church.

The best way to attack the Church is through its revenue. The Ministers are not ashamed at the proof that the religion is illfounded and untenable as to its alleged original facts; but touch the revenue and you at once touch them to the quick. The revenue forms the nucleus of the orthodoxy and to that all men who can profit will stick.

I have had but a slight acquaintance with the Vicar's tithecollector, having met him but once or twice; but hereafter I must become familiar and examine the Vicar's revenue and his vested rights. I rather think the tithes of this parish are regulated by an Act of Parliament; but Acts of Parliament are not always effectual. It will be wise in the Vicar not to send his collector to me for any kind of church dues; for I shall be so much of an infidel as not to pay before I examine.

R. C.

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street.-All Correspondences for "The Republican," to be left at the place of publication.

No. 3. VOL. 14.] LONDON, Friday, July 28, 1826. [PRICE 6d.

TION

DECLARATION OF THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS

Investigated by a primitive Catholic.

In the early part of the present summer, the Catholic Bishops of Great Britain issued a Declaration of their religious tenets in the shape of a denial of the many absurdities imputed to them. It appears as if this Declaration was sent forth preparatory to the general election.

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Attached to the Declaration by the Bishops is an "Address from the British Roman Catholics to their Protestant FellowCountrymen" in approbation of that document.

As far as any thing called Christianity can be ably descanted upon, they are two well-written documents. The preamble to the Declaration is good, because it applies alike to the weakest or persecuted party in all affairs of religion. The principle of religious persecution is ever the same in all religions and in all men. It is the evil part of human nature. The first Christians were called Atheists by the Pagans; the first Protestants were called Atheists by the Catholics; the Unitarians by the Protestants; the Deists by the Unitarians; and the Materialists by the Deists. Under this view and explanation, I insert the whole preamble.

"When we consider the misrepresentations of the Catholic religion, which are so industriously and widely propagated in this country, we are filled with astonishment. But our astonishment 'subsides, when we call to mind, that the character of Christ, was himself misrepresented; he was charged with blasphemy, with breaking the sabbath, and with forbidding tribute to be paid to Cæsar:-that the apostles and disciples of Christ were misrepresented, they were charged with speaking blasphemous words against Moses and against God, with exciting sedition, and with many other grievous offences entirely devoid of proof,t and that misrepresentation was the general lot of Christians in the first ages of the church. The primitive Christians were first calumniated and held up to public contempt, and then persecuted and deprived, not only of their civil rights and privileges, but of their property, and even of their very lives. They were charged with idolatry, with horrid cruelties, and other flagiticus * Matt. xxvi. 65. Mark iii. 22. John ix. 16. Luke xxiii. 2. † Acts vi. 11. xxiv, 5. xxv. 7.

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet Street.

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