lieve, recognize only to insult, worship, and trifle with, adore and disobey. And, consequently, where the writings for which I am prosecuted have made one infidel, the measures which they have adopted have made a thousand. Who, then, are the enemies of Christianity? Who are they, whose conduct aims directly to take away from suffering humanity the balm of spiritual consolation-to overcloud the last bright prospect of another and a better world-to dissolve the mystic charm that makes victory sit upon the fading cheek, and triumph sparkle in the dying eye-to loosen all the holds and stays of moral virtue, and set the soul afloat on the waves of a shoreless scepticism? It is not Inot we-not any books which we have published or sold-not any thing which we have done or could do. It was never in our inten. tion, never in our will, never in our power; but it is the act and deed of our prosecutors; it is they who give Christianity the fatal wound-'tis they who have produced in all men's minds the latent and deep-working leaven of scepti cism; they have excited the universally extending suspicion which the eye cannot avoid seeing, and from which the mind cannot turn away. They have exhibited Christianity in features of caricatures, and set up Jesus on the pedestal of Dagon. If there were any thing to the dishonour of Chris tianity contained in the books, for the sale of which I am prosecuted, it was at least not forced upon public observation; no one was obliged to purchase or read them: they did not present a lie on the title page; they did not profess to be what they were not; they did not say, "This is Chris tianity." Yet if Christianity be a gracious and beneficial dispensation, surely they exhibit as much of it as the conduct of our prosecutors; who act as if they deemed violence and cruelty necessary to its defence, and thus, in the sight of all men, by their manifest and overt acts, proclaim that they themselves think Christianity has no brighter evidence than such as may glimmer through the bars of a pri son. I am instructed, therefore, to call upon you, as Christians, by your verdict this day, to vindicate the honour of the Christianity you profess-to disappoint the machinations of those more dangerous enemies to Christianity, those traitors within your walls, who are secretly sapping its foundations, and working a deadlier mischief to your citadel than all the power of avowed enemies could pour on you from without. Disappoint the purposes of those mistaken and vindictive men. Let you verdict be responsive, not to the angry passions and sinister interests of a faction, but to the calm judgment and

good sense of all the wise and good men in the world: in the
number of which you will not find one but who would con-
template any other than a verdict of acquittal with chagrin
and sorrow. Let your verdict fearlessly respond to what
must be the sincere dictate of your conscience; let it shew
your respet at least for that part of Christianity which re-
quires that you should do unto all men as you would they
should do to you; let it shew your respect for yourselves,
that you will not, for the sake of, a little favour with these
great men, be induced to deliver over a victim to their re-
sentment; let it shew your becoming remembrance of the
similarity of my situation this day to that of "the author
and finisher of your faith." Act but as he would have you
act, and I am sure to be acquitted. Against this, the only
sophistry that I can fear is, that tyrannical dogmatism which
would be for making short work of this question, and under
the pretext of precedent and law, seek at once to cut me off
from all hopes of justice, and you, from the fair exercise of
your.functions as jurors, on which alone my hopes of justice
rest. You may be told, perhaps, with just as much reason.
asan Eastern Caliph would condescend to give that "I
knew the penalty incurred-I had sufficient example," and
so forth as the oriental despot would say, "There is the
law-there is the offender, and there is the punishment; and
all the jury has to do is to read that law, seize that offender,
and apply that punishment." But, Gentlemen, this short
measure will not do-'tis false, 'tis barbarous, and wicked.
I beseech you, become not the instruments of a tyranny like
this. No precedent or number of precedents will justify
what is in itself iniquitous; and that any man should be sent
to prison for the open avowal of disbelief in a religion, which
disclaims all means of persecution and force, is as great a
wrong as wrong can be. To urge, however, that there is a
law on the subject, and that that law, merely because there
is such an one, must be enforced, is a most cruel and arbi-
trary sophism. It is an insult on your understandings; and
they who press it on you, laugh in their sleeves at the stupi-
dity that can be so easily imposed on. No, Gentlemen,
"there is no law that can authorise evil. In the
very article
of its injustice it is per se annulled. And if such exist on the
letter of a fusty statute book, it should not be respected, but
repealed; and till this can conveniently be done, the office
and duty of a jury is, not to put it in force, but to prevent
its operation. To make existing law the means of oppres
sion is to add the last possible aggravation to cruelty and in-

justice. So it was by the law, that Naboth, the Jezreelite, was put to death, when the tyrant Ahab, having occasion to possess himself of his inheritance,,had him accused of. having" blasphemed God and the King," and the murder of Christ himself must seem justifiable, if that was good rea soning of the chief priests of his day, when they said, "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die."-No, Gentlemen, though the letter of written law. was against him, justice was not; and that same justice which should have rescued him from the letter. of strict enactment, now pleads for me. I beseech you, Gentlemen, as Christians, not to justify, by a verdict against me, the condemnation of him whom you believe, though sacrificed by the text of law, to have been "led as a lamb to.the slaughter, and as a sheep dumb before his shearers" beseech you as Christians to respect the very essence and soul of Christianity, and suffer me not to sink under the rigid application of a human law, when even that' law, which you hold to be divine, yielded, and gave place to a dispensation of mercy and forgiveness. Be it that I have erred-be it that all this evidence, which seems so clear against me, is as free from fraud and guile as it is from any sort of charity! Be it, therefore, as my inexorable Judge will tell you, that my liberty is forfeit to the law; is it for them to strain this point against me, who profess a religion, and for that very religion which teaches, that

"All the souls that are, were forfeit once,

And he who might th' advantage best have ta'en
Found out the remedy."

I beseech you, Gentlemen, to acquit yourselves as the administrators, not the machines, of law, and suffer not your own good sense to be overborne, and your right of exercising your unbiassed judgment taken from you, by the sophis tical dogmatism which would tell you, that you have no other business than to inquire merely whether I have done as I am charged withal. You have no statute but the mere ipse dixit of that weak and wicked man, Judge Hale, to authorize these prosecutions and will you hand me over at once to condemnation, in spite of the convictions of your own consciences, in spite of the positive precepts of Christianity itself -in spite of the cries of "shame on such measures" echoing from one end of the kingdom to the other-in spite of truth itself, and of the God of Truth?

Gentlemen, the Judge has no right thus to controul and
No. 4, Vol. X.

limit your functions. Your business is much more than to make the inquiry which he would prescribe, or give the verdict that he would dictate. You are judges of the law as well as of the fact, and you are to try the motives and spirit in which that inquiry has originated, and to take care that a pretext of zeal for religion be not a cloak of maliciousness. You will recollect, Gentlemen, that persecution is still persecution, under whatever names or pretexts it may be carried on. The most bloody massacres, the most cruel and furious persecutions never wanted their excuse; they all pleaded reasons of state, regard to public morals, the interest of the community, and so forth, and if such pleas were of any weight, it would follow, that there was never such a thing as persecution or bigotry in the world. When Mary delivered Cranmer to the stake, she declared that "the interests of religion required that he should suffer." Had he kept his opinions to himself, he might have been pardoned, but his attempt to shake the faith of others, was the sin against the Holy Ghost; and when thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow creatures were committed to the flames for heresy, by the pious zeal of the Holy Office;-they did not think that it was persecution.-Oh, no! 'twas charity to the souls committed to their care; 'twas the high and solemn Act of Faith." It was done, with awe I speak it, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." If you hesitate at the testimony of secular history, accept, at least, that of your blessed Saviour. "The time cometh," said he, "when, whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." Since, then, men may be so grievously deceived, what better security can we have for keeping within the sphere of truth, than to take care that we never wander from the attraction of charity. Charity is al"ways right-charity only is the infallible guide. You have its rule; it thinketh no evil, it is not easily provoked, it heareth all things, it hopeth all things, it endureth all things. But I, Gentlemen, have no occasion to throw myself upon your compasssion, I have suffered wrong, indeed, but I have done none. I have already lain in prison more than six gloomy weeks upon a false accusation, supported only by the suborned testimony of a base hireling slave, who sells his oath as he would sell his salvation-for money; and in a case in which he may be, and certainly is mistaken, dares to imprecate the vengeance of the Almighty on his head! Gentlemen, I have not done as is stated in that indictment; I

have not maliciously published a most wicked and blasphemous libel. Whether the pamphlet in question be wicked and blasphemous I am not concerned to determine. I am neither its author nor its printer; but it is my prosecutors themselves that have published it by calling public notice to it; and if to hunt a man into Newgate who never did, or intended harm to any one, and if to buy the soul of a poor wretch to come here and stake his salvation upon a fact of which he is not and cannot be certain, be malice, then, Gentlemen, my prosecutors are guilty, not only of the publishing, but of publishing maliciously. Gentlemen, assert yourselves, assert the sacred right of jurors, you must not follow a multitude to do iniquity; you are not to condemn me because others have been condemned; you are not to have the law dictated to you, for there is no written law on the subject; you are not to follow precedents, for then you would be mere ciphers, and have no judgment at all to form. Again, and again I beseech you to remember, that you are judges of the law as well as of the fact. The gowns and wigs which you see around you, are the mere pride, pomp, and circumstance of judicature. Your breasts only are the judgment seat. Let no Pontius Pilate sit there! and I shall not fear his Lordship on the bench. You, you only are my judges; yours will be the guilt, if an innocent man be condemned; yours will be the glory of putting an end for ever to bigotry and persecution, if you acquit me. Your unbi

assed judgment will be the equity of the case, and your voice its law! So far would the strict letter of a statute, even if such could be adduced, seem from confining your sphere of judgment, that you would not hesitate to laugh at a Buller or Jefferies on the bench, and quash evidence itself, rather than be the instruments of a sanguinary execution; and they are "good men and true" in England, who, feeling that there is a higher rule of justice than the statute book can prescribe, represent an article which they know to be worth thirty or forty pound, as of value under forty shillings, rather than yield, even manifest guilt, to too severe a law. Your verdict, then, Gentlemen, should respect not merely the evidence, not the law, and, least of all, the Judge. But it should be formed in a calm view of the case under all its bearings and all its consequences. And the mere technical form of those three syllables, Not Guilty, which I certainly expect to hear from you, will signify, not that I have not done as is stated in the contemptible rhodomoutade of that foolish