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    said to have been ovmnUd by the Court / Mr . Philips thinks this was because the question was asked too late ; that if he bad not believed in the GoapelSj he would not " hare been effects alfjjf sworn on them ; " for " that the ' evidence would be given without any religious sanction ; " that " if the law requires an oath , and the witness believe not in any form ofreUgion ^ the con * sequence must necessarily be * tha £ tK # cannot be sworn . "

    Now here , with deference 1 & Mr . Phtllipps , we cannot see the « etiseoftEi * reasoning , or thaHt itt aaf way follows up the decision of Lord Hale , or the Judges fti Onryehund and Barker . According to this , a witness is a , good witness if he denies Christianity , and takes an absurdity , perhaps an immoral and profligate system of idolatry , instead of it ; but he is a bad witness if he is a man who has

    the misfortune to reject Christianity , and therefore ( for w . e may put i % sri ) to reject all pretended revelations , which his inquiries must have shewn him , stand on far less evidence than the one he has found himself called on to reject . Inndelity , />/« # idolatry , superstition and Immorality , is good ; minus

    those qualities , It is bad . Was ever such an absurdity heard of } And whence arises the objection , merely technical as it is ? Only from the witness having a book placed in his hands , ( to which , by the bye , the words of no oath allude , and which the Quaker never has given him , ) in which he does not believe . Because

    he does not believe in that book , Mr . Phillipps says he has " no religious sanction "; and yet he has just before told us that the only proper question is , " Whether he believes in the existence of God and a future state . * ' Is not this the sanction required ? Is it not this which makes the oath binding ; and if this

    principle be rejected , why do you swear an Indian by his trumpery ; another by holding up his hand , and another by covering his head ? If you avoid the anomaly of giving a Heathen a book in which he does hot believe , and swear him in a form which he chooses to say he considers binding , ( for which you take his word , be it observed , as we believe was held in the Queen's case , ) why , in the name of

    common sense , is not the English Unbeliever to be allowed the same privilege as an Indian savage , of stating what does constitute his religious sanction , and of being sworn in that way ? And it the book be considered an objection , ( and probably the objection would not come from the witness , who would be indifferent about it , ) let it not be offered . What jumble exists in Mr . Phillipps * mind be-

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    tween the " form of a religion" and the form of an oath we do not exactly see . We cannot doubt for a moment that if a Heathen came , who said that he was a believer in God , and in a future state of rewards and punishments , bu £ t £ ta £ iir his country he knew of neitfteiraT ^ ft cific t ( form ot re % hf ^* uar &ett Mnr of ^ a / A , ftirfmi ^ o ^ wittWfasense would on

    re ^«« ml » fiK * raipetCttt that account . ^ Wfetfeverbe the formy" concludes Hfr . PfrilHpps , " the meaning of the oath Iff the same . It is calling on God to witness what we say , afld invoking his vengeance if what we say is false . " To be sure it is y and if the decision in " Omychundp . Barker , " amounts to anything , ilir , thafc fee law looks , to the substance totheveUgvm , notta the / sww of ifeL . oc of the oath either . If , howeveiy tbw «^

    be any weight in the technical objection which Mr . Phillipps puts forward in one sentence , and seems to retreat from in another , that some form is necessary , it would seem that the petitioner and his followers ( who , by the bye , are not bound to answer any other questions than the general one mentioned by Mr ., Phillipps ) have in any case an obvious shift for relieving the law of its difficulty . Some more substantial form would

    certainly be more likely to succeed than the ridiculous scheme of this gentleman for swearing on his book of nature , i . e . upon a metaphor ; but it wonld seem that they have only to agree on some form , ( the ; law quarrels not with its absurdity , ) which they may state to be their 8 y and then they become qualified to come at that substance t which the law professes to have alone in view , but which it bid ** fair to miss under a cloud of subtleties .

    At all events , the debate is worthy o ( note , as a specimen of the vague state of shallow declamation usually resorted to ou these subjects even by lawyers . ( We wonder at Sergeant Onslow , though we do not see occasion to wonder at what falls from Mr . Harrison Batley . ) This cannot be more strikingly evinced than in such a case as the present , where the very proposition which is treated as too gross to be received even in the form of

    a petition , at this moment forms part of the established common law of the land , in a much stronger form , and one which we should suppose more revolting to these gentlemen and their Dissenting supporter in the Times . One would think , by the arguments used on thesq occasions , that it was considered goo 4 service to the community to increase the chances of evading justice by throwing Impediments in the way of the reception of evidence .

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    Inteiiig'ence . ^ Competm ^^^^ m ^^ in&t in Christianity , ft

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1827, page 79, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1792/page/79/