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Untitled Article
canons it was declared , and they were the laws of England , { hear , hear , ) that " when any is passing out of this life a bell shall be tolled , and after the party ' death there shall be rung no more than one short peal , and one other before the burial , and one other after the burial . "
But over law and nature this clergyman allowed antipathies to triumph . Yet again , said Mr . Wilks , he would affirm that Dissenters barbed the arrows for their own breasts , how innoxious else might this vexation have become ! Why would Dissenters continue to identify themselves with ceremonies so absurd ?
Why did they not despise such tmtmnabular infatuations ? Would they renew the times when bishops anointed and baptized the bells , oleo christnatis , and when they were supposed to possess the property of calming tempests , driving the devil from the air , and re-creating the dead ? When would even wise men be
wise ? When would their babyhood be ended ? When would their minds attain to manly vigour ? When would they cease to be bound with such cobweb fetters ; witn bonds that they should blow away , or burst and trample beneath their feet ? ( Loud applause ?)
From those pecuniary demands and petty vexations he would proceed to more important aggressions . During the past year several cases of oppression of the poor had re-appeared .
They multiplied . Further multiplication would ensue . The poor laws embraced yearly a wider circle . Their desolations naturally extended . As the vortex enlarged , more would be involved . The
system of refusing compensation for labour to the peasantry , and instead of paying their earnings , relieving them from rates , converted the industrious into paupers and dependents . Men lost the dignity of independence , which might be felt equally by the rustic and the prince , as pauperism enervated and debased their
minds . Wrongs inflicted on them especially excited his abhorrence . Could he but feel with peculiar interest all that affected , the interests and happiness of the poor ? { Hear , hear . ) Few were their comforts , wretched enough was their condition , without any augmentation of their wretchedhess-rt- ^ without
rendering doubly bitter the e bitter draugh t they ha 4 to drinks TQr th 6 poor ever the gospel should be preached . To them fit was adapted U relieved and fever blessed
tjiem . It waslight , in all theiurdankness To deprive , therefore ; the , piou ^ poor of jfcjte means , piety , : itirfts to fW ^ Uffe ettfoy--ment , to , inflict a woe , to diu % the drop 4 * f consolation from : % he thirsty iip , to tear from the wrecked mariner the fragment to which he clung . Y * jf « tliose
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s j deeds were multiplied ; and { their pi ^ even i tion was most difficult . Great disapi probation . ) He then detailed several i cases , where , by withholding public chai rities , by excluding children from Schools ,
by withholding parish relieiM&t Woodbridge , in Suffolk ; at a parish near Basingstoke ; at Paynton , in Devonshire ; at Tut bury , in the county of Stafford , and at Stonham Aspal , An Suffolk , these acts of persecution were ¦ unblushingly committed ; \ n most cases , at the
suggestion of the clergymen ., and in one , of an incumbent holding three livings , a prebend in a cathedral , a justice of the peace , and even the Chairman at the Sessions , to which if Dissenters were injured , they could alone appeal . Besides
those cases he mentioned , that , m the hundred of Tattingstone , near Ipswich , lived a poor man , named' William Hawks , who for 22 years had been a member of the congregation of the Rev . Mr . Atkinson in that town . Honest
and deserving , he had been compelled , in old age , to seek an asylum in the Hundred House . For some time he had been permitted to totter to the long-frequented house of prayer , where he had often forgotten his labours , his woes , his fears ; recreated by sabbatic rest , by pious
pleasure , and by heavenly hope . At length an order was made by the governors of the Hundred House , that no person should be allowed to attend at any religious services but those which were performed by a curate of the Church of England in the Hundred House . Some
independent and public-spirited men of the county of Suffolk , commiserating the poor old man , honourably interfered . Their interference , and that of the Society , did not avail . From the governors he received an answer , that to their order
they should adhere ; that , under a certain Act of Parliament , their conduct could be justified \ and that they woul 4 not relax in that exercise of power . ( Hisses . ) Thus was this poor man confined in a British bastile : for what could be a worse
basfile than any abode where the unguilty , th £ deserving , were precluded from those religious services which they approved , ? ( CHeak , keafo ) * To the Court of ^ King ' s Bench , the Society would have ftppQidd ^ ; bxtt t \^ % low lontt occasion , when fo&dliy ^ over
^ iphHllf ^ gsth&Mvu ^ M men htolHaacfe ^ to fbem jc ^ iimiuni ^ coiiformky might ih ^ e ^ pirrfven ^ Qd suitable reijressl rtJBut ^' ii # tlt ® iliH # ga ^> . vrearess against thele rabuses ^ giifotimuthQrity waal hard to beMfo ^ IMtt ^ eweiM ^
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436 Intelligence . —Protestant Society > J # K WitMtf * tipetefr .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1820, page 436, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2490/page/56/
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