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iVjr . Hodgkin . s declined to bury a child baptized by a Dissenting minister , the parents were therefore compelled to deposit the child in another and distant irrave . In this case , however , ignorance rather than malevolence produced an
effect which he how regrets , and which he assures us shall not recur . At Rudwick , in Sussex , a child named Etherington had been baptized by a Dissenting minister , and died . xApplication was made to the aged clergyman to officiate ,
but he refused . The parents gave him regular and convenient notice of the time they s-hould attend , aud they attended at the churchyard with their friends in sad procession . The clergyman , however , was determined in his refusal , and as
the mourners passed along they saw him driving by in his chaise , heedless of their notice and their grief . The child was then taken nine miles to a Dissenting burial-ground , and there interred at ^ reat inconvenience and expense . To
this clergyman we wrote . The result confirmed our experience , that the insoknt are often timid , and this very man , when threatened with suspension from his living for his neglect , wrote to the minister connected with the Home
Missionary Society , labouring in that district , " that he would attend and perform the customary service on the day he might appoint V * Resolved that an example should be made , the coffin was disinterred , brought back to the parish , aud the burial service of the Church was
read over the remains ! At South Shields , the clergyman has refused to bury a child baptized by the Rev . Mr . Lawson of that place , unless he received the fees of baptism as well as of interment . What parents in such moments would withhold any demand ? The fees were paid . Mr . Lawson was indignant ,
and interfered . An action was threatened against the clergyman for the recovery of the money ; he offered to give Mr . Lawson back the money . " No , Sir /' said he , " send it back yourself , and let all know that you had no right to do the evil you have done . " There are , however , cases in which no efforts on the
part of the Society can prevail , nor can we afford assistance to our members who complain . I refer to cases affecting a vastl y exten ded body of Protestant v ! n nterS ~ our Ba P tist friends . Where cMldren have been baptized by a
Dis-* entiug minister or by a layman , the law entitle them to burial , according to the ntual of the Established Church ; but wwre persons die unbaptized , then , ac-<^ aiHg to t he present atate of the En-Mi * n law , it is thought that no clergyman vie , i - P ell € Kl to perform the sere This affects several hundred thou-
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sand individuals , including many families of great opulence , intelligence and worth . On their behalf , we have , therefore , during the last few months , communicated with Lord Liverpool . The communication related to two points . The first was the power claimed by the clergy to
refuse admittance to the corpse into the Church , and thus justify their omission of the biblical part of that most impresive composition which forms the Burial Service of the Established Church . This subject certainly appears to be involved in some obscurity . No legal decision has been pronounced , but some parts of
the Rubric appear constructively to invest the clergyman with this invidious right . It must , however , be presumed , that it is an authority which the clergy ought not to possess , and as to which the Legislature should afford relief . The other and more important point related to that situation in which it has been
stated , that all the Baptists throughout England and Wales uunecessarily are placed . This power to withhold the Burial Service from the unbaptized , we learn that they frequently exert . At Llandulas , in North Wales , in the
diocese of St . Asaph , the Rev . Mr . Hughes , the clergyman , refused interment to au infant six weeks old , the child of Baptist parents . At first he onlv refused himself to officiate ; then he said , that it should not be buried ; that
prohibition , however , he recalled , and would allow the interment , provided the father and a friend brought the corpse at eight o ' clock at night , ( and this was in the month of December , ) then without ceremony to be deposited in a certain part of the churchyard , where still-born infants are entombed ! The parents
would not comply with such gross indignities ; they took their child to a Baptist burial-ground , nine miles distant . Another case had been communicated by Mr . Terrell , of Exeter , a most active and enlightened friend . At Islington , in Devon , a similar refusal had occurred Oppression makes fools ingenious , and the timid brave . Determined that some
funeral rite should be performed , fourteen yeomen and the Baptist minister stood outside the churchyard , aud on its very verge , and the minister delivered au address and offered prayer . But even then they perhaps wore trespassing , or if they stood on a church path , might be
apprehended as breakers of tlie peace . And it is ia England and in the nineteenth century these deeds are done ! Is it not high time , indeed , that this Society and the Legislature interfere ? The clergy should either themselves officiate , or permit the ministers and friends to conduct the service . Yet our illustrious
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Intelligence . — P rat extant Society : Mr . Wilktfs Speech . 373
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v . xxi . : j ( ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1826, page 373, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2549/page/57/
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