We are

buried, for no other purpose than to reconcile himself to himself! and to be a sacrifice for us, to appease himself! here also required to believe, that this God without a body, parts, or passions, took a fourth part to itself, or added manhood to its Godhead, by taking "flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature into heaven," still remaining one and indivisible! We are also required to believe, that one part of a bodiless, partless God, went down into hell, a fictitious place of torment, now proved to have no existence; that is, we are required to believe what we know to be a physical falsehood, and to assent to a proposition, as true, which we positively know not to be true, or to proclaim that in Christianity, a fiction or a falsehood are synonymous with truth, and both alike at the same time! The same argument applies to the fabled ascent into heaven with " flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature," whilst astronomy has annihilated the heaven, by teaching us that the immensity of space is filled with planets similar to our own, and other scientific researches have taught us the physical impossibility of any animal to pass beyond the atmosphere of the earth, in an attempt to move towards any other planet.

We are also required to believe nothing but what is found in the books of the Old and New Testaments, and yet different translations give us very different meanings to different passages, whilst what we are required to believe in these Articles is not to be found in any of those books of Jewish Scripture: for instance, the first of these Thirty-nine Articles requires us to believe that "there is but one God," aud he "without body, parts, and passions," whilst the Jew Books uniformly represent the God of the Jews with body, parts, and passions, and constantly located, either in their Ark of Shittim wood, their Tabernacle, or their Temple; and that he was particularly endowed with the passions of anger, vengeance, and repentance. We are required to believe that the Old Testament is not contrary to the New, and that the Old, as well as the New, offers everlasting life to mankind by Christ, when in fact, there is not the slightest allusion to any thing of the kind, without perverting the true meaning of words. We are required to believe that we can do nothing by our works towards our salvation from that fictitious place of torment called Hell, and at the same time, we are further required to believe that every thing depends upon ourselves!

This is the Christianity of the Thirty-nine Articles of the

Established Church, or the religion of the law. This is the Christianity of one sect, but there are near one hundred different sects of Christians in this country, all professing different tenets, and each laying claim to that which they say is alone the genuine sort. One argues the sufficiency of Infant Baptism by affusion; another the immersion of adults in water, as a baptism essential to salvation. One argues for free will, and that man can do every thing for his own salvation; and another, that every thing is predestinated, and all that man can do is vain. One says that Jesus Christ is a part of the Godhead; and another, that he was nothing more than a prophet of the highest order, and the natural son of Joseph the carpenter, and Mary his wife. One believes the miracles he is said to have wrought; and another believes them not. All these, and a hundred others, alike call themselves Christians, and each boasts that he exclusively holds to the right Christianity. What, then, is the Christianity that I have blasphemed? or how can your Lordships, as judges of the law only, and not as priests of any sect, judge my opinions upon matters of religion, where the law recognizes such a variety? The Jew is protected in his opinions, though in reality more inimical to the Christian Religion than mine, and even inimical towards the moral part of the New Testament, which I am not. The Hindoo and Mahometan are protected under the British Government and law, and openly encouraged to practice their idolatries, in opposition to Christianity. Why, then, am I to be punished for rejecting this vague thing, called Christianity? Can the impugner of the Trinity be more of a Christian than I am, though he assumes the name, and does he value any thing more than the moral part of the New Testament, which I and every other Deist values?

I will put a case to your Lordships. If a Jew, Hindoo, or Mahometan, resident in this country, were publicly to state his opinion, that the religion of this country, which the law recognizes under the name of Christianity, was not founded in truth, and that he verily believed it to be founded in imposture, and to be a cheat upon the people, an opinion which we know each of those idolators to hold; would such a public expression of their opinions be amenable to our law as a case of blasphemy, whilst custom tolerates the practical part of their idolatries, and their opposition to the Christian religion?

If the law can punish, it does not, in those cases, and cus

tom, as far as it relates to manners, forms the most powerfully operative part of the law. I am not a Christian. I am proud in rejecting the epithet after the confused notions I have exhibited as connected with what is called Christianity, and the inexplicable demands it makes upon our credulity. In relation to Christianity, I ask from your Lordships, to be ranked with the Jew, Hindoo, or Mahometan. I flatter myself that I stand before your Lordships as a person of good morals, though I have scorned to resort to the usual mode in those cases, of exhibiting them upon affidavits. I felt it to be unnecessary. I feel that my morals are not impeached, notwithstanding the abusive nature of the record against me. Lawyers are licensed to be abusive, and gallantry or courtesy towards the female sex is not recognized as an accomplishment in legal pursuits. The records of our Courts of Law, or the proceedings upon them, are not arguments to convince of error, but a system of bearing down by clamorous and false abuse; where the weakest is sure to go to the wall: where powerful oppression always triumphs. But is there any one among my prosecutors who will impeach my morals? Is there one who will show I am a bad mother, a bad wife, a bad friend, or a bad member of society? Will those slanderers, who have blasphemed me through the medium of the indictment, with the epithets of wicked, malicious and ill-disposed, come forward and show that I have ever been guilty of one immoral act in my life? Will their own characters bear the same scrutiny? Pray, for what are your Lordships called upon to punish me? For what, to shut me out of society? why strip me from my husband, and bereave me of my children? what have I done, more than to publish two pamphlets, the truth and morality of which are unimpeachable? Yes, I am charged with blaspheming Christianity, but how is it proved? by the verdict of a man who knows so much about it, as not to know when it was attacked or defended. By a special Juryman, who was scarcely superior in intellect to an idiot; who was ignorant enough to think that every word that dropped from me must be an attack upon it, and who interrupted me when I was really reading the sermon of a Christian Priest who defended it, but condemned all persecutions in its support. My persecutors blaspheme their religion of Christianity by bringing me here for punishment: they speak evil of it, they pronounce that it cannot stand without persecuting those who impeach it; that it must not be spoken against, lest, like a bubble, it be dispersed with a breath.

You, my Judges, if you do not allow me to go from this Court will blaspheme it; you will sanction persecution in its defence, and if your victims fall under the punishment you inflict, you will stain your robes with the blood of martyrs to truth. I therefore call upon you in the name of truth, in the name of every thing that is great and good in society; in the spirit of free discussion, which is the source of all human happiness and improvement, to allow me to proceed. from this Court to my home, to my husband, and to my children, free from bond.

Christianity in all its varieties is a thing founded upon words and nothing but words, it has no relation to any thing in nature, in physics, or in morals, and I challenge any buman being to shew the contrary of what I assert. Law in a civilized society is a compact between its members to preserve to each other their lives, their liberties, and their properties. There can be no such thing as law to preserve the use of certain words, it would be treated with ridicule and contempt, in such a country as this: therefore I protest against any decision of your Lordships, if you say there is a law to support the use of the words which relate to, or constitute the verbal system of, Christianity. If I am permitted to be punished upon the indictment against me in this Court, it will be despotism not law.

In all cases of law that come before your Lordships, you require proofs from the mouths of competent witnesses, that the life, the health, the liberty, or the property of some individual, has been injured. You always require the appearance of two parties before you, the person who has been injured, if life be not taken, and the person who has done the injury. If proof be shewn to your Lordships, that some person has been injured, and that the wrong done is brought home to another before you, as his action, you then give the injured party damages from the property of the other, or you inflict the pains which the law warrants on him who has done the wrong. This is all right and intelligible: this is law that relates to physical grounds, and that is supported or defensible upon moral grounds. But I would ask your Lordships, who have I injured, does any one stand before your Lordships as my accuser, to say that he has been injured by me? Will any member of the Vice Society stand forward as my individual accuser, and say I have done him an injury? One of your Lordships was once a member of this prosecuting, this persecuting society; does his Lordship feel that I have done him an injury in the publication of the pamphlets before the Court?

Then, if I have done no one injury, if no unpaid individual stands in this Court as my accuser, upon what moral grounds can your Lordship inflict any kind of punishment upon me? I may be told that the King is the person injured, and that he is my accuser, but all this we know to be fiction, because though prosecuted in the name of the King, it is notorious to your Lordships, that I have done him no physical or moral harm. The duty of your Lordships is to judge of actions not opinions. Expressing opinions of any established institution, or selling a printed pamphlet containing such expressions, cannot be construed to be an individual injury arising from malicious motives; because, in all public institutions, every individual in the society has, or ought to have, an equal interest. An interest of the same import to the person who may disapprove, as to him who may approve. It will be said, or it has been said, that I have been tried and found guilty upon the principles of the common law of the land. This I am also prepared to dispute. It was lately asserted by the present Solicitor General, in the House of Commons, that the common law of the land had no other foundation than common sense, and that they were synonymous terms. Your Lordships will support this proposition of the common law, and you will not venture to say that it is opposed to common sense, nor that it deviates from it in any shape or degree. Now then, I shall apply the principles of common sense to this prosecution: if they will not tally, if I show your Lordships that they are opposed to each other, I think, and I should hope your Lordships will so think, that I shall have shewn reasons sufficient why I ought to be dismissed from this Court without punishment. I will lay it down as an axiom, that there is no kind of law, either statute or common, but such as is, or can be well understood by your Lordships. What you do not or cannot understand, can have no relation to law, because you cannot administer upon just ground as law, that of which you do not understand or comprehend the bearing, and to which you cannot attach one rational idea, or an idea that is supported by a reference to any known existence. If, then, Christianity has any connection with the common law, it must have a connection with common sense, which, I think, I have fairly proved to your Lordships, that it has not; or if I have not yet proved it, I can adduce other arguments for that purpose, against which I challenge an answer and discussion.

Words are the signs of all ideas, and of all legal, literary, political or religious knowledge; and unless the words we