THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 



quarters of Protestantism, the demon of religious 

 persecution has again reared its head. The 

 council of state of the Pays de Vaud, at the in 

 stigation of tlv clergy, on January 15, 1825, 

 published a decree, &quot; p p ohibiting, under the 

 penalty of severe fines ana imprisonments, all 

 meetings for religious worship or instruction, 

 other than those of the Established Church :&quot; 

 and in the following May, another decree was 

 issued, which denounces &quot; fines, imprisonment, 

 or banishment, upon the most private kind of 

 religious assembly, or even the admission of a 

 single visiter to family worship.&quot; In pursuance 

 of these disgraceful laws, several ministers and 

 private Christians of high character for piety and 

 acquirements, have been banished from the Can 

 ton, some for one and some for two years cut 

 off from all means of subsistence, unless possess 

 ed of independent fortunes, and left perhaps to 

 starve and perish in foreign lands. If they re 

 turned before the expiration of their sentence, it 

 is said that death is the punishment to be inflict 

 ed. One poor man, a school-master, in the 

 principality of Neufchatel, has been condemned 

 to ten years banishment. He was brought out 

 from prison, tied with cords, and compelled to 

 kneel in the snow in the nnblic square to hear his 

 scr. tciicw read. His crime was, gathering toge 

 ther a few fellow Christians in his own house, 

 and there having the Lord s supper administer 

 ed by a regularly ordained minister!* 



And is England pure from the spirit of perse 

 cution and intolerance? Let us see. At Ken- 

 neridge in Dorsetshire a worthy and excellent 

 individual, belonging to the Wesleyan denomi 

 nation, had attended on a green, where 20 or 30 

 persons usually congregated, on a Sunday after 

 noon, to listen to the truths he thought it impor 

 tant to declare. The clergyman of the parish 

 approached with a retinue of servants, and com 

 manded him to desist. The preacher look no 

 notice o; the command and proceeded to read his 

 text. r l he clergyman then commanded the 

 tithing-mao to seize him. He was directed to 

 be conveyed to Wareham jail ; and to every 

 question the preacher put, as to the ground of his 

 being seized upon, the reverend and worthy cler 

 gyman only replied by the brandishing of his 

 stick. Instances have occurred in which clergy 

 men of the establishment have refused to bury 

 the dead. At Chidds Evcal, in Shropshire, the 

 child of a poor man was refused interment, and 

 the father was obliged to carry it six miles, be 

 fore it could be laid at rest in its mother earth. 

 Ai Catsfield, in SussMfa similar act of in 

 famy was committed. At the moment when the 

 bell had tolled, when the earth was to fall heavily 

 upon the coffin, containing the only remains of 

 the being that affection had endeared, and when 



See a pamphlet on this subject by Dr. Pye Smith. 

 =5ee also Cons- Mag. for June, 1825, and other peri- 

 Ik .1 works of that date. 



those who stood by needed all tLj .^if-v&amp;gt;lation3 

 that religion can supply at thij moment the 

 clergyman appeared, but advanced only to give 

 pain to the mourners, and to agonize a parent s 

 heart, by saying, &quot; Now that you have waited an 

 hour till it suited me to come, I will not inter 

 your child ! I did not know that you were Dis 

 senters take your child some where else take 

 it where you please but here it shall not lie ii,. 

 consecrated ground.&quot; And, in fact, they were 

 compelled to carry the child away eleven miles 

 from the abode of its parents, and from the place 

 that gave it birth, before it could find repose in 

 its kindred dust. At Mevagissey, in the county 

 of Cornwall, the vicar refused to allow the corpse 

 of a Dissenter to be brought within the church, 

 and, therefore, read the burial service in the open 

 air; but, in consequence of which, he read only 

 a part of that service, and omitted the most 

 beautiful portion. Such a power appears to be 

 conceded to the clergy by the laws of the church ; 

 but the spirit which gave it existence is deeply to 

 be deplored, as the spirit of bigotry and intole 

 rance. At \Vellingborough, a clergyman, in op 

 position to a custom which had been established 

 for sixty years, issued orders, that no bell should 

 toll when a Dissenter expired. He boldly avow 

 ed, &quot; that he never would permit the passing bell 

 to be rung for a Dissenter, even in the event of 

 an interment in the church-yard ; that whilst he 

 held the curacy, no bell of his church should 

 ever toll for a Dissenter ; and that he would not 

 even permit the bells to ring for a marriage where 

 the parties were Dissenters.&quot; In reference to 

 this case, an appeal was made to the Bishop of 

 Peterborough, who wrote a long letter on the 

 subject, and defended the conduct of this Well- 

 ingborough curate. At Newport Pagnel, two 

 persons of decent appearance, teachers of Bap 

 tist Societies, were colled ing subscriptions for 

 the erection of a new place of worship. Aftei 

 arriving at the residence of the parish clergyman, 

 they were taken before a clerical magistrate, who 

 upon the oath of the other clergyman, that they 

 were rogues and vagrants, committed them to 

 Aylesbury jail ; where they were confined for 

 three weeks in common with the basest felons } 

 among convicted thieves of the most abandoned 

 character; nay, more, they were sentenced to 

 the tread-mill, and kept at hard labour there, 

 though, during the whole time, one of them was 

 afflicted with spitting of blood. Their papers 

 were seized upon ; their money was taken from 

 them ; and by means of it the expense of sending 

 them to prison was defrayed.* 



All the above-stated instances, and many 

 others of a similar description, occured within 

 the limits of the year 1824 ; and every year since 



* The reader will find a more particular detail of 

 these cases, in the &quot;Address of John Wilka, Esq at 

 the Fourteenth Anniversary of the Protestant Bo- 

 ciety for the Protection of religious Liberty, in 

 May, 1825, 



