JET. 43.] ON QUEEN CAROLINE. 433 



doing penance for her sins. Till this had been done, 

 I would never have defiled my hands by placing the 

 sacred symbols in hers ; and this she would have been 

 compelled to do in those good old days when Church 

 discipline was in pristine vigour and activity/ 



" Gentlemen, the author of this scandalous, this in- 

 famous libel, is a minister of the gospel. The libel is 

 a sermon the act of publication was preaching it 

 the place was his church the day was the Sabbath 

 the audience was his flock. Far be it from me to 

 treat lightly that office of which he wears the outward 

 vestments, and which he by his conduct profanes. A 

 pious, humble, inoffensive, charitable minister of the 

 gospel of peace is truly entitled to the tribute of affec- 

 tion and respect which is ever cheerfully bestowed. 

 But I know no title to our love or our veneration 

 which is possessed by a meddling, intriguing, unquiet, 

 turbulent priest, even when he chooses to separate his 

 sacred office from his profane acts; far less when he 

 mixes up both together when he refrains not from 

 polluting the sanctuary itself with calumny when he 

 not only invades the sacred circle of domestic life 

 with the weapons of malicious scandal, but enters the 

 hallowed threshold of the temple with the torch of 

 slander in his hand, and casts it flaming on the altar ; 

 poisons with rank calumnies the air which he espe- 

 cially is bound to preserve holy and pure making 

 the worship of God the means of injuring his neigh- 

 bour, and defiling by his foul slanders the ears, and 

 by his false doctrines perverting the minds, and by 

 his wicked example tainting the lives, of the flock 

 committed by Christ to his care ! 



" Of the defendant's motives I cay nothing. I care 



VOL. II. 2 E 



