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tion pointed out in his Majesty's proclamation.. From this statement of facts, you will see that your pretty anecdote from the arch infidel Voltaire is quite out of place:-indeed, on your own conclusions, it is altogether irrelevant. For what analogy is there between the French people judging that the Pope has no right to dethrone kings, and an Englishman thinking that if a magistrate should refuse to execute the laws of the land, he might be called to account for his misconduct in a higher court than that in which he presides himself? Are you ignorant, Sir, that no man can transgress the laws of this country with impunity? Is it not a well-known excellency in the British constitution, that the most exalted individual, next to majesty itself, is amenable to the law for misdemeanors ?-But enough on this subject. Let me only add, that as the solicitor to whom the Society applied to manage their business did not think it improper to exhibit the letters that passed between himself and the Society on that occasion, there can of course bè no impropriety in their more extensive publication, as an appendix* to this work. The Public will then judge for itself where the truth is to be found; and I hope, Sir, that, if ever you undertake to write on the subject again, you will be careful to state facts and to use arguments.-I conclude my ob

* See Appendix, No. 2.

servations with remarking, that though the Reading Society for the Suppression of Vice may for the present have failed in accomplishing the important and desirable objects it had in view, it will, notwithstanding this, never become contemptible. May its opposers remember and weigh an important sentence recorded in those Scriptures which never have been, and which never can be, broken:- Them that honour me, I will honour; but they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed."

Having made a few observations on your sentiments respecting the sabbath, allow me to notice what you have asserted in relation to Good-Friday." We are all the children of opinion, and are easily led by high-sounding words. You and I remember the time when Good-Friday was considered as a day peculiarly set apart for sports and pastimes; but of late years, one of our bishops having, at the end of nearly eighteen centuries after the crucifixion, discovered, for the first time, that it ought, on the contrary, to be kept as a day of fasting and prayer, the discovery was echoed in every quarter; the holiness of the day has since been annually recommended by the public functionaries, who must be allowed to be great proficients in the knowledge of the Scriptures, and without further investigation adopted by the nation at large." Those of your readers, Sir, who are accustomed to observe days, will think that you have here out-done all your out-doings. Who

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could have imagined it possible that he could have found a person from Berwick on Tweed to the Land's End, who could have mistaken Good-Friday for Shrove-Tuesday? But this is actually the case with the Stranger in Reading. Why, Sir, you are thinking of the pancakes, the cock-fighting, cock-throwing, and all the other carnival enjoyments and pastimes of Shrove-Tuesday. You have actually transferred these virtuous, humane, and rational amusements from the latter to the former-mentioned day; and then raised up a bishop in the conclusion of the eighteenth century to discover, for the first time, that, instead of a day of pastime, Good-Friday ought to be observed as a day of fasting and prayer. As you sometimes seem desirous of being considered as a good churchman, you cannot object to two short citations from one of the standard books of our venerable establishment.

"The Tuesday after Quinquagesima Sunday is generally called Shrove-Tuesday, a name given it from the old Saxon words shrive, or shrove, which in that language signifies to confess; it being a constant custom amongst the Roman-Catholics to confess their sins on that day, in order to receive the blessed sacrament, and thereby qualify themselves for a more religious observation of the holy Lent immediately ensuing. But this, in process of time, was turned into a custom of invitations, and taking their leave of flesh and other dainties, and

afterwards, by degrees, into sports and merriments, which still in that church make up the whole business of the Carnival.

Good-Friday received its name from the blessed effects of our Saviour's sufferings, which are the ground of all our joy, and from those unspeakable GOOD things, he hath purchased for us by his death, whereby the blessed Jesus made expiation for the sins of the whole world, and by the shedding his own blood obtained eternal redemption for us."

"The commemoration of our Saviour's sufferings hath been kept from the very first ages of Christianity, and was always observed as a day of the strictest fasting and humiliation; not that the grief and affliction they then expressed did arise from the loss they sustained, but from a sense of the guilt of the sins of the whole world, which drew upon our blessed Redeemer that painful and shameful death of the cross."*

I am, Sir, &c.

See Wheatly on the Common Prayer.

LETTER IV.

SIR,

I PROCEED to offer some animadversions on the principal topics of your fifth letter, which, in the judgment of every one who has any knowledge of the subjects you have attempted to discuss, must be considered as a compound of error, ignorance, misrepresentation, falsehood, and malevolence. You may startle, Sir, at such a charge ; but a simple exhibition of the truth will substantiate it.

In attempting to offer strictures on your remarks concerning the different sects and divisions of religion which have obtained in times past, and which still continue to prevail, in this town, I am at a loss to know how to begin. Your mistakes, your misrepresentations, your sophistical arguments, and your false charges, are so uncommonly numerous, that it may safely be asserted, that in many of your pages and paragraphs thev abound in a quintuple proportion to your sentences. Many particulars therefore must be omitted, and others only slightly noticed.

You first speak of the sects which subsisted in

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