le and refined ruse of a bitter enemy of that
church. At a moment when the feelings of the Dissenters are wrought up
to intense excitement by a sense of wrong from grievances unredressed,
an individual of that class who teach from the pulpit that a man who
lacketh charity lacketh every thing, has had the daring effrontery to
vomit forth a mass of rancorous scurrility against the whole Dissenting
body, especially its teachers, applying to them epithets proscribed in
almost every species of polemical warfare, except that carried on by
Carlile and his party, detailing disgusting anecdotes thinly veiled in
the decency of a Latin translation, excluding them from the pale of
Christianity, and proclaiming that "the curse of God rests heavily upon
them!" It is to be regretted that there are a few individuals of the
letter-writer's class, men who have exchanged the sword for the gown, or
who desire to transform the pen into the sword; but these intolerant
zealots, so long as their acts are not countenanced by their superiors,
do but little mischief. The letters in question, however, have been
specifically recommended in a note appended to the late charge of the
Bishop of London, as "containing a great deal of useful information and
sound reasoning, set forth with a little too much warmth of invective
against the Dissenters." Mr. Lushington, who avows himself a member of
the church of England, has had the candour and manliness to step forward
and publicly vindicate the Dissenters from the effects of such a
recommendation of such a work, suggesting, at the same time, "some
political and Christian considerations, which should operate to secure
for those calumniated persons a little more conciliatoriness from their
opponents, and a far greater measure of justice from their judges." He
shows what the Dissenters have done, and are doing, to supply the
deficiencies of the established church; he disproves the accusation
that the Dissenters, as a body, seek to destroy that church, which
would be repugnant to the system to which they owe their distinction
as a religious body; and he suggests that, if the religious wants of
the community are to be adequately supplied, it must be by one of three
plans--either by the establishment and other sects, as at present; or by
the establishment alone, all other sects being merged, comprehended, or
put down; or by the episcopal church and other denominations, without an
establishment. He assumes that th