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No. 13. VOL. 4.] LONDON, Friday, Sept. 25, 1829. [PRICE 6d.

INFIDEL MISSION.-EIGHTEENTH BULLETIN.

London, Sept. 24, 1829.

DURING our stay in London, we shall fill up those reports of our proceedings in the country, which the time and circumstances would not allow of being done during our peregrinations, and which can be so much better done after a calm, deliberate, and dispassionate view of all the proceedings. It is a loss to the world, that every word uttered by us and against us, in our orations, lectures, and discussions, during the four months' tour, has not been reported and published, by impartial persons. My report will be deemed partial, my memory will not serve me to record all that happened, and further, my style of description is too concise to do justice to all that passed. This I can vouch for, that the talent of Infidelity was never before so fully and so finely brought into action. The speech of the Rev. Robert Taylor in the Gothicroom at Liverpool, in reply to Mr. F. B. Wright, the Unitarian. preacher, who had set up as adamantine pillars, whose base was the centre of the earth and whose top reached to heaven, the Christian institutions of the sabbath and the sacrament, and which were sufficient evidences of the correct historical foundation of the Christian religion, if all others were deficient or absent, would, if published, be worth a sovereign. The newspaper-people are solutely afraid to report our language, and they are afraid because it is powerful against the religion of the country. They know it cannot be answered: they know it is convincing: they know it is a specimen of unalloyed talent emanating from great research, deep thought, and honest application of the powers of the human mind: they see Christian advocates contemptible before it, and if they do notice us at all, they go and lie for malice and vexation. Some of the fellows who are themselves Infidels, such as Foster

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet Street. No. 18. Vol. 4.

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of Leeds, and Prentice of Manchester, have vilified us with the secretly-acknowledged hope of extending the circulation of their papers among the Dissenters and other religious people. They were virulent toward us, sheerly because they thought our opponents were not the most numerous party and yet these fellows call themselves reformers, and profess to seek the amelioration of the condition of the people. They are bad men and a part of a vile gang of politicians calling themselves reformers; but who are in reality doing more mischief in the country than all the persons in office of whom they complain. There is Harmer, the attor-. ney, of London, joint proprietor of the Weekly Dispatch, known to have been an Infidel of thirty years' standing, and the boon companion of a coterie of known and secretly-avowed Infidels, allows his paper to be the medium of the most vile misrepresentations and scurrilities that can be heaped on myself and brother apostle, and more vile than we find in any other paper. This fellow is also a pretended reformer, and will toast the health of Thomas Paine, and talk about civil and religious liberty. There is nothing in England so much wanting reform as the characters of those who call themselves parliamentary or political reformers. Look at Cobbett, see what a mass of contradiction, bad passion, bad principle, and quarrel with acquaintances that man is: and he is a true specimen of the class of persons of whom he is counted the head and leader. He will never do any good in this country, as all hope of self-reform is with him out of the question: and the reason is, because he and they who have associated themselves with him, have never rested on any honest, honourable, and wellunderstood principles, in advocating a reform. The first great principle of radical reform is to free the mind from superstition and to prevent the superstitious education of youth. The mind once set right here will never work politically wrong, will never quietly submit to oppression, and without this there can be no liberty. Free the public mind from superstition, and all other necessary changes will naturally follow; but without that freedom there will be no other freedom. A slaye to a superstition is a slave in every other sense, he is radically a slave and a fit object for oppression or tyranny, as circumstances may offer the

means.

The excitement which we produced in Lancashire brought us a scurrilous notice from some few papers; but, excepting the Bolton Chronicle, not one of them did us the least share of jus

We were, according to their reports, put down in argument by cobblers and weavers, and fellows who were ignorant enough to be exceedingly religious; and with all this putting down, not one competent person stood out to meet us fully and fairly upon the terms of our challenge. How readily would they do it if they could. Greasy-coated, drunken fellows, who report for or edit the country papers, at fifteen or twenty shillings per week, can, in

their columns, set us down as ignorant and illiterate, while they are incapable of putting forth or understanding an original idea. Their papers, edited with the scissars, made up with scraps from the London papers, a bit of poetry in one corner, and a few pro vincial vulgarisms in the shape of correspondence and domestic chit-chat, in another, are an hebdomadal round of sameness and nothingness, as innocent of talent or original idea as a preacher of the gospek The fellows connected with those papers call themselves literary men; men of letters they certainly are, but with out a knowledge how to arrange them so as to strike out any thing that has not been said before and ready to their scissars. To make an editor of a provincial newspaper, it is enough for a man to be able to read. He is not required to be able to write. Some of them heard from Mr. Taylor such talent in oratory and language as they never heard before, yet not one of them was so situated as to be capable of reporting him fairly. However, we must and cannot fail to triumph over them, and then the poor creatures may have the satisfaction of remembering that they did all they could to crucify better and cleverer men than Jesus of Nazareth, and in much the same spirit as is falsely attributed to the Jews with relation to that figment of history.

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Throughout our late tour, and for some time past, we have asserted the superiority of the Pagan religion and the Pagan peo ple over the Christian religion and Christian people. A circumstance that has occurred since my return supports and illustrates this, and has left on my mind the assurance of a growing knowledge on this head. On Monday evening, I was visited by a Peruvian gentleman, whose business was to get me to publish some account of his country before its conquest by the Spaniards, and the introduction of the Christian religion. Before that time, he says, the Peruvians were a happy and well-governed people; and since that time, they have been a miserable, deget nerate, and a degraded people; so that the conquest and Christian religion together may be said to have ruined that country. Can the same thing be said for any country that was ever conquered by the Pagans? The Peruvian gentleman had not left me many minutes, before a stranger called to say, that a gentleman, lately from America, whom I knew, was on his death-bed, and that he very much wished to see me, and to have my assurance, that I would preserve and publish his laboured compilation, on the great superiority of practical morals among the Pagan over those among the Christian world. I called on him on Tuesday morning, and promised him I would do so. He assured me that it was all he wished to be satisfied about before he died. This gentleman was a perfect materialist, and has lately published a book in New York, entitled THE BIBLE OF REASON. I saw him a robust middle-aged man about two years ago, and now most unexpect edly thrown into a consumption, and about prematurely to be cut

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off from life. He repined not, he feared not, but calmly said it cannot be helped. These were the only words which dropped from him in relation to his prospect of death. His peace of mind, in having my promise to preserve and extend a memorial of him in his works, was evident, assured that such was the only salvation that was to him worth a thought. I confess, it was a painful sight, to see a man of talent, and a useful man dying so young; but he was as calm and composed as myself. We talked about life, as we knew there was nothing worth talking about after death. Here was no prayer, no psalm-singing, no bewailing, not a tear, not a murmur, not a complaint. It was a dying philosopher on whom I looked: and though I wished him longer life, and he perhaps wished it, neither of us feared to look on death. "Death is nothing, and nothing after death." The thought of it never moves me, for I never think it worth the thought.

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On my return from the dying philosopher, I had put into my hands, a volume just published, entitled "An apology for the Life and Character of the celebrated Prophet of Arabia, Mohamed the Illustrious" by Godfrey Higgins, Esq., of Skellow Grange, near Doncaster. This volume asserts with proofs, the superiority of the character of Mohamed, and the Mohamedan religion, over that of Jesus Christ and the Christian religion. It shows a very important historical fact, that the first converts to the Mohamedan religion were Christians, and that such was the corrupt state of the Christian church and religion in that day, that the reform which Mohamed introduced, was absolutely necessary, and nothing more than a purification of the Christian religion. Mr. Thomas Shepherd, of Huddersfield, will do well to read this book, to correct himself, where I perhaps, failed to convince him in the statement, that Mohamedanism was first made up of converts from among the Christians, which he denied. I maintain it as an historical fact, that the Christian religion was not made up at first of Jewish converts, nor did it ever fairly convert a Jew from first to last; but the Mohamedan religion was made up of Christians at first, and has frequently converted Christians where an opportunity offered.

I thought the coincidence curious, that within twenty-four hours, I should have three such distinct and unconnected assurances of the superiority of all other religion-over the Christian, and of the very rapid decay of respect for the Christian. My exIerience assures me, that the Christian religion is most rapidly &oing down in this country, and that the period is not far distant, when it will receive its great and final crash in England. Our lafidel Mission will accelerate the period of this crash, and I begin to think, that I shall certainly live to see it: if so, I shall live the greatest man that ever lived in the world. I never before filt so high a degree of energy for the task in which I am engaged. 1 see by every day's caperience, that no Christian can stand before me in argument on the meris u. Mácii religion. I see them

catching at straws like drowning men, and counting the mere raising of a clamour, as a victory gained in disputation, resisting even day-light conviction, and putting on the most savage manners, when they see the weakness of their cause. I see all this connected with the Christian religion, and I cannot but see its rapid decline.

Delenda est Carthago, and good bye to the Devil.-R. C.

RETURN OF THE INFIDEL MISSION.

17, Carey-street, Lincoln's-inn, Sunday, Sept. 20, 1829.

WE left Huddersfield at 6 o'clock in the morning of Friday the 18th instant, and arrived in Nottingham at 2 o'clock of that day, where, in the evening we entertained as many friends as could be convened on so short a notice, (about forty) who had subscribed to my support during my unjust imprisonment, and who therefore could not with propriety be passed by without the due expression of our gratitude. They are chiefly poor men; but estimating their feelings and services to our GREAT AND GLORIOUS CAUSE, in proportion to their means and power, they have done great things: they have felt warmly, they have served faithfully.

Were the same proportion of doing, to means and power of doing, to obtain universally among our friends, the luxuriance of our success would overgrow the sap of our deservings, and virtue would be a weed.

There's nobody would draw gloomier inferences than I, from the character and extent of the utmost patronage we can boast, if looking into the world's history past or present, there could be pointed out any great or meritorious object that had numbered the wealthy or influential in society, among its early supporters. It seems to be a law of history, that all great results should arise from small beginnings. Had it been, that our commissariat had been efficient, our ammunition equal to our charge, our means to our need, our support to our position, our encouragement to our toil-the reckoning would tell against us. But as it has been, trutinatis omnibus, all things weighed, being weighed in the balances, we are not found wanting. We have produced great effects; greater than ever were produced in the world before by means so small as ours. We have agitated the country. We have set men on the business of thinking, and of enquiring into things that are not constituted to bear enquiry, to which, therefore, thinking will be dangerous, and enquiry must be fatal. We have caused great searchings of heart in Israel. Zion mourns, Hephziba is down in the mouth-Bethel is sick-and Ebenezer's pews, won't pay the rent."

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