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talks about praying to God, that he may be preserved from the galling yoke of Church Courts and their crushing burdens, he exhibits symbolum hereticorum! All the curses of Ernulphus will be poured upon his head for daring to dispute their infallibility of judgment, and their supremacy in jurisdiction, or, as the Associate Presbytery of Albany announce their claim, because he "manifests a want of respect and obedience to the courts of Christ's house, and treats the decisions of" antichristian "Judicatures and Ecclesiastical Courts not only with neglect, but also with open contempt." Ergo, as their renowned prototype, Gardiner, adjudged, "the naughty fellows must turn or burn."

COMMON FAME.

One of the most abominable and mischievous practices which modern "Church Courts" have stolen from the popish inquisitors, and which demonstrates incontestably that they are the strong castle of unrighteousness, and of the minor "mystery of iniquity," is this-their nefarious system of vilifying, criminating, and butchering an obnoxious individual by means, and under the name and shield of that notorious imp of darkness, Common Fame!

Among all the "strong delusions and the working of satan," which protestants have pilfered from "the scarlot colored Beast, and the great whore who is drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus," there is no other "prating with malicious words" so execrable. It is the nefarious and sanguinary impulse of the grand malicious adversary of mankind in

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all its atrocity, and without even the hypocritical endeavor at concealment. The only subject of marvel, is thisfrom what motives any sons of the Reformation could have adopted so nefarious a scheme; and by what chicanery protestants can have been induced to submit to that genuine inquisitorial process?

Nothing is more easy than for an envious, crafty man to disseminate effectually and yet so slily, as ever to remain undiscovered, the most mendacious and deadly reproach of one whom, as a supposed obstacle to his advantage and popularity, he would remove out of his way. He can loosen a hundred tongues, while neither of the second hand calumniators may be conscious of the prompter, or of the manœuvre, by which the retailer of the slander is unintentionally transformed into a partisan foe, a man who has never injured him, and whom he may still fancy that he esteems. In reference to an open-hearted minister of the gospel, especially, those sluices of reproach may be unclosed, until prejudice, passion, social attachments, and above all, hatred of a preacher's opposition to sin and faithful rebukes of the delinquent, will embody a combination of backbiters, who will of course become witnesses, and who will vociferously attest to circumstances to which nothing but infantile credulity and irreligious aversion would even for one moment listen. All which, it is also very probable, every member of the Church Court, before whom the preposterous and contradictory details at last are formally recited, is convinced must be a base and malignant fiction. Those Jewish predecessors of modern Ecclesiastical Judicatures who

strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel, were exactly copied in that respect by the Dominican inquisitors; and some protestants, unless their proceedings are completely falsified by themselves, have emulated their astounding and deceitful gullibility.

That Sanhedrim who sought for testimony, however much it was at variance with itself, and with truth, and decorum, to convict the Lord Christ and his apostles, have been followed exactly by the papal inquisitions and their Jesuistical-familiars, in their modes to insnare and condemn the innocent. Alas! the reformed Church Courts have often evinced, that the same spirit from the "prince of the power of the air" now worketh in other children of disobedience, than the myrmidons of the hierarchical court of Rome. Of that accursed Babylonian process, the principal characters were these-cupidity of wealth, enmity to truth, resolute injustice, and inexorable cruelty, all cemented by unrelenting perseverance.

The instruments were these-secret treachery, artful intrigues, unknown complainants, and torture to extort the confession of guilt in the person who was appointed to be plundered and starved to death in that terrestrial purgatory, "the dungeons of the holy office," or to be roasted at their infernal auto de fe. There is scarcely a contested process of common fame upon record, in which those horrors under different modifications have not been exhibited. The complaining traitor is unknown. The two-faced plotters are masked. The wily conspirators probably remain even unsuspected. The robbers of a man's reputation and means of subsistence, and the tor

mentors of his mind, heart, conscience, and family, watch all the "judicial procedures" with similar complacency to "the way of an adulterous woman," who is described by Agur, Proverbs xxx. 20—" She eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness." They laugh at the credulous disciples whom they deceive; and equally marvel and exult at their own adroit wiles, and the success of their subtil manœuvres.

The relation in which the accused stands to the Babylonian Church Court is this. They are prosecutors, witnesses, jury, and judges; but they cunningly enforce princes to become the executioners of the miserable victims. With the exception of actual incarceration of the person, and open confiscation of property, and the combustibles and smoke of the auto da fe, such are precisely the beginning, the middle, and the end of that modern religious persecution which is commenced in the name of our ecclesiastical "Judge Lynch," and which is carried on by the authority of that lawless tribunal, the inquisition; and which is consolidated by the lying testimony of that houseless "fugitive and vagabond," Common Fame; and which is consummated in all its horrible atrocities under the jurisdiction of the "Beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit, and shall go into perdition."

A reference to the Romish "directory for inquisitors" proves, that in all substantial points, the rules of modern Church Courts have been extracted from the papal bulls and decretals against the Christians who are "suspected of heretical pravity." As that afflictive subject is not comprehended even by the members of the churches who are

most interested, the nature of a process upon Common Fame shall be detailed.

It would be useless to unfold those mock trials, in which, from the first thought to the last word, the whole transaction was avowedly undertaken, under pretended ecclesiastical forms, to crush a staunch disciple of Christ, who had too much conscience to bow "the knees unto Baal:"-but three investigations shall be unveiled, as they were communicated by eye witnesses of the transactions. It is proper also to remark, that the cases occurred in distant parts of our country, among persons of different denominations, and at intervals of several years between each affair. To evince that the system itself is totally corrupt and incurable, it may be subjoined, that none of the craftsmen ever had any intercourse with each other, probably never saw any member of the Ecclesiastical Judicature who was not of their own sect, and most assuredly never heard of the other "judicial procedures."

The charge against all the three ministers implicated, was this-criminal and indecorous behaviour to women in their congregations; and to render the cases more exact, the female in each case was a member of the society in full communion. In two of the affairs, there was ample proof that the prime instigators of the uproar were neighboring preachers, and that their object was nearly the same, to procure the removal of the two ministers, that a pastoral vacancy might be made for a friend. The termination of both those cases was identical. The churches were deprived of their ministers, whose characters were seriously injured. The partisans of the then unsuspected

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