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the summer. From whence it was plain, that a regard for the honour and dignity of the church of England had not induced its spiritual Ministers to put a stop to so shameful a violation of public decency. In the month of September, I, therefore, conveyed another of these advertisements to the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the following letter to his Grace. At which time I also laid before the Archbishop a copy of my third letter to Sir W. Scott.

MY LORD,

Surrey-street, Sept. 1, 1808.

In the report, which I had the honour to lay before your Grace, of my application to the Court of King's Bench, were detailed the particulars of that ecclesiastical transaction, whereon, it is the purpose of my letters to your Vicar-general to suggest some remarks.

Concerning the intrinsic merits of my case, your Grace's opinion, the result of metropolitan wisdom and justice, was fully declared, in the first conversation, to which I had the honour of being admitted, in company with the Rev. Mr. Greene, of Marlingford.

The injury I complain of, has lain in the loss of that metropolitan protection, vouchsafed to my cause, in consequence of the just and liberal avowal, then made, of your Grace's sentiments, respecting it.-And which loss, involving the surrender of my cause, though so sanctioned, and, once, so protected, to the "wishes" of my opponents, I do chiefly attribute to the falsehood, so egregiously imposed on your Grace, by the denial of my ecclesiastical commission.

It having, by your Grace, been deemed inexpedient to listen to the official evidence I had obtained of the falsehood, so asserted by your proper officers; as, likewise, unadvisable to comply with my request, for a public hearing of my case-I have been compelled to adopt this extrajudicial mode, both of stating that falsehood, and of detecting its motives.

That the justice of my cause, as well as the propriety and moderation of my conduct, had, once, the sanction of your Grace's approbation, I shall ever proudly remember. Neither will the efforts I have made to obtain for a cause, so approved, a legal and public hearing, be ever recalled to my mind, without exciting, and confirming, therein, a consciousness of duty, honourably fulfilled.

That a regard for the Church's honour and dignity, although the pretended, has not been the real motive for my exclusion from the Church's courts and offices, I have already demonstrated; First, by shewing that the means, (under the acknowledged inadequacy of legal ones) resorted to by your Grace's ministers, to effect that purpose, have been such as could not promote honour and dignity any where, much less the honour and dignity of the Church of England ;-secondly, by shewing, that so long as the Church allows to remain unheeded and uncorrected, those vices and immoralities, which, as publicly and notoriously existing, to the grief and shame of her friends, to the triumph of her enemies, I have thought it no breach of moral obligation, specifically to point out to your Grace, so long, must the alleged" impropriety” of permitting a clergyman to exercise a canonical employment remain unfounded, and inadmissible.-In addition to the several extracts from the public prints, I have already, in support of this latter argument, had the honour to lay before your Grace, I shall cite a paragraph from the Herald of this day.

"The grand match of cricket, which has taken place on Richmond Green, will be decided on Tuesday next. The Rev. Lord Frederic Beauclerk is expected to be the winner.'

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Morning Herald, Sept. 1, 1808**

Were I, my Lord, to venture the question, from whether of the two, the honour of the Church, and the cause of religion, be likely to suffer most ;-from a permission granted (as authorized by the laws) to an unbeneficed and unofficiating Deacon to gain a decent livelihood, by an honourable and canonical profession; or, from the indulgence enjoyed by a Priest, and even a beneficed Priest, (in violation of the laws) week

after week, and year after year, to advertise himself, as a player of cricket for 1000 guineas a gameenriching or beggaring himself, thereby, as chance may determine,-I should, from the only answer I can, anywise, foresee to such a question, of necessity conclude, and, suffering, as I do, should feel myself justified in saying, that, by these repeated statements in the public prints, it stands unequivocally proved to be, in the present times, and in the present state of the church's discipline, an easier and safer matter for the son of a Duke to violate her laws, than it is, for a Doctor and Professor of Civil Law to seek their protection.

While thus impugning the plea of the church's honour and dignity, set up in defence of my exclusion from my canonical office and profession, I have yet abstained from availing myself of those far stronger proofs which I have already privately pointed out to your Grace.

Conscious as I, my Lord, feel, that a genuine regard for the honour and the interests of the church has alone restrained me from contrasting those existing facts with the allegation of your Grace's Ministers, I still think it incumbent on me to observe that, having vouchers for all the assertions made by me to your Grace, I am prepared publicly to maintain them, should a command from your Grace make it my duty so to do. I am, my Lord, with profound veneration, &c. &c. &c.

Some few years since, a number of serious and religious men were led to observe the awful signs of the times, and perceiving how manifestly the "arrows of God were abroad in the world,” (taking as their mark even the high and mighty of the earth) were forcibly struck by the prevailing state of vice and wickedness in the present age. These religious and pious men determined, therefore, on lending their aid to stem the overwhelming torrent of profligacy and crimes. The existing laws of the church had, it is true, already provided the means, and charged it on her Ministers, as their bounden and sworn duty, to prosecute and to punish those open violations of divine and human laws; such, for instance, as a profanation of the Sabbath, drunkenness, adultery, and all manner of uncleanness; nor is it alone over the clergy that those laws of the church have cognizance, superintendence, and jurisdiction, but over every rank and class (high and low) of the community. Still was it observed, by these religious men, that the laws of the church, being no longer put in force by the Ministers of her spiritual discipline, instituted, for the "welfare and salvation of souls," those laws, efficient even, and all-sufficient, as they, in themselves are, were yet become ineffectual and insufficient, while allowed to remain unenforced and unemployed; in consequence whereof these very respectable persons set themselves to hunt out such violators of God's commandments, of the church's laws, and of the state's decrees, and to bring them before the secular tribunals, for the punishment due to their crimes. One chief obstacle to the salutary purposes of the society, so formed, has arisen from its want of any legal and proper authority, as well as from the inadequacy of the tribunals before which the delinquents have been brought by them-the constitution having, elsewhere, provided for the detection and punishment of such offenders against the laws of God and man. That men, influenced as these serious and religious men are, by a zeal for maintaining the observance of religious ordinances, and for preventing those notorious acts of sin

and wickedness, bringing down the wrath of heaven upon a guilty land-that men thus actuated, and coming forward, also, without fee or reward, in aid of the church's sacred discipline, and to perform the duty of others, largely paid for the same, should become respecters of persons, eye-servants, and men-pleasers, cannot be supposed. If then these religious men have, in no instance, yet brought to shame and condign punishment such violators of God's commandments, as well as of the parliament's and church's laws, as have notoriously and publicly existed among the higher orders of the people, and even among those nearest to the person of the church's august head, anointed with the holy oil of sovereign and spiritual supremacy-such men having, on the contrary, been suffered to live in the open and unrestrained practice of adultery, and other crimes, which it is the sworn duty of every churchwarden of a parish to present for punishment—it cannot be supposed but that these religious men have acted (or, rather, have abstained from acting) under a persuasion of its being held by the church's Ministers, solemnly pledged to discharge that duty, altogether unnecessary, or unadvisable, to put the church's laws in force against these high and mighty breakers of her laws. Very naturally and justly might it be said by the members of the society here alluded to-"if the church's holy and spiritual Ministers be not led, by a regard for the church's honour and dignity, and by an earnest desire of averting the wrath of heaven, to present, prosecute, and punish such great offenders, it cannot consist with propriety, or with a due regard to EXPEDIENCY, that we should officiously interfere, unauthorised and unempowered as we are." Such is the language which I must imagine to be used by the members of a society, avowedly instituted for the suppression of vice, profligacy, and crimes.

I, on the other hand, who, by eleven years of "devotion to the study of The King's Ecclesiastical Laws of England," have learnt the nature and extent of ecclesiastical authority, and of the power possessed by the church's spiritual Ministers for putting a stop, by lawful means, to these public and scandalous violations of divine and human laws, and for promoting thereby the church's honour and dignity, as well as "the welfare and salvation of immortal souls,”-— I have, for the reason above assigned, (being that of overturning their unfounded plea), pointed out to those ecclesiastical Ministers, with whom the correction of such abuses does constitutionally lie, their notoriously unpunished and unrestrained existence.

The representations, humbly and dutifully made by me, in the summer of last year, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, were of no avail, towards putting a stop to the scandal and offence excited by a clergyman of the church of England remaining unrestrained from advertising himself to be seen by the public, for sixpence each, exhibiting himself as a notorious public cricket-player and

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gambler. The advertisement not only was continued, at intervals, through the whole of that, but has been repeated in the summer lately passed. In the month of July last I therefore cut one out of a daily public newspaper, circulating through the kingdom, and laid it before his Grace. It was as follows:

CRICKET.

BRITISH PRESS, July 15th, 1809.

A GRAND MATCH will be played, in Lord's Cricket-Ground, St. Mary-le-bone, on MONDAY NEXT, and the following Day, between a Select Eleven of England, against Four First Chosen, and Seven other Players, for One Thousand Guineas a Side.-The Wickets to be pitched at Eleven o'clock.

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An alteration having taken place in the Laws of Cricket, (but none in the Laws of the Church), the new Laws to be had of Mr. Lord.

Admittance Sixpence.-No Dogs admitted.-Cricket-bats, Balls, and Stumps, sold.

A Marquee to let, will hold one hundred persons.

I also accompanied the advertisement, thus submitted for the Archbishop of Canterbury's inspection, with the following letter to his Grace.

MY LORD,

London, July 15th, 1809.

While venturing to lay before your Grace, by the means of an extract from the British Press newspaper, a further proof of the great latitude indulged even to beneficed clergymen, in matters not interfering with the monopoly enjoyed by your Grace's spiritual Ministers, I have, by this further contrast between the things which the clergy are, and those which they are not, permitted to do, afforded to your Grace a further demonstration of the hardship I am suffering, as was so indulgently, at one time, and so liberally, acknowledged by your Grace.

I am encouraged to hope that I shall not, in taking this step, appear justly chargeable with an intention of offence to any one, much less to your Grace, of whose just, liberal, and enlightened wishes and endeavours in my behalf, the deepest and fullest conviction will ever remain indelibly impressed on my mind.

I am, my Lord, with profound veneration, &c. &c. &c.

It cannot have escaped the attention even of the most casual observer, that, while the great body of the clergy are most strictly observant in their habits and manners of the church's laws and ordinances, honouring thereby themselves, and becoming also their profession, there are others of that spiritual body who, living with impunity in a constant, habitual, and unrestrained violation of canonical restraints, are sometimes led to violate also those temporal laws, which, how

ever, do not suffer themselves to be infringed with a like impunity. Hence it arises that, in consequence of this double violation of the laws, the church of England's clergy are occasionally seen dragged before the secular tribunals, for such offences, as they could not have committed, if the church's laws had been kept in a due state of activity and vigour. For a proof of this assertion, I need go no farther back than to the last assizes holden for the county of Hertford; which assizes furnished the melancholy and disgraceful spectacle of a clergyman of the church of England* sued by his neighbour, and that neighbour his own brother, for entering, in defiance of the laws, forcibly on his premises, and doing him wanton and wilful damage, while following his unlawful profession of an hunter. A litigation not only so unchristianlike, but so hostile to every feeling of social and civilized humanity, must have given great scandal and cause of offence to every member of the church of England truly zealous for that church's honour and dignity, as it also cannot fail of degrading that church in the eyes of all other christian churches. This sad and grief-ful case I laid before the Archbishop of Canterbury, as an additional argument against the plea of the church's honour and dignity, resorted to by my spiritual opponents for the support of their illegal monopoly.

MY LORD,

London, July 29th, 1809.

At the assizes, last week, holden for the county of Hertford, a clergyman of the church of England having been convicted of an injury done to his neighbour, and that neighbour his own brother, by the exercise of that clerical person's occupation as an hunter, he was sentenced to pay one shilling damages. This ferocious and boisterous profession being, by the laws of the church, expressly forbidden to the clergy, under pain of excommunication, I therefore humbly venture to submit it to your Grace, that if those laws could be duly enforced, as they formerly were, and as they ought to be now, an obstacle would thereby be placed in the way of the clergy being thus dragged before the secular tribunals for offences, bringing a great scandal on our holy church, and on the Christian religion. Our forefathers were, my Lord, above measure jealous of the interference of temporal authority in punishing the irregularities of the clergy. But if the church's laws and ordinances are no longer kept in force, so as to prevent her holy, spiritual, and beneficed Ministers, from violating the law of the land, as well as her own sacred canons, the consequence must inevitably be, that of the more active and vigilant exertion of secular jurisdiction for maintaining the peace and order of society, as well as a due respect to the rights of civil property.

I venture also, in stating this matter for the consideration of your Grace's high metropolitan wisdom, to suggest the same in further corroboration of my arguments overturning the plea, set up by your spiritual Ministers, for my exclusion from my canonical office and profession, but which was so justly and so liberally disavowed by your Grace; and which plea I, therefore, under the high sanction of your Grace's authority, (and with the further support of the manifold arguments I already have, together with those I shall hereafter venture most respectfully to submit) do not hesitate to pronounce, instead of a just and true plea, a false and unfounded pretence. With profound veneration, I am, my Lord, &c. &c. &c.

I forbear at present to adduce any further arguments of a like description, lest I should convince both my reader and myself that my opponents are in the right, and that the administration of spiritual discipline, for the "welfare and good of souls," * The Reverend and Honourable Mr. Capel, by the Earl of Essex.

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