The Federal mirror — Concord, N.H., 1795-08-14 00:00:00, page 1

Messrs. Russell & Davis,
The Beauties of Revelation newer appear so
conspicuous and engaging as when its doßriftes
are bappil, united with tbe dilates of Reason:
Tbe, both are equally tbe gift of God, and ought
consequently to go band in band with each otb
or ; and that f,fem of religious tenets in which
tbe, do mos perfeal, harmonize, will ever tend
" A FEW days after the Bishop of
Paria and hit vicars had set
the example of renouncing their cler
ical character, a curi* from a village
on the banks of the Rhone, followed
bv some of his parifanners, with an
offering of gold, silver, faints' chali
ces, rich veftmeots, &c. presented
himfelf at the bar of the house. The
fight of the gold put the convention
in very good humour, and the curi, a
thin, venerable looking man, with
gray hair, was ordered to (peak. I
came, f^d he, from (he village of—,
whereihe only good building Hand
ing (for the chatteau has been pulled
down) is a very fine church ; my pa
rishioners beg you will take it to
make a hofpitai for the sick & wound
ed of both parties, they being equally
our countrymen ; the gold and silver,
part of which we have brought you,
they entreat you will devote to die
service of the state, and that you will
cast the bells into cannon, to drive a
way its foreign invaders. For myfelf
I am come with great pleasure to re
sign my letters of ordination of induc
tion, and every deed of title, by which
I have been constituted a member of
your ecclesiastical polity. lam still
able to support myfelf with the labor
of my hands, and I beg you to believe
that I never felt sincerer joy than I
now do in- making this renunciation—
I have longed to fee this day $ i fee
it, and am glad.•
.When the old man had done (peak
ing, the applauses were immoderate.
You are an honest man, said they all
at once ; a brave fellow, you do not
believe in God ; and the president
advanced to give him the fraternal
embrace. The curi did not seem
greatly elated with these tokens of ap
probation; he retired back a few steps
and thus resumed his discourse : Be
fore you applaud my sentiments, it is
fit you should understand them; per
haps they may not entirely coincide
with your own. I rejoice in this day,
not because I wish to tee religion de
graded, but becaufe:l with co fee it
exalted and purified. By diffohring
its alliance with the state, you give it
dignity and independence ; you have
done it a piece of service which its
well withers would never have had
courage to render it, but which is the
only thing wanted to make it appear
in its genuine luftre and beauty, ^No
body will now fay of me, when I am
performing the offices of my religion,
it is his trade ; he is paid for telling
the people such and such ; he is hired
to keep up a ufeful piece of mumme
ry. They cannot now fay this, and
* A village curate.
tbe mos effiauall, to exalt and dignify tbe hu
man mind and render it ba„.
As an illuflration of this truth, I fend,ou tbe fol
lowing biflorical fad, which occurred during
tbe Revolution in France, and which for cer
tain reajons I have omitted to offer you till now.
B, inverting it in the Federal Mirror, you will
obligea PHILANTHROPIST.
VOLUME 111.
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FOR THE FEDERAL MIRROR.
Miscellany.
NEWHAMPSHIRE PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY E. RUSSELL AND M. DAVI'S, AT CONCORD.
to be called; but it it certainly not
oeceffary they should wear a particu
lar dress, or be appointed by state let
ters of ordination. My letter# of or,
dilation, are my zeal, my charity, my
ardent love for my dear children of
the village ; if I were more learned, I
should add my knowledge ; but alaslj
we all know very litt|e ; to man eve
ry error is pardonable, but want of
humility. ™ We have a public walk,
with a spreading elm tree atone end
of it, and a circle of green round it,
with^a convenient bench. Here 1
shall draw together the children a#
they are playing round me.- I fall
point to the vines laden with fruit, to
the orchard, to the herds of cattle
lowing round us, to the diftanc hills
stretching one behind another, and
they will ask me how these things
came .? I fball tell them all I know or
have heard from wife men who have
lived before me ; they will be pene
trated with love and veneration ; they
therefore 1 feel myfelf railed in my
own esteem, and shall (peak to them
with, confidence & franknef,, which
before this I never durst venture to
assume. We refigo, without reluc
tance, our gold and silver images and
embroidered vestments, because that
we have never found, that looking
upon gold or silver made the heart
more pure or the affections more hi!
venly: Wecan alfofpare our church
es ; for the heart that withes to lift it
felf up to God, will never be st a iofs
for a room to do it in ; but we can
not fpsre our religion, because, to tell
you the truth, we never had so much
occasion for it. I understand that you
accuse us priests of having told the
people a great many falfehoods. I
suppose this may have been the case,
but jill this day we have never been
allowed to enquire, whether the things
which we taught them were true or
not. You required us formerly to
receive them all without proof, and
you new would have us reject them
all without di(crimination. Neither
of these modes of conduct become
phi'ofophers/fuch as you would be
thought to be. lam going to em
ploy myfelf diligently, along with my
parifhoners, to fift the wheat from the
bran, the true from the falfe : If we
are not fuccefsful, we (hall be at least
sincere. Ido fear, indeed, that while
I wore those vestments which we have
brought you, and spoke [n the large
gloomy building which weWave giv
en up to you, I told my poor flock
many idle ftoriei. I cannot but hope,
however, that the errors we have fall
en into have not been very material,
fioce the village has in general been
sober and good ; the peasants are
honest, docile, and laborious ; the
hufbsods love their wives, and the
wives their husbands ; they are fortu
natery not too rich to be compassion
ate, and they have constantly relieved
the lick and fugitives of all parties,
whenever it has tain in their way. I
think, therefore, what I have taught
them cannot be so very much amiss.
You wane to extirpate priests ; but
will you hinder the ignorant from ap
plying for inftruaion, the unhappy
for comfort and hope, the unlearned
from looking up to the learned ? If
you do not, you will have priests, by
whatever name you will order them
C 0 NCO RD, FRIDAY, Aug asb l4, 1795..
will kneel, I (hall kneel with them ;
they will not be at my feet, but all of
us at the feet of that good Being,
whom we shall worship together ; and
thus they will receive within their ten
der minds, a religion. The old men
will come fometimei from having de
posited under the green sod of their
companions, and place themselves by
my fide ; they will look wifhfullv at
the turf, and anxiously inquire— ls be
gone forever? Shall we be soon like him?
Will no morning break over the tomb ?
When the wicked cea/e from troubling,
will the good cease from doing good ? —
We will talk of these things ; I will
comfort them ; I will tell them of the
goodness of God ; I will (peak to
them of a life to come; I will bid
them hope for a state of retribution.
In a clear night, when the ffars Aide
over our head, they will ask what
those bright bodies are, and by what
rules they rife and set ? And we will
converse about different forms of be
ing, and'diftant worlds, io the im
mensity of (pace, governed by the
fame laws, till we feel our minds rail
ed from what is groveling, and refin
ed from what is sordid. You talk of
Nature, this is Nature ; and if you
could at this moment extinguish re
ligion in the minds of all the world,
thus would it be kindled again. You
have changed our holy days ; you
have an undoubted right, as our civil
governors, so to do; it is very im
material whether they are kept once
in (even days or once in ten ; some,
however, you will leave us, and when
they occur, I shall tell those who
choose to hear me, of the beauty and
utility of virtue, and of the dignity of
upright condua. We shall talk of
good men who have lived in the
world, and of the doctrines they have
taught ; and if any of them have
been persecuted and put to death for
their virtue, we shall reverence their
memories the more—l hope in all
this there is no harm. There is a
book, out of which I have fomerimes
taught my people : It fays, we are to
love those who do us hurt, and to
pour oil and wine into the wounds of
a stranger ; it has enabled my chil
dren to bear patiently the spoiling of
their goods, and to give up their own
interest to the general welfare. I
think it cannot be a very bad book.
I with more of it had been read in
your town ; perhaps you would not
have had so many assassinations and
massacres. In this book we hear of
a perlon called JESUS ; some wor
ship him as a God ; others, I am told,
fay it is wrong to do so ; some teach
that he existed before the begining of
ages ; others, that he was born of Jo
seph and Mary. I cannot tell wheth
er these coatroverfies will ever be de
cided ; but in the mean time, I think
we cannot do otherwise than well in
imitating him ; for I learn that he
loved the poor, and went about doing
good.
Fellow citizens, at I travelled hith
er from my own village, I saw peas
ants fitting among the smoking ruins
of their cottages ; rich men and wo
men reduced to deplorable poverty ;
fathers lamenting their children in the
bloom and pride of youth ; and 1 said
to myfelf—/be/? people cannot afford to
part with their religion. But indeed
begun to make yourfelvet a new one.
You are sowing the feeds of fupeifti-
- PARIS, IO PRAIRIAL, MAY 29.
Merlin of Thionville, on mission with the
armies of the Rhine and Moselle, wrote from
Strafburg, 7 Prairie ——" Vengeance ! all
the left bank of the Rhine— 200,000 Repub
licans repeat the cry of Vengeance. We have
not fpilt our blood, fay these brave defenders
of their country —we have not faught for 4
years, for the purpose that an horde of rob
bers should give laws to France. They de
sire that the Convention may banish the as
sassins of the Representative Ferraud ; that
intrepid Republican who had made the slaves
of Austria tremble before the walls of Man
heim. They expert this justice from the
Convention, and the good citizens of Paris.
For me, you know my sentiments. lam
ready to march with a Republican column to
Paris, if the compulsory measures, which you
have taken against the Fauxbourg St. An
toine, should not be fuccefstul."—Applaud
ed, and ordered to be inserted in the Bulle-<
tin.
Chafer, after a pompous eulogium on
the civic ' virtues and courage of the Repre-4
fentative of the People, Ferraud, murdered+
by the revellers, presents in the name of the
committees the project of a decree, ordering,
that on the 14th of Prairial, there shall be
celebrated in the hall of the Convention, a
feaft in hqnor of the memory of Ferraud.—
The Convention and the constituted author
ities shall assist at the ceremony. The for
eign Ambassadors ihall be invited. A rep
resentative of the people (hall pronounce the
was not worth while to have been
philosophers, and destroyed the imag
es of our faints for this, but let every
one choose the religion that plcafei
him : I and my parifhoners are con
tent with ours ; it teaches us to bear
the evils your childish or fanguffiary
decrees have helped to bring upon
the country.
defiroying fupetftuion, and in two or
three generations your posterity will
be worshiping some clumsy idol, with
the rights perhaps of a bloody Mo
loch, or a lafeivious Tbamufar. It
The curi turned his footfteps home
ward, and the Convention looked for
some minutes, oh one another, before
they refamed their work of blood."
you cannot take it away; if, contrary
to your firft declaration, you choose to
try the experiment of persecuting it,
you will only make us prize it the
more, and love it the be ter. Relig
ion, true or falje, is so necessary to the
mind of man, that you have already
tion at the moment you fancy you are
HAMBURGH, JUNE fr
THEY write from Erufl'els,that the whole
French cavalry, in Belgia, have receiv
ed orders to march towards the Rhine. The
head quarters of the army of the Sambre, and
Mofel, under General Jourdan, is established
near Coblentz. [The/e indicate jeme military
event of movement.]
From Amsterdam, under the date of May
28, they write, that " their fleet will p^t to
fed in 14. days."
—- —rara^EEramßMmMi
IPARIES, MAY ifc
The expenses of the last campaign, ate
computed by Vernier, at 3000,000,000 of
livres in affignats. ✓ The following (ums
are destined for the expenses of the present
month.
Livres.
For the Civil administration, 5,000,000
For the Committee of Public 1
Inftrudion, ^2,000,000
For the Committee of Agri-7
culture, “ I 1,000,000
For Provisions, 600,000,000
For Public Buildings, 10,000,000
For Posts and Conveyances, 70,000,000
For the Marine,, 20,000,000
For Arms and Gunpowder, 30,000,000
The Receipt of last month 1
was inferior to the Ex- > 660,000,000
penditure b) J
Latest Foreign Intelligence.
[number 147.]