It is painful to see the ...
The Times, 1824-06-10T00:00:00

It is painful to see the trials continue every day for the sale of Paine's Age of Reason, and other anti-Christian works. The prosecutions, howvever, being in the regular torm, and by the regular autlhorities, the public will have less to regret, and the unhappy creatures convicted wYil probably rejoice in the asylum of a prison, where they can live in idleness aiid escape starvin'g. It is said tllat CAR- LILE and his people receive some secret support from more exalted infidels. If so, we are sure that the pittance be- stowed justifies the homely proverb, that the Devil (and of course his agents imitate their chiief) is a hard task-master, and pays ill; for we happened to pass the shop on Tuesday, just after the label indicating the conviction was attached to the window, and we therein beheld three such squalid figures (one of them, we believe, a wonman) as we shall never forget. The appearauce of the philoso- pher standing behind the counter not only beggars descrip- tion, but even the imagination cannot retrace to itself the marks of misery evident in his abject person, unless the object were to staad again for his picture. Suppose the defendants wvere suffered to proceed in dis- seminating infidel principles, what good would they do ? Every body knows wvhat blasphemy is, without reading PAINE and PALMER. It has been offered in everv possible form to the acceptance of man7kind sinec the establish- ment of Christianity, and bas hy the common sense of mankind-(there is no accounting for eccentricities and peculiarities)-but has by the common sense of man-, kind been rejected. If the doctrines propounded by infidels, and Ilublished by CARLILE, were new--if they were a recent discovery-thete might be. some sense or reason in offering them to p4blic acceptance or rejection: but wlien they are known and rejected, what absurdity as well as insolence in continuing to force them upoit the disgnstedand nauseatingmindof the public! Did not Locxs, and NEWTONT, and BOYLE and BA1CON, know what difficulties stood in the way of believing Chris- tianity as well as PAINE and C.RLILE ? Allt. yet BACON and BOYLE, and LocsE and NEWTON, all believedin reve- lation ! Christianity forced its way througli a million times the impediments that are or ever were opposed to the pro. gress of infidelity, because it hadl truth to support it, and was consonant to the nature, and adapted to the wants of man. True philosophy was opposed and peisecutedin the person of GALILEO; yet true philosophy in - that case also prevailed. Noow what a -wonderful- fate must that of infidelity be, provided it be true, that. unlike every other truth, it is constantly propounded, and yet makes no way. It is propounded in dark ages, and in enlightened ages, by insidious and by open advocates-it has had the advantage of being persecuted, and of being fostered, as by the King of PRUSSrA; yet stiilfor eighlteen huadred years, it has gained no ascendancy: it.remnains where it was, lurking in the obscure recesses of eccentric, perverted, disingenuous minds. Surely such a hist(ory, if ve plunge no deeper, constitutes the external description of a falsehood.