the charge of persecution against Mr. Fuller; and which demands the serious attention of that gentleman. After giving Mr. F's account of the matter, Mr. A. adds as follows: "Mr. Fuller first heard the indictment read in company with some of his Cambridge friends. It struck them,' but not him, that it was founded on the penal laws, against anti-trinitarians. Mark the effect of habit. The wellread, liberal, private gentlemen of Cambridge, though calvinists, were quick to discern and prompt to expose intolerance. They had been the hearers (occasionally or regularly,) and some the companions of ROBERT ROBINSON, that brilliant genius, who kindled up the flame of religious liberty in the bosoms of all that knew him, and from the lightning of whose wit and eloquence, the malignant spirit of persecution instinctively shrunk away. Of this bright ornament to the dissenting cause, I was forcibly reminded again and again, whilst I was, on this occasion, on the spot which he had so long illuminated by his talents and his virtues. Most poignantly did I regret that he had not been longer spared to strengthen, to inspirit and to dignify the cause of intellectual and religious freedom. How eagerly should I have supplicated, how readily should I have received, his advice and assistance, in the contest which I was sustaining! I felt indeed, that I would not have yielded even to himself in love of liberty; but I lamented most sincerely the absence of those powers that cast a radiance upon truth, attracted beholders, and filled them with delight. -But I should have moderated my regret, if I had then known that his spirit survived him at Cambridge, that though dead he was yet speaking. When the indictment was read, the Cambridge friends were struck; there was persecution in the formulary of law; they felt the blow; and they protested against the iniquity.--There spake the mind of Robinson! Excellent man! The tide of reproach bore hard aud long against his inemory, but he had established solid principles which could never be borne away; they remain, his best monument: I see them in the character of the "Cambridge friends," not so much of Mr. Fuller as of christian liberty, and whenever I reflect upon their conduct, I shall revere them the more for Robert Robinson's sake. "Much as they were struck, the mind of Mr. Fuller was unaffected. He does not pass for a man of dull and slow apprehension; but his sensibilities were not awakened by the stirring up of penal laws against anti-trinitarians. He is quick of discernment as to heresy: he can see an Arminian under the mask of Calvinism, and, in the detected Arminian, can discover the future Socmian ; but he could hear an indictment read in which word after word, and line after line, were in the direct characters of persecution, and yet not perceive the malus animus, the detestable meaning. "Even when the Cambridge friends explained how they were struck, Mr. Fuller did not feel with them by the com mon sympathy of friendship. He did not demand to hear the indictment again; he did not canvass the words and clauses that were thought by some of his company to speak a language not not christian; he, and I dare say his Sohum friends, would have suffered the persecuting matter of the indictment to pass, through inadrertence, if the shar per sighted pupils of Robinson had not perceived and exposed it their sense of christian liberty served them for Ithuriel's spear, and from the reptileform into which Mr. Fuller could not penetrate, (so intent was he upon its convenient deformity, so satisfied with its useful venom,) they dislodged the evil spirit. : "Mr Fuller had not sufficiently thought upon the subject.' Thirty years reflection and discourse as a dissenting minister, had not prepared him to feel instantly and act decidedly in a case of persecution! For the greater part of that time he had been in warfare with the Socinians, but he had not catechized his heart, so as to know that there were some hostile weapons, and amongst them indictments, which his honour would not allow him to use. "Ile knew," indeed, that his object was not to prosecute Mr. G. as an anti-trinitarian, but merely to prevent the place of worship from being wrested from its rightful owners;' that is to say, the direct intention of the prosecution was not to enforce the penal laws, but there was no objection, at first, to calling in their aid, as subsidiary to the main design. "Mr. Fuller intimates that there seemed no alternative between proceeding on the ground of the penal laws and agreeing to a compromise: a compromise he wished to be excused from making; yet who dares to charge him with being favourable to persecution? "A whole night did Mr. Fuller sleep upon this indictment! A thorny pillow, surely, for a christian head! He was pushing a proceeding which his friends warned him would issue in persecution; would put to jeopardy the properties and liberties of a large class of his fellow citizens, not despicable for their talents and acquirements, not of mean consideration from their stations and employments, not degraded by their immoralities to the rank of criminals. He could not at once resolve to desist. -I solemnly declare, that I would rather bear the utmost severity of all the penal laws against me as an Unitarian, in their combined force and most rigorous administration, than I would have passed such a night as Mr. Fuller went through, if he felt as he ought. "In the morning, the Cambridge friends, steady to their purpose urged again upon Mr. Fuller the persecuting matter of the indictment; upon which, he resolved, not to quash it!-not to alter it!—but to inquire of his counsel Mr. Best, whether his friends were right in their coestruction of it. Mr. Best did not deny that the indictment rested on that ground,' namely the penal laws. No, I dare say the learned gentleman smiled at the simplicity of the question. I wish we had been furnished with all that he said upon this occasion; it would probably have let us see how an indictment came to be prepared on the ground of the penal laws!. "I must, really, beg your attention, for a moment to this question. It is, I believe, an invariable rule that professional men, in these cases, act according to the instructions of their clients. The form of an indictment is of their order ing, but the matter of it must come from their employers. If the penal laws were in the indictment, it must have been because Mr. G.'s anti-trinitarian principles were suggested to Mr. Fuller's attorney and counsel, as considerations affecting the cause.--You will recollect, that this was not a civil but a criminal cause; that the legal right to the place of worship was not now to be tried, however it might be affected by the is sue of the trial; that, in short, Mr. Gisburne, in company with one of the trus tees and a third person, was indicted for a breach of the peace-a riot. Now how could the crime of anti-trinitarianism have been implicated in such a prosecution, but at the instance of the prosecutors? The trust-deeds, if they had been received in evidence, could not have led to the penal statutes, for they contain not a syllable about the Trinity, but exactly describe what Mr. G. and his friends were, Protestant Dissenters of the Baptist persuasion, The penal laws were wholly extraneous to the cause, and would not have suggested themselves to the mind of a mere lawyer. They were not as will have been seen, first talked of at Cambridge, and I know not how to believe that the idea of them originated at Soham." We are sorry that our limits prevent us from inserting the whole of this spirited, and most interesting letter-but we can only add the following extract towards the conclusion. "Mr. F. took credit to himself and his party, for not proceeding with Gisburne another way, that is, a different way from arbitration, and, as he gave me to understand, the way of the penal statutes. For this, I was to acknowledge his and their liberality, and to take it as a set-off agasust any concessions that I might make. Can you wonder, Sir, that I was indignant? What! Take credit for not unchristianizing yourselves! Take credit for not doing what would have stamped you with indelible disgrace! How should we look upon a man who should take credit with us for not having calumniated our characters! And in the degree in which persecution, which leads to fine, imprisonment and out-lawry, is worse than calumny, shall I ever rate the persecutor above the defamer, in the scale of moral disapprobation. "Mr. Fuller made a distinction between heresy and blasphemy; but nothing can be more idle. Once allow the competency of the civil magistrate to interfere in matters of conscience, and this distinction will not restrain him for a moment; it opens a door wide enough for the entrance of a Spanish inquisitor. The opinion that a bigot deems heresy, he calls, when uttered, blasphemy. The persecutor may first attack those who revile his creed, vulgarly and scornfully; but he will not rest till he has extirpated such as argue against it, and in the end such as besitate to receive it. He resembles the animal who having once tasted blood cannot subsist without a constant supply of the same horrid food. "I do not impute a sanguinary design to Mr. Fuller; but he has provoked the inquiry whether he has or has not manifested an intolerant spirit, a leaning to persecution? And this every reader must determine from his language and conduct." Letter the 6th. contains a vindication of the account in the Month ly Repository. In confirmation of its truth a letter is published, signed by Benjamin Fuller, (another kins man of Mr. Andrew Fuller's) WilTiam Attesley, and William Threader, given an account, for the truth of which the people of Soham are` appealed to, that entirely overturns the previous statement of Mr. Robert Fuller, proving the little credit due to the assertions of the latter, and how completely he had imposed on his reverend kinsman. This letter cannot be read without exciting feelings of indignation, on account of the scandalous proceedings of Mr. Gisburne's opponents during divine service, and their persecuting conduct afterwards; and which, we hope, are unparalleled at least in the history of modern dissenters. The town and neighbourhood are appealed to as "knowing the truth of the statement." Letter 7th. consists of Miscellaneous Remarks, in which Mr. A. with his usual ability, and with complete success, refutes the charges of want of honour, hypocrisy, &c, brought against him by Mr F. The whole concludes as follows: "Should Mr. Fuller condescend to publish a reply to these letters, I shall be guided by my opinion of its contents, either to rest satisfied with what I have written, or to renew my appeal to the public. I will promise him, however, that if he convict me of any material error, I will make frank confession of it, either in a separate pamphlet or in the Monthly Repository. But it may be useful to say, once for all, that I shall not think it necessary to notice any further attestations of Thomas Chapman, or Thomas Emons, or any others of Mr. Fuller's party at Soham. "If any reader think that I have been too severe in any of my strictures upon Mr. Fuller, let him consider the wanton provocation which my adversary has given, and he will I am sure hold me justified. Mr. Fuller has in short reduced me, (some may think ominously for himself) to much the same condition that my friends and I stood in at heavy charges which I could not sucCambridge; he has indicted me cessfully repel but by cross-indictments; my cause is in the hands of the jury of the public; and I have no doubt that, as in the former case, Mr. Fuller's bill will be thrown out, and mine found true:" on A Second Appeal to the London Missionary Society, in reply to a Publication entitled A Brief Statement of Facts. By Joseph Fox. p. 32. 15. Conder. Amongst the various methods taken to ameliorate the conditon of mankind, by extending the know ledge of the gospel, the several Missionary Societies which have been recently established are not unde serving of notice. It is impossible for any one who is sensible of the importance of genuine christianity, and who is a firm believer in revelation, not to look forward with eager expectation and ardent desire to the accomplishment of those great and glorious predictions, which assure us, that by the influence of pure christianity, the whole world shall be transformed into one large family of love and peace, wars shall cease, and the only remaining strife, if strife it can be called, shall be who 'shall do most good to each other! The project, however, of converting distant nations by means of Missionary Societies, is by no means new, and equal zeal has been shewn by the votaries of the church of Rome, as well as of the church of England in former times, as by any of the societies of more modern date. Most, if not all of these different so❤ cieties, in their origin, had many well disposed members, and produced some partial good; although, it is much to be lamented, some of them were afterwards productive of infinite mischief, and very few have answered the grand end designed by the majority of their supporters. In the present corrupt state of Chrstendom, when some of the most zealous promoters of Missionary Societies are the equally zealous promoters of war and corruption, the most bitter enemies of reform, in either church or state, and who brand every real reformer with some odious appellation in an age when the VOL. IX. British name has been rendered odi ous by the crimes of those who have plundered and desolated the distant countries they have invaded and conquered, we have little reason tơ expect the arrival of the glorious period, when whole nations of christians shall be born in a day, and when a little one shall become a thousand and a small one a strong nation. May the LORD hasten the accom plishment in his time and way; but till the majority of professing christians understand and practise that pure religion which is without pare tiality and without hypocrisy, themselves, there is little reason to hope that they will be made the honoured instruments of extending the knowledge and practice of christiani ty, in any considerable degree, a◄ mongst heathen nations. The pamphlets now before us con. tain much information respecting the management of a society, which arrogates, as has been justly remarked, the title of THE Missionary Society, when there are so many others which, (it is paying them no great compliment) are at least as well, or to speak more correctly, are not worse conducted. A serious perusal, will, we hope, be the means of opening the eyes of many who do not properly consider that subscribing an annual donation, or putting money into a plate at a public collection, are only parts of benevolence; that it is an equally important part to take care that their liberality is not abused, but that it is inanaged not only with integrity, but with wisdom. With respect to the particulars of the dispute between Mr. Fox, and the Di rectors of the Missionary Society so conspicuous in the management-the Rev. Dr. Haweis, Messrs. Burder, J. Clayton, and various other ministers, together with laymen, some of the latter of whom, we are sorry to find, do not attend their duty as men ought to do, who take upon them 3 I selves to act for others;- -our limits, as well as our inclination, oblige us to pass over the major part of them. One of the principal objects of the dispute relates to a Mr. Bicknell,one of the Missionaries, who appears, like others of his brethren, to be a weak man, who can tell different stories to different persons. We do not charge him with want of integrity, but he certainly seems to have been influenced by that fear of man which brings a snare. The choosing of such men for Missionaries proves, that, notwithstanding the solemu mummery of what is ridiculously called ordination, practiced in order to give such men importance in the eyes of the religious world, the little care and judgment exercised in sending out men of such description, on a work which requires great pru-, dence, as well as great piety.—Additional evidence of the unfitness of some of the Missionaries may be seen in other publications than those before us. By the Evangelical Magazine for March last, we perceive that one of those ordained by our modern Apostles for this service, <t was constrained to offer himself a Missionary by witnessing the solemn designation of Mr. Morison for China; and hearing that his determination had been formed by these remarkable words-Curse ye Meroz, curse them bitterly said the angel of the Lord; because they came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty ""Such ignorant interpreters, or rather perverters of the word of God, are, at an enormous expence, sent forth to evangelize the heathen world! Of the unfitness of many of the Missionaries for their work, Mr. Fox presents us with the following account. "Those judicious persons who observed the enthusiasm which was excited at the fitting out of the Otaheitan mission, and the eagerness with which many persons were caught at to be sent out as missionaries, from the first predicted its failure. "The enchanting descriptions which were given of the ambrosial air, and the fragrant groves, female beauty, and bounty of nature, in presenting bread manly gentleness, together with the of her own preparing with one hand, while she withdrew the curse with the other, by rendering labour unneccessary, were powerful inducements to young men of roving dispositions and for this work. unsettled prospects, to offer themselves "It is well known, that the object of the Directors being to complete this mission in as short a time as possible, they were not exceedingly strict as to the degree of christian experience of those who offered themselves as candidates; and the result with respect to several of the persons who were sent out, will justify the assertion, that no very close enquiries were made concerning the moral dispositions, or mental abilities of the persons who were set apart for this ill-judged mission. "I am compelled, however, to notice the conduct of a gentleman who accompanied this mission. Being a surgeon, he was led to consider, that the sure means to establish the mission and render it respectable in the eyes of the natives, would be to begin with relie ving some of those diseases, which had been introduced by the vices of Europeans; and discovering that no surgeon had been engaged by the Directors, be nobly volunteered himself for this important service. To the honour of this gentleman be it mentioned, that his outfit was entirely at his own expence, and that he also had to encounter the disapprobation of some of his nearest from prosecuting his pious determina relatives. But this did not deter him tion, and seeking the opportunity of administering those remedies which his skill could apply, and thus imitate his LORD in curing the diseases of suffering humanity. the injudicious selection of the persons "Nothing can more strongly prove who were appointed for missionaries, than the infamous treatment which this gentleman received from some of them during the voyage, compelling him to avoid as much as possible all communication with men, whose ignorance and brutal conduct rendered them un fit to be companions with a man of liberal education. It was only the au thority of the Captain of the ship that |