If these transactions took place in any part of England, instead of the indifference with which they have been too long regard ed, the public zeal would be called forth, and every possible endeavor would be used to put an end to them. "A person informing us that a woman was about to be burnt with the corpse of her husband, near our house, I, with several of our brethren, hastened to the place. But before we could arrive, the pile was in flames. It was a horrible sight. The most shocking indifference and levity appeared among those who were present. I never saw any thing more brutal than their behavior. The dreadful scene had not the least appearance of a religious ceremony. It resembled an abandoned rabble of boye in England, collected for the purpose of worrying to death a cat or dog. A bamboo, perhaps twenty feet long, had been fastened at one end to a stake, driven into the ground, and held down over the fire by men at the other. Such were the confusion, the levity, the bursts of brutal laughter, while the poor woman was burning alive before their eyes, that it seemed as if every spark of humanity was extinguished by this accursed superstition. That which added to the cruelty was, the smallness of the fire. It did not consist of so much wood as we consume, in dressing a dinner; no, not this fire that was to consume the living and the dead! I saw the legs of the poor creature hanging out of the fire, while her body was in flames. After a while, they took a bamboo, ten or twelve feet long, and stirred it, pushing and beating the half consumed corpses, as you would repair a fre of green wood, by throwing the unconsumed pieces into the middle. Perceiving the legs hanging out, they beat them with the bamboos for some time, in order to break the ligatures which fastened them at the knees, (for they would not have come near to touch them for the world.) At length they succeeded in bending them upwards into the fire, the skin and muscles giving way, and discovering the knee sockets bare, with the balls of the leg bones; a sight which, I need not say, made me thrill with horror, especially when I recollected that this hapless victim of superstition was alive but a few minutes before. To have seen wolves thus tearing a human body limb from limb, would have been shocking; but to see relations and neighbors do this to one with whom they had familiarly conversed not an hour before, and to do it with an air of levity, was almost too much for me to bear. "You expect to hear perhaps, that this unhappy victim was the wife of some Brahmin of high caste. She was the wife of a barber, who dwelt in Serampore, and had died that morning, leaving the son I have mentioned, and a daughter of about eleven years of age. Thus has this infernal superstition ag gravated the common miseries of life, and left these children stript of both their parents in one day. Nor is this an uncommon case. It often happens to children far more helpless than these; sometimes to children possessed of property; which is then left, as well as themselves, to the mercy of those, who have decoyed their mother to their father's funeral pile.” [This narrative may excite feelings of disgust and horror. But it is suited also to excite the liveliest gratitude for that most benign religion, under which we are permitted to live. I will not ask what female, but what individual in christendom, in contemplating this scene, can refrain from blessing God, that he was born, and has been reared, under the benign influence of the Gospel? And distressing as the spectacle may be, let us not turn hastily from it. "True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear, or eye; but in feeling for the suffer ings of others, and being forward and active in relieving them." In another number, we may be able to conclude this summary; and as we may rely on the facts which it contains, it cannot fail, we think, of being very interesting and useful.] ARGUMENTS AGAINST REQUIRING SUBSCRIPTION TO HUMAN CREEDS. "1. THAT stating any doctrine in a confession of faith with a greater degree of precision than the Scriptures have done, is in effect to say, that the Scriptures have not stated it with precision enough; in other words, that the Scriptures are not sufficient. 2. That this experiment of leaving men at liberty, and points of doctrine at large, has been attended with the improvement of religious knowledge, where and whenever it has been tried. And to this cause, so far as we can see, is owing the advantage which protestant countries in this respect possess above their popish neighbors. "3. That keeping people out of charches, who might be admitted consistently with every end of public worship, and excluding men from communion, who desire to embrace it upon the terms that God prescribes, is certainly not encouraging, but rather causing men to forsake the assembling of themselves together. 4. That men are deterred from searching the Scriptures, by the fear of finding there more or less than they looked for; that is, something inconsistent with what they have already given their assent to, and must at their peril abide by. 5. That it is not giving truth a fair chance, to decide points at one certain time, and by one set of men, which had much better be left to the successive inquiries of different ages and different persons. "6. That it tends to multiply infidels amongst us, by exhibiting Christianity under a form and in a system, which many are dis gusted with, and who yet will not be at the pains to inquire after any other." Some years ago, a serious attempt was made in England by some members of the established church, to free themselves and others from the tyranny and inconvenience of having to subscribe articles of faith, which they neither believed nor understood. At that period a publication appeared, entitled "Considerations on the propriety of requiring a subscription to articles of faith." To this followed an "Answer from the Clarendon press." Dr. Paley is not supposed to be the author of the "Considerations," but he wrote & "Defence" of them in reply to the Answer. The defence is an ingenious and able performance. Having replied to the answer, he stated the six arguments which we have copied, as "contained in the Consideration, to which no answer has been attempted." As we have reason to doubt whether there was any person in Great Britain able to answer these arguments, we publish them for the consideration of all our readers, and particularly those who think it to be safe and proper to require subscription to hu man creeds. If any one of these will furnish us with a concise, candid, and well written answer, he may rely on its being published in this work. VOLTAIRE'S VIEWS OF THE MADNESS OF WAR. B. I AM well enough acquainted with the rights of peace: they consist in keeping one's word, and leaving every man in possession of the rights of nature. But as to the right of war, I don't know what it is. The code of murder seems to me a strange fancy. I hope we shall shortly have the laws and rights of robbers on the highway. A. What! do you deny the possibility of a just war? B. I never knew of any such thing; it appears to me self-contradictory and impossible. A. Two princes dispute concerning an inheritance, their titles are litigious, and their reasons equally plausible; war must decide, and consequently the war is just on both sides. B. It is physically impossible but that one of the two must be in the wrong; and it is absurd and barbarous that nations should perish, because one of these two princes has reasoned falsely. Let them fight in single combat, if they choose; but it is shocking that a whole people should be sacrificed to their interests.-For example-the archduke Charles disputes the throne of Spain with the duke of Anjou, and four hundred thousand men are slain. I wish to know if this be just? A. I confess it is not.-How can we explain this rage? B. In the same manner as physicians give an account of the plague and madness. We are not always attacked with madness-Nothing more is necessary in general, than for one mad minister of state to bite another, and in three or four months the madness is communicated to four or five hundred thousand men. [The above sentiments have been extracted from the Dialogue on the "Right of war." Voltaire and Volney have very justly reproached Christians, for their inconsistency in making war. Let Christians no more expose themselves to such reproaches.] glory are not always at our command. A single defeat makes many victories be forgotten." "These are truths which cannot be denied by men who are ac quainted with the nature of things, as well as the human heart."-Discourse on different Nations. THE JESUITS BANISHED FROM SPAIN. DON CARLOS, king of Naples, would not permit the Jesuits to approach his person; and his aversion for their society was no longer doubted, when he solicited at Rome the canonization of Don John de Palafox. Don John de Palafox descend ed from one of the most ancient families in Spain. Learned, and pious, he had merited by these qualities the nomination of Philip the Second, to the bishoprick, newly erected in America, "De los Angelos de la Puebla." He became consequently the rival of the Jesuits, who had emigrated to that canton, armed with papal bulls, which authorized them to exercise the functions of bishops. He thought their privileges suspended by his nomination, and this excited violent contestations between him and them. Neither the king of Spain, nor the sovereign Pontiffs could succeed in their exertions, to deprive them of their chimerical pretensions, for they had gained the people, and Palafox died a martyr to the persecution of these ambitious monks. Don Carlos ascended the throne of Spain in 1759. It was then that the complaints of the governors, and the merchants of America burst out. The Viceroy of Lima, and the governor of Quito represented, that the solicitor general of the Jesuits, at Guipuzcoa, had possessed himself of all the commerce of Peru; that, to no purpose, they had commanded him repeatedly, to confine himself to his province; that by purchasing the commodities of Europe for ready money, there was twenty per cent. difference between the price current and theirs; that the monopolies granted to the Jesuits, combined with the facility of smuggling, allowed them to sell at a cheaper rate; that from this cause, innumerable bankruptcies had ensued; and that these abuses not only reigned in the Spanish dominions, but extended into Asia through the Philippine islands. The court of Spain had the good will to prescribe, but not the power to administer, a remedy to these disorders, true or false. The Jesuits disdained the orders which they received, and the government was reduced to dissemble and to wait. Besides these grievances against the transatlantic members of the society, the king had peculiar provocations from the Jesuits of Spain. The question was not concerning their erroneous opinions, their daring theological system, their licentious morality, nor their renovated Pelagianism. The Spanish ministry thought little of these objects. The question was. concerning the assassination of the king of Portu. gal, the verbal process, and the proofs, which convicted the Jesuits as the original instigators of that crime, the predie ed and executed empoisonment of Benediet the Fourteen:h, the ruin of the great houses of commerce, and the contempt of episcopacy. Glaring abominations of every kind commanded the attention of the sovereign. The court pursued the steps of the Jesuits, without awakening their apprehensions. The court of France informed the Spanish ministry, that these Fathers had a printing press at Villa Garcia. conducted by Father Idiaquez, from which issued a multitude of publications injurious to the tranquillity of the French government, Certain booksellers at Bayonne were arrested, and spoke, at the Bastille and the court of Spain, suppressed the printing press without making any noise. The Jesuits, nevertheless, guided by the instructions and orders of their general, collect ed parties, and employed them in rendering the ministry odious. Under the preceding reigns, they had usurped a most extensive power. The vast texture of their policy had surrounded and enveloped the king and his subjects, the grandees and the common people, the church and the state, the learned and the ignorant. They commanded the fathers by their children, the masters by their domestics, the women by confession, artisans by their congregations, courtiers by their projects, sovereigns by their weaknesses, popes by appearances of devotion and obedience. They disposed of all sexes, ages, and conditions. Did religion op. pose their various projects of ambition? They altered it. They folded and twisted morality to their views and their interest, by their interpretations of its decisions. If a defender of religion and morality arise, like Don John Palafox, they calumniated him-“He was a dangerous man." "He was a rebel." Some such they drove away by arbitrary strokes of power, or despoiled them of their fortunes and situations. Others intimidated by their numerous partizans. Others assassinated or poisoned. Whoever dared to unmask their intrigues ensured his own destruction, They marched between hypocrisy and tyranny; the Gospel in one hand, and the poniard in the other. They were cringing and insinuating, despotic and menacing. Hence that whimsical mixture of modesty and arrogance, of poverty and riches, of edification and scandal, of study and business, of artifice and violence, of fraud and usurpation, of flattery and defamation, of intrigue and simplicity, of zeal and fury, of virtue and villany. It was by uniting extremes and opposites, that they rendered themselves formidable. Things were altered under the reign of Charles the Third, who knew the Jesuits, and had resolved to reduce them to obedience, or to suppress them. Charles commenced by sending Don Ca |