with it. Such was Popery in the last century. It burns now with comparative dimness, occasionally emitting a sudden flare under the energetic fanning of its zealous upholders. It may yet throw out a stronger flame, but it will have no great effect, unless darkness be permitted to spread over us in judgment. When the Sun of Righteousness beams forth in its glory, and sheds its blessed radiance over hill and vale, and sea and river, the papal torch will be visible no more. CHAPTER XVII. FRENCH REVOLUTION. LIBELLOUS ATTACK UPON SIR RICHARD HILL AND HIS BROTHER ROWLAND. REMARKS OF SIR RICHARD. OUTLINE OF THE CHARACTER AND CAREER OF MR. STRIKING PROSECUTION OF THE LIBEL. ERSKINE. VERDICT OF GUILTY. REMARKS OF SPEECH OF MR. LORD KENYON. HOLDER AT HAWKSTONE. ENORMOUS BUNCH OF GRAPES. CHEERFULNESS OF SIR RICHARD HILL. HIS SENTIMENTS RESPECTING THE WAR. FRENCH REVOLUTION. His WHEN Sir Richard Hill returned to England, he continued his public and private exertions for the promotion of true religion, and the interests of his fellow-creatures, with all his former zeal, integrity, and kindness. spirits were much saddened at the gloomy shade cast over the surface of Europe, by the awful state of France and the barbarities of the revolution in that nation, which afforded an example to the whole earth of the true character of infidelity, when it lets loose its furies to gorge themselves with blood. It is a demon of darkness, waiting only for the night to rush in with its harpy legions, flapping their terrific wings and appalling with their screams those deluded victims, who suddenly trans LIBEL. REMARKS OF SIR R. HILL. 417 fixed by relentless talons find themselves without hope, or light, or refuge. Such were the horrors of the French revolution, and such will be the invariable result of every successful attempt to bring in the monster Scepticism, instead of that blessed Truth which is our noonday shade, our refuge from the storm, our defence and lamp in darkness. But the piety and virtues of Sir Richard Hill could not afford security against slander, though they obtained a noble triumph over it. He and Mr. Rowland Hill were grossly assailed by an adversary, against whom he found it necessary to appeal to the verdict of a jury, which was unhesitatingly given in his favour. It was also accompanied by the high encomium, from as honest a judge as ever wore the robes of justice, which forms the motto of this volume. The gross libel he considered it right to prosecute, bore the contemptible title, "a Cure for Canting," and was a tissue of the most impudent and vulgar abuse imaginable. In his observations on it, Sir Richard Hill thus modestly defended himself. "Feeling, as I do, the weight of declining years, being now nearly arrived at my grand climacteric,' and looking back, as I trust I can, with more than indifference on a world I must very soon leave, to give an account of all my deeds done in the body, rejecting with abhorrence the Pharisee boast of God, I thank thee, I am not as other men are,' and shuddering to approach my Maker with any other plea but that of the humble self-abased publican; yet in the retrospect of so many days that are past, I am not afraid of being deemed too presumptuous, in making my solemn appeal to conscience and to the whole world, that not one of those days has ever been 1 This was written in 1794. sullied by a single mean or ignoble action towards my fellow-creatures. Self-vindication must ever be most painful to a feeling mind, but personal attacks demand a personal defence; and under such circumstances, truth, honour, character, and religion itself must all concur in the propriety of such vindication, provided a delicacy be observed as to particular instances." In the libel alluded to, though notoriously the poor man's friend and generous benefactor, he was described as oppressive and avaricious. In reply to this last remark, he beautifully observes, "Thanks be to that gracious Providence who hath given me what I have, for giving me at the same time to know and feel that there can be no happiness in riches, but with riches to make each other happy insomuch that I scruple not at all to affirm, that I would rather live on £100 or even £50 a year, than be the possessor of millions, either for the purposes they are too frequently lavished, prostituted, and abused, or to increase a sordid heap of mouldering dust; so that for whatever else I may have occasion to be humbled as a sinner before my God, I trust I may by his grace anticipate that my death-bed will not shake under me with the horrors of that sen tence:- Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries which shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten; your gold and silver are cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and you shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.'' The time is at hand when the mask of hypocrisy must be plucked from every visage, and when professions of faith will be judged by the works they 1 James v. 1. TROUBLESOME APPLICANT. 419 have produced, towards the souls and bodies of our neighbours. Till that period arrive, the estimates which my fellow-mortals may make of me, are of so little avail, that were it not that the honour of religion itself is struck at, by the blows which are levelled at those who in this day of rebuke and blasphemy, infidelity and profaneness, are not ashamed to confess it and its divine Author, I should not have made a word of reply to all the envenomed tongues of falsehood, malice, and slander united." The pamphlet Sir Richard Hill considered it his duty to notice for these reasons, proceeded from a person to whom he had been particularly kind, and in whose favour he had successfully applied to his friend Mr. Pitt; so that the man himself had written, "I was become known to Sir Richard Hill, who always treated me with that liberal condescension and kindness for which he is so justly characterized"-an encomium which he afterwards exchanged for almost unprecedented abuse and invective, because even the kind patience of his patron was unable to hold out against his forwardness, and unreasonable applications. His letters also became impertinent and troublesome, and their tone of pretence sometimes rendered them ridiculous. "A little money," said he in one of them," is much wanted by way of a present; its much wanted for a very pressing and immediate purpose. Besides it will give fresh vigour to my genius, and will add irresistible force to the thunders of my eloquence: Destruction sooner comes and rattles louder Out of a mine of gold than out of Pouder." Mr. Rowland Hill also, tired by the same causes, was at length obliged to forbid the man his house, upon which he directed his abuse against him, as well as Sir Richard. |