IN EVIDENCE OF

THE APATHY, DERELICTION, AND

DEGRADATION

OF THE

NATIONAL CLERGY.

BY THE

INCUMBENT OF WORMEGAY & TOTTENHILL,

NORFOLK.

"I will provoke you to jealousy.-MOSES, Deut. xxxii, 21.

PAUL, Rom. x. 19.

"Genuine reform is genuine conservation. No men are so liable to be
harassed and impeded as the clergy of the Established Church. A single
fact may illustrate the point. Look at their present position. Where
are our constitutional principles ?"-DANIEL NIHIL, On the Revival of
Ecclesiastical Assemblies.

Why is the Church of England to be nothing but a collection of
beggars and bishops; the Right Reverend Dives in the palace, and
Lazarus in orders at the gates, doctored by dogs, and comforted with
crumbs ?-SYDNEY SMITH, Letter to Archdeacon Singleton.

LONDON:

W. E. PAINTER, 342, STRAND;
E. JOHNSON, TRINITY STREET, CAMBRIDGE;
AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.

1844.

PRICE SIXPENCE.

11126. e. 27.

"Let it not seem grievous in the eyes of my reverend lords, the Bishops, if to their good consideration I offer a view of those sores which, being not in time cured, may procure, at the length, that, which God of his infinite mercy avert! Of Bishops in his time ST. JEROME complaineth, that they took it in great disdain to have any fault, great or small, found with them. EPIPHANIUS, likewise, before Jerome, noteth their impatiency this way to have been the very cause of a schism in the Church of Christ; at what time one AUDIUS, a man of great integrity of life, full of faith and zeal towards God, beholding those things which were corruptly done in the Church, told the Bishops and Presbyters their faults in such sort as those men are wont who love the truth from their hearts, and walk in the paths of a most exact life. Whether it were covetousness or sensuality in their lives, absurdity or error in their teaching, any breach of the laws and canons of the church, wherein he espied them guilty, certain and sure they were to be thereof most plainly told; which thing they whose dealings were justly culpable could not bear; but instead of amending their faults, bent their hatred against him who sought their amendment, till at length they drove him, by extremity of infestation, through weariness of striving against their injuries, to leave both them, and with them the Church."-HOOKER. Eccles. Pol., vii. 24.

HENRY SMITH, PRINTER, CAMBRIDGE.

FACTS AND TRACTS, &c.

TRACT I.

IRREGULAR BAPTISM, DESECRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS, AND USURPATION OF THE CHURCH OFFICES, BY THE PEOPLE CALLED RANTERS, OR PRIMITIVE

THODISTS.

SIR,

To the Editor of the Church and State Gazette.

ME

In your number of the 8th inst., there is an account of Millerism, as related by the Bishop of Montreal, concerning the diocese of Quebec, so remarkably descriptive of the Ranterism of this country, that the names of the two really appear to mean one and the self-same thing. (See Gazette, No. 108, p. 148.)

Any thing more frantic or more mischievous can scarcely be conceived. In the meetings of the Millerites, persons acted upon by the vehement proclamation of close approaching judgment, enforced by the expedients usual in such cases for goading the human mind, fall into what are technically called the struggles, and roll on the floor of the meeting-house, striking out their limbs with excessive violence; all which is understood to be an act of devotion in behalf of some unconverted individual, who is immediately sent for, if not present, that he may witness the process designed for his benefit. Females are thus prompted to exhibit themselves, and 1 was credibly assured, that at Hately, two young girls were thus in the struggles, the objects of their intercession being two troopers quartered in the village. Revolting as such scenes may appear, yet when mixed up with the awful realities of future judgment, they take a prodi