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Religion & Morality Vindicated, Against Hypocrisy and Pollution: Or, an Account of the Life and Character of John Church the Obelisk Preacher, Who Was Formerly a Frequenter of Vere-street, and Who Has Been Charged With Unnatural Practices in Various Places. To Which Is Annexed, a Fac-simile of a Letter, Written by Him to James Cook, Who Kept the Infamous House in Vere-street. — John Shaqi

Religion

Religion & Morality Vindicated, Against Hypocrisy and Pollution: Or, an Account of the Life and Character of John Church the Obelisk Preacher, Who Was Formerly a Frequenter of Vere-street, and Who Has Been Charged With Unnatural Practices in Various Places. To Which Is Annexed, a Fac-simile of a Letter, Written by Him to James Cook, Who Kept the Infamous House in Vere-street.

Name: Religion & Morality Vindicated, Against Hypocrisy and Pollution: Or, an Account of the Life and Character of John Church the Obelisk Preacher, Who Was Formerly a Frequenter of Vere-street, and Who Has Been Charged With Unnatural Practices in Various Places. To Which Is Annexed, a Fac-simile of a Letter, Written by Him to James Cook, Who Kept the Infamous House in Vere-street.
Author: Bell, Robert

Bell, Robert

Church, J. (John), approximately 1780-approximately 1825 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Sodomy) -- England

Among the recent communications that have been made to me in the course
of the week, the following are the more remarkable, and ought to be
proclaimed through all parts of the kingdom.  Several persons have been
at a loss to know by what authority this man presumed to take upon
himself the functions of a minister of the gospel.  They have asked how
could a man so profligate—so notoriously criminal, come forth to instruct
others in religion.  The question was natural, and I will answer it.  The
practice among Dissenters is, that when any man feels a strong desire to
become a preacher, he communicates the same to several Ministers, who
make strict enquiry into his qualifications as to piety, learning,
morals, &c. and if they find these established on satisfactory evidence,
they confer on the candidate a sort of ordination, without which he can
have no authority to officiate as a minster of the gospel.  I understand
that Church did receive some ordination of this kind at the town of
Banbury, in Oxfordshire; from which place, as I stated in a former
number, he was driven away for his mal-practices.  Since then he has not
been under the control, and has acted in defiance of all the ordinances
of the Dissenting Church.  He has in fact gone about as a mere isolated
adventurer; and I am informed that no minister will preach in any pulpit
belonging to him.  Yet he continues to preach, in defiance of Christian,
as well as of moral ordinances; because he cannot be silenced by any
legal authority, and because he rejects all ecclesiastical government.
This is the reason why I labour to rescue religion from the disgrace
which he throws upon it.  And I again ask if it is to be tolerated in a
Christian, in a moral country, that a man ordered by the magistrates to
be tried for the basest of all crimes, alleged against him on oath,
should be suffered to collect an assembly of English subjects around him
under pretence of giving them religious instruction?  Is the government
to suffer its subjects to be thus contaminated?  The magistrates of
Sparta and of Rome (which were heathen nations) would have permitted no
such sacrilege as this.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

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