Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 3 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
Come, Nero! Thou awful Roman Emperor! Come up! No; thou wast drunk with
power! schooled in Roman depravity. Thou hadst, besides, the example of
thy fancied gods! Go, wait another day. I will seek a worser man.
Come hither, St. Dominic! come, Torquemada!--Fathers of the Inquisition!
Merciless monsters, seek your equal here! No; pass by! You are no
companions for such men as these! You were the servants of atheistic
popes, of cruel kings. Go to, and get you gone. Another time I may have
work for you,--not now; lie there and persevere to rot. You are not yet
quite wicked and corrupt enough for this comparison. Go, get ye gone,
lest the sun turn back at sight of ye!
Come up, thou heap of wickedness, George Jeffries!--thy hands deep
purple with the blood of thy murdered fellow men! Ah, I know thee! awful
and accursed shade! Two hundred years after thy death, men hate thee
still, not without cause! Let me look upon thee! I know thy history.
Pause and be still, while I tell it to these men.
Brothers, George Jeffries "began in the sedition line." "There was no
act, however bad, that he would not resort to to get on." "He was of a
bold aspect, and cared not for the countenance of any man." "He became
the avowed, unblushing slave of the court, and the bitter persecutor and
unappeasable enemy of the principles he had before supported." He "was
universally insolent and over-bearing." "As a judge, he did not consider
the decencies of his post, nor did he so much as affect to be
impartial, as became a judge." His face and voice were always unamiable.
"All tenderness for the feelings of others, all self-respect were
obliterated from his mind." He had "a delight in misery, merely as
misery," and "that temper which tyrants require in their worst
instruments." "He made haste to sell his forehead of brass and his
tongue of venom to the court." He had "more impudence than ten carted
street-walkers;" and was appropriately set to a work "which could be
trusted to no man who reverenced law, or who was sensible of shame." He
was a "Commissioner" in 1685. You know of the "Bloody assizes" which he
held, and how he sent to execution three hundred and twenty persons in a
single circuit. "The whole country was strewed with the heads and limbs
of his victims." Yet a man wrote that "A little more hemp might have
been usefully employed." He was the worst of the English judges. "There
was no measure, however illegal, to the execution of which he did not
devotedly and recklessly abandon himself." "During the Stuart reigns,
England was cursed by a succession of ruffians in ermine, who, for the
sake of court favor, wrested the principles of law, the precepts of
religion, and the duties of humanity; but they were all greatly
outstripped by Jeffries." Such is his history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account