JOHN CHURCH, the subject of the following pages, was found, when an infant, on the steps, or near the porch of a church (some say that of St. Andrew, in Holborn;) and the overseers of the parish not being able to discover who were his parents, or by whom he was thus abandoned, had him sent to the Foundling Hospital, where he received that name, which bears the nearest analogy to the place where he was found. Here he remained until he was nine years old, when a complaint to the Governors having been made against him by the nurses, that he was addicted to improper and disgusting practices, it was thought prudent to apprentice him out at that early age, to obviate the possibility of the contagion spreading amongst the rest of the boys who partook of the bounties of that charity. From his evident illiteracy, and from the badness of his writing, it is certain that he must have quitted the Hospital at an earlier age than usual, because, in general, none leave it who are not good scholars. He was accordingly placed out as an apprentice to a Gilder, in Blackfriars Road. Before the expiration of his indenture, he married and quitted the service of his master. Shortly afterwards, he worked for a composition ornament maker, in Tottenham Court Road. This immaculate Minister of the Gospel here commenced his religious career, and, under the assumed garb of sanctity, took upon him the office of a teacher to the Sunday School, at that time established at Tottenham Court Chapel. Thinking that preaching was a better trade than that which he was employed in, this _precious_ teacher, together with two other young men, hired a garret in the neighbourhood of Soho, where they used to learn the method of addressing themselves to a congregation. An old chair was the substitute for a pulpit. He now began (to use his own expression) “_to gammon the old women_.”—Good fortune happened at length to procure him the notice of Old Mother Barr, of Orange-street, who, being interested in his behalf, allowed him the use of a room of hers, in which he treated her and a few other choice labourers in the field of piety with his rapturous discourses.. From this he used to hold forth more publicly. His virtues and acquirements now recommended him to one Garrett, of notorious memory, who obtained him a _living_ at Banbury. It was at this place that he became obnoxious. Having made several violent attempts upon some young men while at that place, he was driven out from thence, by the trustees of the chapel in which he preached, and ordered never to show his face there again. He hastily decamped, leaving behind him his wife and children; and the police officers having been sent in pursuit, their searches proved fruitless, and it was a long time before he was heard of. He once more retired into the country, but was called from his solitude, to use his influence in town, by a man of his own disgraceful kind, named _Kitty Cambric_, and well know at the Swan, in _Vere Street_.