The rise and dissolution of the infidel societies in this metropolis : including, the origin of modern deism and atheism; the genius and conduct of those associations; their lecture-rooms, field-meetings, and deputations; from the publication of Paine's Age of reason till the present period / [William Hamilton Reid].

  • William Hamilton Reid
Date:
1800
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The rise and dissolution of the infidel societies in this metropolis : including, the origin of modern deism and atheism; the genius and conduct of those associations; their lecture-rooms, field-meetings, and deputations; from the publication of Paine's Age of reason till the present period / [William Hamilton Reid]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    r ‘9 ] both within and beyond the fphere of the clubs, a number of draggling auxiliaries might be rec¬ koned upon, who were drawn together by the noife and alarm of .the Field-Difputants. Thefe confided of My dies, Muggletbnians, Millennaries, and a variety of eccentric charadlers of different denominations: I call them auxiliaries, becaufe, their ridiculous mode of defending, or enforcing, their different tenets only increafed the objeffions to the Chridian Belief, in the minds of thofe per- fons before unhinged by the fubtleties of Infidel^; and thus, unintentionally, an additional weight was thrown into the fcale of the common enemy, by thofe who had a zeal, but not according to knowledge. Among the latter, were two preachers, called Jetv-Qucikers, from the circumdarice of their having but one beard between them ; one having the upper, the other the under, lip only: to thefe may be added, a Bird-catcher, and a Bafket- maker, both well known as Holders-forth, and, of courfe, having their admirers. All thefe grotefque characters, the Deids and A'theids* judly conddered as fo many Punchinellos, whom thofe who held the wires behind the feenes might play off, as bed fuited their pur- pofe; a podtion which a fuperficial obferver might not immediately perceive : but I recolleft an indance, in the dimmer of 1798, at the con- clufion of a Field-fermon, when it was remarked, that, the Deids did not oppofe the Arian preachers with the fame virulence as the Trinitarians. The full force of the obfervation was admitted, while it was urged, as a reafon for this forbearance, that, the Infidels conddered the Arians as doing a part of their budnefs for them. But beddes the deids, and the divifion-rooms, the Inddehpropagandids made ufe of another me-