against the Bible and its Deity, but the idea of a barrister having
a copy of the "sacred volume" in his chambers was really too absurd
for belief.

The preamble charged us, in the stock language of Indictments for
Blasphemy, as may be seen on reference to Archibold, with "being
wicked and evil-disposed persons, and disregarding the laws and
religion of the realm, and wickedly and profanely devising and
intending to asperse and vilify Almighty God, and to bring the
Holy Scriptures and the Christian Religion into disbelief and contempt."

The first observation I have to make on this wordy jumble is, that
it seems highly presumptuous on the part of weak men to defend the
character of "Almighty God." Surely they might leave him to protect
himself. Omnipotence is _able_ to punish those who offend it, and
Omniscience knows _when_ to punish. Man's interference is grossly
impertinent. When the emperor Tiberius was asked by an informer to
allow proceedings against one who had "blasphemed the gods," he replied:
"No, let the gods defend their own honor." Christian rulers have not
yet reached that level of justice and common sense.

Next, it was flagrantly unjust to accuse us of aspersing and vilifying
Almighty God at all. The _Freethinker_ had simply assailed the
reputation of the god of the Bible, a tribal deity of the Jews,
subsequently adopted by the Christians, whom James Mill had described
as "the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind
can devise." What difference, I ask, is there between that strong
description and the sentence quoted from the _Freethinker_ in our
Indictment, which declared the same being as "cruel as a Bashi-Bazouk
and bloodthirsty as a Bengal tiger"? The one is an abstract and the