are they again before the public? Had they hopes of skulking into
obscurity among the _motley_ multitude of certificates which throng the
folio of _the book_? or have they like one of the moral personages in
_Hudibras_, "_catch'd the itch on purpose to be scratch'd_?" It now
requires an eye less keen than that of a ministering spirit to pierce
the cob web veil which shields them from detection.

But in the process of this investigation, we are led to the
consideration of a subject "_too awful for irony_." The interested
certificates of these men are ushered to a Christian public, and a
higher sanction demanded for them, by the author, than he is willing to
allow to facts attested under the _solemnity_ of _an oath_. One could
hardly have anticipated this _atheistical_ appeal to the credulity of
the public, even tho' human nature were as vile and monstrous in
_others_, as it appears to be in _that author_. But perhaps there was a
necessity for it, in order to preserve the _dark_ uniformity of his
production. If, as has been asserted more than _one_ of his prominent
certifiers (among whom I would by no means rank these men) are
themselves _atheists_, what could he swear them upon?--Upon the
evangelists think you?--He might as well swear them on Payn's age of
reason, or his own vile book itself. Where they "believe that their
miserable bodies must take eternal refuge in the grave, and the last
puff of their nostrils will send their souls to annihilation, they
laugh at the solemnity of an oath and tell you that the grave into
which they sink as a log, forms an intrenchment against the throne of
God, and the vengeance of exasperated justice!" Such is the character
which the writer fixes upon _himself_.--Such is the character which
several of his _disciples_ sustain in public.

True, the falsity of an extra-judicial oath, carries with it no