ecclesiastical, civil, or military employment, and on a second
conviction be imprisoned for three years and deprived for ever
of all civil rights.

Lord Coleridge and Sir James Stephen call this statute "ferocious,"
but as it is still unrepealed there is no legal reason why it should
not be enforced. Curiously, however, the reservation which was
inserted to protect the Jews has frustrated the whole purpose of
the Act; at any rate, there never has been a single prosecution
under it. So much of the statute as affected the Unitarians was
ostensibly repealed by the 53 George III., c. 160. But Lord Eldon
in 1817 doubted whether it was ever repealed at all; and so late
as 1867 Chief Baron Kelly and Lord Bramwell, in the Court of Exchequer,
held that a lecture on "The Character and Teachings of Christ: the
former defective, the latter misleading" was an offence against the
statute. It is not so clear, therefore, that Unitarians are out of
danger; especially as the judges have held that this Act was special,
without in any way affecting the common law of Blasphemy, under
which all prosecutions have been conducted.

Dr. Blake Odgers, however, thinks the Unitarians are perfectly safe,
and he has informed them so in a memorandum on the Blasphemy Laws
drawn up at their request. This gentleman has a right to his opinion,
but no Unitarian of any courage will be proud of his advice. He
deliberately recommends the body to which he belongs to pay no
attention to the Blasphemy Laws, and to lend no assistance to the
agitation for repealing them, on the ground that when you are safe
yourself it is Quixotic to trouble about another man's danger;
which is, perhaps, the most cowardly and contemptible suggestion
that could be made. Several Unitarians were burnt in Elizabeth's