The Trial and Conviction of That Infamous Hypocrite John Church / The Surrey Tabernacle Preacher, Borough-road, St. George's Fields, for an Abominable Offence; Including the Whole of the Evidence; Tried Before Lord Ellenborough, at the Surrey Assizes, Croydon, Saturday, August 16, 1817. To Which Is Added, His Life, Confessions, Notes of One of His Sermons, the Whole of the Love-letters, &c. &c.

by Anonymous

CHURCH BURNT IN EFFIGY!

We are informed by a most respectable follower of and believer in, John Church, one who gave evidence on his trial in his favour, and whose name we will, if required, give up to satisfy the most credulous of its authenticity, that on Monday evening last, after a visit to his residence, adjoining the Tabernacle, in the Borough-road, he returned to Rock-House, Hammersmith, which he had no sooner entered than the mob, having gained a knowledge of his being there, attacked with mud, filth, and other missile annoyances, and presently broke all the windows, expressing their indignation at Church’s most abominable atrocities; meanwhile, by groans, hisses, and all sorts of execrations, they having previously drest up an effigy of him, in a black silk gown, with a painted Church placed on each side, that the most dull might be informed whom it was meant to represent, paraded with it all through the village, when they finally burnt it to typify those Gomorrah fires, which, in the absence of a timely and sincere repentance, we are taught to believe will be the lot of the original in that place where fire is never quenched. Of this repentance we are sorry to observe no signs at present, but we trust the forth-coming punishment (most probably solitary confinement) will give him leisure to reflect on his atrocities and awaken him to a due sense of their enormities: truly happy shall we be to hear that the retribution of an earthly judge has shewn him the greater danger in which he stands with regard to his heavenly one.