“Sundays and working days were all alike to them, for they would send out to buy liquors and whatever else they wanted, on Sundays as well as other days.
“The house would be frequently more like a play-house (I might say a bawdy house) than a minister’s house, where a set of young people would come, and behave more indecently than ought to be mentioned. Even one Sunday morning they made such an uproar, as that they broke one of the windows, and after that, they would go with him to his Chapel, and after that he would give the sacrament to such disorderly people, let their characters be ever so loose.”
“He was always ready to go fast enough out to dinner or supper, where he could get good eating and drinking; but poor people might send to him from their sick bed, times and times before he would come to them. Seeing so much of his inconsistencies and shocking filthiness in their rooms, (though they always paid the rent,) we were determined to give them warning to quit our house, and we do think that a worse man or woman never came into any man’s house before, especially as Mr. Church pretended to preach the gospel; such hypocrites are much worse than others, and besides this, we never heard any man tell lies so fast in all our lives. It is a great grief to us that ever we went to hear him preach, or suffered him to stop so long in our house.”
In addition to the above testimonies, the writer has received a very long narrative of atrocities committed by JOHN CHURCH while he resided at Banbury, written by a Minister at that place; but the facts are too disgusting and shocking to be published.
On the 6th of June 1813, the Grand Jury for the County of Middlesex found a Bill of Indictment against JOHN CHURCH for his attempt some years ago on a lad named Webster. Incredible as it may appear, this very man, on the very evening of the day he was held to bail for trial on the most horrid charges, given on oath, had the impudence to go into his chapel and preach to a crowded audience.
At the Middlesex Sessions on Monday the 12th of July 1813, he was tried and _acquitted_. Indeed, it was never imagined that any other verdict than one of acquittal would have been given. If the reader looks back to the proceedings at Union Hall, he will find that this prosecution was ORDERED by the Magistrates of that Office, and _did not originate_ with the prosecutor, William Webster, on whom the abominable attempt was alleged to have been made (now fourteen years ago). The very mention of the attempt was a mere incidental circumstance arising out of another proceeding then before the Magistrates. Let the Reader also take notice of the following sentence:—“The Magistrate observed, that from the length of time which had elapsed since the offence had been committed, he thought a Jury would not feel justified in finding him guilty.” This William Webster, therefore, must be considered, in all respects, as an unwilling prosecutor. He was supported only by one counsel, then of young standing (Mr. Adolphus), who had to struggle against two of the most able advocates (Messrs. Gurney and Alley) in the criminal courts. It appears also that Webster gave his evidence with embarrassment and trepidation, and that he suffered himself to fall into some inconsistencies. With this _solitary_ and confused evidence, and after a lapse—after a _silence_ of ELEVEN YEARS, was it possible to suppose that a Jury would have found any man guilty? It must here be observed, that the decision on this solitary complaint of eleven years standing, does not in the slightest degree affect any of the numerous accusations of a more recent date which have been made against John Church.