acts that persons reviling the sacraments of the Lord's Supper by contemptuous words shall suffer imprisonment. The 9 & 10 Will. III., ch. 32, enacts that if any person educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion shall, by writing, preaching, teaching, or advised speaking, deny any one of the persons or the Holy Trinity to be God, or shall assert or maintain that there be more Gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of divine authority, he shall upon the first offence be rendered incapable of holding any office or place of trust, and for the second, incapable of bring ing any action, or being guardian or execu tor, or of taking a legacy of or deed of gift, and shall suffer three years' imprisonment without bail. The 53 Geo. III., ch. 160, excepts from these enactments " persons deny ing as therein mentioned respecting the Holy Trinity; " but otherwise the common and statute law on the subject remains in England as stated. By the law of Scotland, as it originally stood, the punishment for blasphemy was death. By a statute passed in King William the Third's reign, any person reasoning against the being of God, or any person of the Trinity, or the authority of the Holy Scriptures, or the providence of God in the government of the world, was to be impris oned for the first offence until he should give public satisfaction in sackcloth to the con gregation; to be punished more severely for the second offence; and for the third, con demned to death. By the combined influ ence of 6 Geo. IV., ch. 47, 7 Wm. IV., & 1 Vict., ch. 5, these punishments were re duced to fine or imprisonment or both. Thomas Aikenhead (a very appropriate pa tronymic for such a one), a young Edinburgh student of twenty, appears to have been the only one executed for this crime in Scotland; his offence consisted in loose talk about Ezra and Mahomet, and in crude anticipations of materialism. He was hanged in 1697, buried beneath the gallows, and all his movables
forfeited to the crown. (See Maclaurin's Crim. Cas. 12.) He seems to have been harshly treated, no counsel appeared for him. But if Mr. Buckle quotes correctly, the clergy in Scotland ofttimes punished blasphemers and the profane in a manner which antici pated lynch law. A celebrated divine of the early days of the seventeenth century, named John Welsh, on one occasion was sitting at supper with the Lord Ochiltree, and, as his manner was, he entertained the company with godly and edifying discourse, which was well received by all the company save only one debauched Popish young gentleman, who sometimes laughed, and sometimes mocked and made faces, whereupon Mr. W. brake out into a sad, abrupt charge upon all the company to be silent, and observe the work of the Lord upon that profane mocker, which they should presently behold; upon which immediately the profane wretch sunk down and died beneath the table, but never returned to life again, to the great astonish ment of all the company. (Buckle's Hist, of Civil, vol. iii. ch. 4.) A Rev. Thomas Hog, some fifty years later, brought down heaven's vengeance upon another graceless sinner; only in this instance the transgressor was allowed to retire to his bedroom before the fatal bolt fell. A drunken man was one day aping the Rev. Gabriel Semple by put ting out his tongue when, mirabile diclu, " it turned stifle and sensless, and he could not drau it in again, but in a feu dayes dyed." (Buckle, supra.) In Denmark, by the laws of Christian V., passed in 1683, the blasphemer was be headed, after having the tongue cut out. (Lea's Hist, of Inquisition, vol. 1. p. 235.) About 1650 the Maryland colony enacted that if any person should deny the Holy Trinity he should, for the first offence, be bored through the tongue and fined or im prisoned; for a second offence be branded as a blasphemer, the letter B being stamped on his forehead, with double the fine or im prisonment; and for a third offence he should die, and all his goods be confiscate to
