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    indisputably that card-playing-in itself is wrong and immoral ; that is , that it must inevitably tend to corrupt the heart and to vitiate tKe mind . When he has done this , I will join with him in opinion that it is wrong for a minister , as it would be wrong for any one else ever to touch a card , since any practice which can be proved to be what I have just stated , cannot be Sanctioned by that system of morals which is of all others the most pure * P . Q .. seems ft ? have formed his opinion of card-playing and card-players from the gaming-houses of St . James ' s ^ or the Macaroni of Newmarket , and he either is , or affects to be ^ ignorant of the difference between an ass ^ pablage of well-educated and well-bred people and a gang of professed sharpers and gamblers : he assumes , in the first place , that cards are the amusement only of the dissipated and the vicious , and then asks this absurd question— € C Is it worthy of the holy

    function of a minister to become the associate of the prophans and worthless at the card-table , whose oaths and * imprecations often eat as does a canker V This real or pretended ignorance appears in every sentence that P . Q ,. writes , under cover of which he makes the broadest and most unqualified assertions ^ which indeed are so palpably absurd that they carry their own refutation with them . " The very essence of the temptation to sit at cards is the hope and wish of gain . " This is true as

    far as it relates to professed gamesters ; but as it respects the generality of well-bred persons who play at cards , it is false . It is perfectly convenient Tor P . Q . to state the abuse of this amusement as the general and universal practice : it is also convenient for him to attribute to . it motives and actions as

    universally and unavoidably proceeding from it , which obtain only among the vicious and the abandoned ; but let him not pretend to the title of a fair disputant or a candid reasoner .

    < c Prayer—the Bible—the card-tabfe I" he exclaims , in a transport of pious indignation ^ without ever perceiving that the absurdity and impropriety of the combination arises solely from his own wajxt of judgment . Try any the most rational and

    innocent amusement in the world in this way , and it must appear ridiculous , if not improper . But why couple things together which have no connection or correspondence with each other ? Why join in the same line and sentence a trifling and in itself perfectly innocent amusement with that subject which ought never to be thought of but in moments the most serious ?—** There is no concord , " says P . Q ,. between the prayer of the righteous man and the card-table ? " If he means by this , that no righteous man either prays while he is amusing himself with cards or with any other recreation ^ or that while he is engaged in prayer be does not suffer his thoughts to be

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    On Dissenting Ministers playing at Cards . 649

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    voju i . 4 o

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1806, page 649, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1731/page/33/