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Sabbath

.—A day appointed by Christians (from the Jews) for public worship, which is employed in works of piety, instead of works of labour This hebdomodal fit of devotion among Christians re­turns regularly every Sunday, when they discharge in whining prayers and discordant hymns, the ac­cumulation of the week, and empty themselves in copious evacuation, much in the same necessary manner that a gormandizing alderman does after a feast. In different parts of England, various ways are adopted of expressing to the Creator, the de­votional fervor of the people. In the metropolis the city apprentices, journeymen and their masters generally pay their tribute of adoration, in a shil­ling ordinary at Hackney, or some other neigh­bouoring village, a row in a boat to Putney, or at the Dog and Duck. The higher orders of society, in a ride in Hyde Park in the morning, and at a gaming-table in the afternoon. In the country, the athletic villagers generally engage in a game of cricket, trap-ball, or long-fives; and the boys amuse themselves at marbles, or at toss halfpenny on a tomb-stone in the church-yard. In the churches you will find a few old bachelors, old maids, and other poor deluded wretches (who think to atone for the sins of a whole life, by goint to church twice in one day in the week and cheating all they can the other six) listening with open mouth to the dogmas of an illiterate priest, who is bound apprentice to Implicit Faith, Esq. a wholesale mer­chant, both in religion and politics; and afterwards becomes an acting partner in the extensive com­mercial house of Messrs. Superstition, Fraud, Hy­pocrisy an Co.

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Entry taken from A Political Dictionary, by Charles Pigott, 1795.

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Sabbath