Online Cigarettes

From Chapter 8:
Another famous parson, the Rev. John Newton, was a smoker, and so was Cowper's other clerical friend, that learned and able Dissenter, the Rev. William Bull, whose whole mien and bearing were so dignified that on two occasions he was mistaken for a bishop. Cowper appreciated snuff, but did not care for smoking, and when he wrote to Unwin, describing his new-made friend in terms of admiration, he concluded—"Such a man is Mr. Bull. But—he smokes tobacco. Nothing is perfection 'Nihil est ab omni parte beatum.'" Bull, however, was not excessive in his smoking, for his daily allowance was but three pipes. In his garden at Newport Pagnell, Bull showed Cowper a nook in which he had placed a bench, where he said he found it very refreshing to smoke his pipe and meditate. "Here he sits," wrote Cowper, "with his back against one brick wall, and his nose against another, which must, you know, be very refreshing, and greatly assist meditation."

From Chapter 14:
Sometimes tobacco was used in church for disinfecting or deodorizing purposes. The churchwardens' accounts of St. Peter's, Barnstaple, for 1741 contain the entry: "Pd. for Tobacco and Frankincense burnt in the Church 2s. 6d." Sprigs of juniper, pitch, and "sweete wood," in combination with incense, were often used for the same purpose.

smoking, it may safely be asserted, was never practised commonly in English churches. Even in our own day people have been observed smoking—not during service time, but in passing through the building—in church in some of the South American States, and nearer home in Holland; but in England such desecration has been occasional only, and quite exceptional.

One need not be much surprised at any instance of lack of reverence in English churches during the eighteenth century, and a few instances can be given of church smoking in that era.