The mental fact which I have stated is, nevertheless, as unchangeable as the intellectual laws to which God has subjected mankind; as fixed as the means employed by God himself to address his revelation to us. The Christian truth, which man can make an object of defence, is an impression which exists in his own mind: it is his own Christian truth which he wilfully identifies with the Christian truth which is known to the Divine Mind. That each individual is bound to hold that Christian truth which he conscientiously believes to have found in the Bible; that it is the great moral duty of every man to prepare himself conscientiously for the undisturbed reception of the impression which he is to revere and to follow as Christian truth, I cannot doubt at all. I acknowledge also the duty of every man to assist others (without intrusion), as much as it may be in his power, in receiving a mental impression similar to that which he venerates as Christian truth. But it is at this point that a fierce contest arises; and the reason is this: certain men wish to force all others to reverence (at least externally) not the mental impression, the sense, which each receives from the Bible-not the conviction at which each has arrived-but the impression and conviction of some theological sect or church. The Christian truth of some privileged leaders (it is contended by every church respectively) should be recognized as Christian truth by all the world: in more accurate, because more scientific language, Christian parties, of the most different characters, have for eighteen centuries agreed only in this-that the subjective Christian truth of certain men should, by compulsion, be made the objective Christian truth to all the world: i. e. that the sense which the scriptures did at some time or other convey, or still convey, to such and such men, should be acknowledged as identical with that sense which was in the mind of the writers of the Bible; the true sense which is known to the Divine Mind. Opposition to these various standards of Christian truth, with those who respectively adopt them, is HERESY.

The question of Inquisition or no Inquisition, among Christians, is identical with this: Has Christ, or have his Apostles, declared that the mental impression of any man or men, in

regard to Christian truth, shall be received by all, as the only real Christian truth*?

That this might have been done, that Christ might have commanded that his followers should pay the same reverence to what some succession of men declared to be Christian truth, as if he himself attested it, is not only conceivable, but appears also, at first sight, a thing antecedently probable: and it is, indeed, this antecedent probability, considered in itself and without due attention to the multitude of facts that contradict it, which is the true root of POPERY. This very natural delusion is the main foundation of the Church of Rome; this is the obstacle which stopped the progress of the reformation almost at once; this is the secret power which, at different periods, and in various places, seems to make the reformation recede, and restore the ground to Popery. Protestantism, if established on the basis of

* In a history of the INQUISITION, I would not use that word in any other sense but that of an authority employing means of compulsion in defence of Christianity in general, and of the doctrines considered by some denomination of Christians as exclusively those of Christ and his apostles. But in a work chiefly intended to shew that the spirit of the Roman Catholic Inquisition exists wherever the notion prevails that Orthodoxy and Saving Faith are identical, I think I may be allowed to apply the name of Inquisition to all the means used among Christians to prevent or check that perfect liberty of scriptural interpretation which, in my opinion, and according to the Protestant principle, belongs to every disciple of Christ. In this sense it appears to me unquestionable, that, if Christ had established some authority to which individuals should bow, all that class of Christians whose duty in such a case would be to conform, must be under some sort of Inquisition. Those who conceived themselves charged with the preservation of Orthodoxy would be bound to watch over the opinions of the rest; while all such as had humbly submitted themselves to the appointed authority, would, in conformity with the tendencies of human nature, act as spies against the liberty of their bolder brethren. Is nothing of this kind to be found in this politically free country? Is there no moral Inquisition in Great Britain and Ireland? Who knows but these Letters may act as a TEST?

"A sprightly academic was one day making some free observations upon the canons before an eminent sage of the law: 'Beware, young man,' says the prudent counsellor of the holy office, and remember that there are starving as well as burning Inquisitions.""-The Confessional.

ORTHODOXY, i. e. the belief of a Rule of Faith different from individual conviction, must be annihilated between UNBELIEF and CATHOLICISM. By this supposition, by laying this treacherous foundation, Protestantism not only exposes itself to inevitable ruin, but places Christianity defenceless before the host of its opposers. If there must be an external or objective rule of faith, besides the words of the Bible; if the mass of Christians must submit to the decisions of another authority, by whatever name it may be described-Pope, Council, Church, Reformers-the Church of Rome can fear no rival. You may raise doubts against its supremacy; you may fill volumes with interpretations and various readings of the writings which attest the early and almost universal recognition of Rome as the centre of Christian unity; but how very few minds, if inclined to that degree of superstition which, in most cases, attends what is called a pious character, will not be overpowered by the pre-eminence of Rome in the Christian world?

"Doubts and objections (the Roman Catholic will say) are inseparable from the most important truths. But, if a judge of controversies is to be acknowledged (as most Protestants confess), what prudent man will hesitate between one so distinguished and eminent as ours, and those which the Reformation set up? You blame us for grounding our Christian certainty on the questionable fact of the divine appointment of Rome to be the head of the Christian world; but can this uncertainty be compared with that which lies at the very foundations of your churches? A few divines meet, and draw up a list of theological propositions; the secular power takes them under its protection, ejects the clergy who will not submit to them; fences the Articles, for a long period, with penalties and civil disabilities, and makes them the rule of Christian faith FOR EVER*. This is what you

* I was not aware how recently and distinctly Parliament had decreed that the Faith of the Church of England and Ireland shall remain for ever, what the former Acts of the Legislature made it. But in No. CXXII of the Edinburgh Review, p. 506, I found the following extract from the Act of Union of England and Ireland. By the fifth article of the Act of Union, it is ruled, "That the Churches of England and Ireland, as now by law established, shall be united into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called

call the judgment of the Church, which to oppose is HERESY. It is Heresy now to dissent from the Thirty-nine Articles; but there was (it seems) a happy moment when the notions of a few individuals could be set up, without Heresy, against the judgment of a well-defined and well-constituted church, to which all Christians except HERETICS had, for ages, submitted their private views on Christianity."

"Settle your disputes (says the unbeliever, on the other hand), and then I will listen to your arguments in defence of Christianity. Both of you, Romanists and Protestants, offer me salvation on condition that I embrace the Christian faith. You offer me a sovereign remedy, which is to preserve me alive in happiness through all eternity; but I hear you accusing each other of recommending to the world, not a remedy but a poison; a poison, indeed, which, instead of securing eternal happiness, must add bitterness to eternal punishment. You both agree that it is of the essence of Christianity to accept certain doctrines concerning the manner in which the Divine Nature exists; the moral and intellectual condition in which man was created; our present degradation through the misconduct of our first parents; the nature of sin, and the impossibility of its being pardoned except by pain inflicted on an innocent person; the existence or non-existence of living representatives of Christ and his apostles; a church which enjoys, collectively, some extraordinary privileges in regard to the visible and the invisible world; the presence of Christ among us by means of transubstantiation, or the denial of such presence: all this, and much more, some of you declare to be contained in, and others to be opposed to, the scriptures; and even here there is a fierce contention as to whether those scriptures embrace the whole of that Christianity which is necessary for salvation, or whether tradition is to fill up a certain gap. I am, therefore, at a loss how to account for the invitation you give me. To me (the unbeliever might continue) it is quite evident that the ablest opponents of Christianity never discovered a more convincing argument against REVELATION in the United Church of England and Ireland; and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church shall be, and shall remain in full force FOR EVER, as the same are now by law established.”

general, than that which inevitably arises from your own statements, and from the controversies of your churches. God (you both agree), pitying mankind, has disregarded the natural laws fixed by himself, and for a space of four thousand years, and more, has multiplied miracles for the purpose of acquainting men with the means of obtaining salvation, and avoiding eternal death, eternal death signifying almost universally, among you, unending torments. But when I turn to examine the result of this (as you deem it) miraculous and all-wise plan, I find it absolutely incomplete; for the whole Christian world has been eighteen centuries in a perpetual warfare (not without great shedding of blood), because Christians cannot settle what is that faith which alone can save us. Have you not thus demonstrated that the revelation of which you boast cannot be from God? Do you believe, and wish me to believe, that, when God had decreed to make a saving truth known to the world, he failed of that object, or wished to make Revelation a snare?"

answer.

That abundance of declamation may be used against this reasoning, no one acquainted with controversial books will doubt; but I cannot conceive how it may be met by a satisfactory If saving faith implies ORTHODOXY, i. e. acquiescence in a certain collection of abstract deductions from the scriptures, as logically true, or properly inferred from the language of scripture, and no higher and more certain means to attain this object have been given to men by God than their individual logical powers; the discovery of saving faith has an infinite number of chances against it, in respect to each individual: to use more definite language, the chance of success in the search after saving faith, is as one to the number of sects and subdivisions of sects which now divide, and may still further subdivide, the Christian world. Could this be the plan of the Allwise and All-good for the salvation of his creatures? Could such a communication be called a REVELATION? What would it have revealed unless it were the melancholy fact, that the lovers of truth among mankind could be rendered still more unsettled, restless, and unhappy, than they were under the reign of pagan philosophy?

"You would, then, make us Papists," will be the indignant