Ib. p. 94.

Eventually the whole direction of the popular mind, in the affairs of religion, will be gained into the hands of a set of ignorant fanatics of such low origin and vulgar habits as can only serve to degrade religion in the eyes of those to whom its influence is most wanted.  Will such persons venerate or respect it in the hands of a sect composed in the far greater part of bigotted, coarse, illiterate, and low-bred enthusiasts?  Men who have abandoned their lawful callings, in which by industry they might have been useful members of society, to take upon themselves concerns the most sacred, with which nothing but their vanity and their ignorance could have excited them to meddle.

It is not the buffoonery of the reverend joker of the Edinburgh Review; not the convulsed grin of mortification which, sprawling prostrate in the dirt from “the whiff and wind” of the masterly disquisition in the Quarterly Review, the itinerant preacher would pass oft’ for the broad grin of triumph; no, nor even the over-valued distinction of miracles, —­which will prevent him from seeing and shewing the equal applicability of all this to the Apostles and primitive Christians.  We know that Trajan, Pliny, Tacitus, the Antonines, Celsus, Lucian and the like,—­much more the ten thousand philosophers and joke-smiths of Rome,—­did both feel and apply all this to the Galilean Sect; and yet—­’Vicisti, O Galilaee’!

Ib. p. 95.

They never fail to refer to the proud Pharisee, whom they term self-’righteous’; and thus, having greatly misrepresented his character, they proceed to declaim on the arrogance of founding any expectation of reward from the performance of our ’moral duties’:—­whereas the plain truth is that the Pharisee was ’not righteous’, but merely arrogated to himself that character; he had neglected all the ‘moral duties’ of life.

Who told the Barrister this?  Not the Gospel, I am sure.

The Evangelical has only to translate these sentences into the true statement of his opinions, in order to baffle this angry and impotent attack; the self-righteousness of all who expect to claim salvation on the plea of their own personal merit.  “Pay to A. B. at sight—­value received by me.”—­To Messrs. Stone and Co.  Bankers, Heaven-Gate.  It is a short step from this to the Popish.  “Pay to A. B. ’or order’.”  Once assume merits, and I defy you to keep out supererogation and the old ‘Monte di Pieta’.

Ib. p. 97.

—­and from thence occasion is taken to defame all those who strive to prepare themselves, during this their state of trial, for that judgment which they must undergo at that day, when they will receive either reward or punishment, according as they shall be found to have ‘merited’ the one, or ‘deserved’ the other.

Can the Barrister have read the New Testament?  Or does he know it only by quotations?

Ib.