“When a man turns his back on this world, and is in good earnest resolved for everlasting life, his carnal friends, and ungodly neighbours, will pursue him with hue and cry; but death is at his heels, and he cannot stop short of the city of Refuge.” (Notes to the Pilgrim’s Progress by Hawker, Burder, &c.) This representation of the state of real Christians is as mischievous as it is false.

Yet Christ’s assertion on this head is positive, and universal; and I believe it from my inmost soul, and am convinced that it is just as true A.D. 1810, as A.D. 33.

Ib. p. 82.

The spirit with which all their merciless treatment is to be borne is next pointed out. * * “‘Patient bearing of injuries’ is true Christian fortitude, and will always be more effectual to ‘disarm our enemies’, and to bring others to the knowledge of the truth, than all ‘arguments’ whatever.”

Is this Barrister a Christian of any sort or sect, and is he not ashamed, if not afraid, to ridicule such passages as these?  If they are not true, the four Gospels are false.

Ib. p. 86.

  It is impossible to give them credit for integrity when we behold the
  obstinacy and the artifice with which they defend their system against
  the strongest argument, and against the clearest evidence.

Modest gentleman!  I wonder he finds time to write bulky pamphlets:  for surely modesty, like his, must secure success and clientage at the bar.  Doubtless he means his own arguments, the evidence he himself has adduced:—­I say doubtless, for what are these pamphlets but a long series of attacks on the doctrines of the strict Lutherans and Calvinists, (for the doctrines he attacks are common to both,) and if he knew stronger arguments, clearer evidence, he would certainly have given them;—­and then what obstinate rogues must our Bishops be, to have suffered these Hints to pass into a third edition, and yet not have brought a bill into Parliament for a new set of Articles?  I have not heard that they have even the grace to intend it.

Ib. p. 88.

On this subject I will quote the just and striking observations of an excellent modern writer.  “In whatever village,” says he, “the fanatics get a footing, drunkenness and swearing,—­sins which, being more exposed to the eye of the world, would be ruinous to their great pretensions to superior sanctity—­will, perhaps, be found to decline; but I am convinced, from personal observation, that every species of fraud and falsehood—­sins which are not so readily detected, but which seem more closely connected with worldly advantage—­will be found invariably to increase.” (Religion without Cant; by R. Fellowes, A.M. of St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford.)

In answer to this let me make a “very just observation,” by some other man of my opinion, to be hereafter quoted “from an excellent modern writer;”—­and it is this, that from the birth of Christ to the present