the far greater part * * *.  They deem it better to inculcate the moral duties of Christianity in the pure simplicity and clearness with which they are revealed, than to go aside in search of ‘doctrinal mysteries’.  For as mysteries cannot be made manifest, they, of course, cannot be understood; and that which cannot be understood cannot be believed, and can, consequently, make no part of any system of faith:  since no one, till he understands a doctrine, can tell whether it be true or false; till then, therefore, he can have no faith in it, for no one can rationally affirm that he believes that doctrine to be true which he does not know to be so; and he cannot know it to be true if he does not understand it.  In the religion of a true Christian, therefore, there can be nothing unintelligible; and if the preachers of that religion do not make mysteries, they will never find any.

Who? the Bishops, or the dignified Clergy?  Have they at length exploded all “doctrinal mysteries?” Was Horsley “the one red leaf, the last of its clan,” that held the doctrines of the Trinity, the corruption of the human Will, and the Redemption by the Cross of Christ?  Verily, this is the most impudent attempt to impose a naked Socinianism on the public, as the general religion of the nation, admitted by all but a dunghill of mushroom fanatics, that ever insulted common sense or common modesty!  And will “the far greater part” of the English Clergy remain silent under so atrocious a libel as is contained in this page?  Do they indeed solemnly pray to their Maker weekly, before God and man, in the words of a Liturgy, which, they know, “cannot be believed?” For heaven’s sake, my dear Southey, do quote this page and compare it with the introduction to and petitions of the Liturgy, and with the Collects on the Advent, &c.

Ib. p. 110.

We shall discover upon an attentive examination of the subject, that all those laws which lay the basis of our constitutional liberties, are no other than the rules of religion transcribed into the judicial system, and enforced by the sanction of civil authority.

What!  Compare these laws, first, with Tacitus’s account of the constitutional laws of our German ancestors, Pagans; and then with the Pandects and ‘Novellae’ of the most Christian Justinian, aided by all his Bishops.  Observe, the Barrister is asserting a fact of the historical origination of our laws,—­and not what no man would deny, that as far as they are humane and just, they coincide with the precepts of the Gospel.  No, they were “transcribed.”

Ib. p. 113.