of low deception or of shuffling fraud.  Its very members trust each other with caution and reluctance.  The more wealthy among them are drained and dried by the leeches that perpetually fasten upon them.  The leaders, ignorant and bigoted—­I speak of them collectively —­present us with no counter-qualities that can conciliate respect.  They have all the craft of monks without their courtesy, and all the subtlety of Jesuits without their learning.

In the whole ‘Bibliotlieca theologica’ I remember no instance of calumny so gross, so impudent, so unchristian.  Even as a single robber, I mean he who robs one man, gets hanged, while the robber of a million is a great man, so it seems to be with calumny.  This worthy Barrister will be extolled for this audacious slander of thousands, for which, if applied to any one individual, he would be in danger of the pillory.  This paragraph should be quoted:  for were the charge true, it is nevertheless impossible that the Barrister should know it to be true.  He positively asserts as a truth known to him what it is impossible he should know:—­he is therefore doubly a slanderer; for first, the charge is a gross calumny; and were it otherwise, he would still be a slanderer, for he could have no proof, no ground for such a charge.

Ib. p. 15.

Amidst all this spirit of research we find nothing—­comparatively nothing—­of improvement in that science of all others the most important in its influence * * *.  Religion, except from the emancipating energy of a few superior minds, which have dared to snap asunder the cords which bound them to the rock of error * * * has been suffered to remain in its principles and in its doctrines, just what it was when the craft of Catholic superstition first corrupted its simplicity.  So, so.  Here it comes out at last!  It is not the Methodists; no; it is all and each of all Europe, Infidels and Socinians excepted!  O impudence!  And then the exquisite self-conceit of the blunderer!

Ib. p. 29.

—­If of ‘different denominations’, how were they thus conciliated to a society of this ominous nature, from which they must themselves of necessity be excluded by that indispensable condition of admittance, “‘a union’ of religious sentiment in the ’great doctrines’:”  which very want of union it is that creates these ‘different denominations’?

No, Barrister! they mean that men of different denominations may yet all believe in the corruption of the human will, the redemption by Christ, the divinity of Christ as consubstantial with the Father, the necessity of the Holy Spirit, or grace (meaning more than the disposition of circumstances), and the necessity of faith in Christ superadded to a belief of his actions and doctrines,—­and yet differ in many other points.  The points enumerated are called the great points, because all Christians agree in them excepting the Arians and Socinians, who for that reason are not deemed Christians by the rest.