To attain a conviction for heresy, involving deprivation of office, the forms of justice must be respected.  It is only under peculiar circumstances, that the ecclesiastical authority can be content with saying, “I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, or Dr. Smith, and I depose thee accordingly”.  A regular trial, with proof of specific contradiction of specific articles, allowing the accused the full benefit of his explanations, must be the rule in every corporation that respects justice.  In the Church of England, a man cannot be deprived unless he contradict the articles clearly and consistently; the smallest incoherence on his part, the slightest vacillation in the rigour of his denial, is enough to save him.  We may easily imagine, therefore, how widely a clergyman may stray from the fair, ordinary, current rendering of the doctrines of the Church, without danger.  The whole essence of Christianity may be perverted under a few cunning precautions and by observing a few verbal formalities.

It has been pointed out, many times over, that the legally imposed creeds were the creatures of accident and circumstances at the time of their enactment, and are wholly unsuitable to the conservation of the more permanent and essential articles of the Christian faith.  The amount of heresy, as against the more truly representative doctrines, that may pass through their meshes is very great.

This weakness is aggravated by another—­the want of any provision for amending the creed from time to time.  If it were desirable to adopt measures for maintaining uniformity of opinions among the clergy, the creed should be excised, or added to, according to the needs of every age.  That this is not done, shows that the machinery of tests is altogether abnormal; it is not within the type of regular legislation.  That any given creed should be regarded as out of keeping, as both redundant and defective, and yet that the ecclesiastical authority should shrink from applying a remedy to its most obvious defects, proves that the system itself is bad.  All healthy legislation lends itself to perpetual improvement; that the enactments of articles of belief cannot be reconsidered, is a sign of rottenness.

A third objection to tests is, that mere dogmatic uniformity, if it were more complete than any tests can make it, is at best but a part of the religious character.  It does nothing to secure or promote fervour, feeling, the emotional element in religion.  It is by moral heat, far more than by its mould of doctrine, that religion influences mankind.  There is no means of censuring preachers for coldness or languid indifference; or rather, there is another and more legitimate means than penal prosecutions, namely, expressed dissatisfaction and the preference of those that excel in the quality.  A warm, glowing manner, an unctuous delivery, commands hearers and conducts to popularity and importance.  The men of cold and unfeeling natures may get into office,