and defended.  The reflections might be retorted on the saint, since he broached and defended doctrines as unworthy of the Supreme All-Perfect Being as those which the heathens taught concerning their fictitious and inferior gods.  Is it necessary to quote any other than that by which we are taught that God has created numbers of men for no purpose but to damn them?  “Quisquis praedestinationis doctrinam invidia gravat,” says Calvin, “aperte maledicit Deo.”  Let us say, “Quisquis praedestinationis doctrinam asserit, blasphemat”.  Let us not impute such cruel injustice to the all-perfect Being.  Let Austin and Calvin and all those who teach it be answerable for it alone.  You may bring Fathers and Councils as evidences in the cause of artificial theology, but reason must be the judge; and all I contend for is, that she should be so in the breast of every Christian that can appeal to her tribunal.

Will you tell me that even such a private examination of the Christian system as I propose that every man who is able to make it should make for himself, is unlawful; and that, if any doubts arise in our minds concerning religion, we must have recourse for the solution of them to some of that holy order which was instituted, by God Himself, and which has been continued by the imposition of hands in every Christian society, from the Apostles down to the present clergy?  My answer shall be shortly this:  it is repugnant to all the ideas of wisdom and goodness to believe that the universal terms of salvation are knowable by the means of one order of men alone, and that they continue to be so even after they have been published to all nations.  Some of your directors will tell you that whilst Christ was on earth the Apostles were the Church; that He was the Bishop of it; that afterwards the admission of men into this order was approved, and confirmed by visions and other divine manifestations; and that these wonderful proofs of God’s interposition at the ordinations and consecrations of presbyters and bishops lasted even in the time of St. Cyprian—­that is, in the middle of the third century.  It is pity that they lasted no longer, for the honour of the Church, and for the conviction of those who do not sufficiently reverence the religious society.  It were to be wished, perhaps, that some of the secrets of electricity were improved enough to be piously and usefully applied to this purpose.  If we beheld a shekinah, or divine presence, like the flame of a taper, on the heads of those who receive the imposition of hands, we might believe that they receive the Holy Ghost at the same time.  But as we have no reason to believe what superstitious, credulous, or lying men (such as Cyprian himself was) reported formerly, that they might establish the proud pretensions of the clergy, so we have no reason to believe that five men of this order have any more of the Divine Spirit in our time, after they are ordained, than they had before.  It would be a farce to provoke laughter, if there was no suspicion of profanation in it, to see them gravely lay hands on one another, and bid one another receive the Holy Ghost.