Will you tell me finally, in opposition to what has been said, and that you may anticipate what remains to be said, that laymen are not only unauthorised, but quite unequal, without the assistance of divines, to the task I propose?  If you do, I shall make no scruple to tell you, in return, that laymen may be, if they please, in every respect as fit, and are in one important respect more fit than divines to go through this examination, and to judge for themselves upon it.  We say that the Scriptures, concerning the divine authenticity of which all the professors of Christianity agree, are the sole criterion of Christianity.  You add tradition, concerning which there may be, and there is, much dispute.  We have, then, a certain invariable rule whenever the Scriptures speak plainly.  Whenever they do not speak so, we have this comfortable assurance—­ that doctrines which nobody understands are revealed to nobody, and are therefore improper objects of human inquiry.  We know, too, that if we receive the explanations and commentaries of these dark sayings from the clergy, we take the greatest part of our religion from the word of man, not from the Word of God.  Tradition, indeed, however derived, is not to be totally rejected; for if it was, how came the canon of the Scriptures, even of the Gospels, to be fixed?  How was it conveyed down to us?  Traditions of general facts, and general propositions plain and uniform, may be of some authority and use.  But particular anecdotical traditions, whose original authority is unknown, or justly suspicious, and that have acquired only an appearance of generality and notoriety, because they have been frequently and boldly repeated from age to age, deserve no more regard than doctrines evidently added to the Scriptures, under pretence of explaining and commenting them, by men as fallible as ourselves.  We may receive the Scriptures, and be persuaded of their authenticity, on the faith of ecclesiastical tradition; but it seems to me that we may reject, at the same time, all the artificial theology which has been raised on these Scriptures by doctors of the Church, with as much right as they receive the Old Testament on the authority of Jewish scribes and doctors whilst they reject the oral law and all rabbinical literature.

He who examines on such principles as these, which are conformable to truth and reason, may lay aside at once the immense volumes of Fathers and Councils, of schoolmen, casuists, and controversial writers, which have perplexed the world so long.  Natural religion will be to such a man no longer intricate, revealed religion will be no longer mysterious, nor the Word of God equivocal.  Clearness and precision are two great excellences of human laws.  How much more should we expect to find them in the law of God?  They have been banished from thence by artificial theology, and he who is desirous to find them must banish the professors of it from his councils, instead of consulting them.  He must seek for genuine Christianity with that simplicity of spirit with which it is taught in the Gospel by Christ Himself.  He must do the very reverse of what has been done by the persons you advise him to consult.