"It is curious to see how completely the medical man of the nineteenth century squares with the priest of the sixteenth century. The clergy of all sects are now better divines and better men than they ever were. They have lost Bacon's reproach that they took a smaller measure of things than any other educated men; and the physicians are now {270} in this particular the rearguard of the learned world; though it may be true that the rear in our day is further on in the march than the van of Bacon's day. Nor will they ever recover the lost position until medicine is as free as religion. "To this it must come. To this the public, which will decide for itself, has determined it shall come. To this the public has, in fact, brought it, but on a plan which it is not desirable to make permanent. We will be as free to take care of our bodies as of our souls and of our goods. This is the profession of all who sign as I do, and the practice of most of those who would not like the name "HETEROPATH." The motion of the Sun in the Ecliptic, proved to be uniform in a circular orbit ... with preliminary observations on the fallacy of the Solar System. By Bartholomew Prescott,[596] 1825, 8vo. The author had published, in 1803, a _Defence of the Divine System_, which I never saw; also, _On the inverted scheme of Copernicus_. The above work is clever in its satire. THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY. Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, established Nov. 12, 1824. Twenty-four plain questions to honest men. These are two broadsides of August and November, 1826, signed by Robert Taylor,[597] A.B., Orator of the Christian Evidence Society. This gentleman was a clergyman, {271} and was convicted of blasphemy in 1827, for which he suffered imprisonment, and got the name of the _Devil's Chaplain_. The following are quotations: "For the book of Revelation, there was no original Greek at all, but _Erasmus_ wrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516. Bishop Marsh,[598] vol. i. p. 320."--"Is not God the author of your reason? Can he then be the author of anything which is contrary to your reason? If reason be a sufficient guide, why should God give you any other? if it be not a sufficient guide, why has he given you _that_?" I remember a votary of the Society being asked to substitute for _reason_ "the right leg," and for _guide_ "support," and to answer the two last questions: he said there must be a quibble, but he did not see what. It is pleasant to reflect that the _argumentum a carcere_[599] is obsolete. One great defect of it was that it did not go far enough: there should have been laws against subscriptions for blasphemers, against dealing at their shops, and against rich widows marrying them.