I lament with you that “the Holy Book is made a nose of wax;” I, too, am “_sadly_ experiencing” this, “daily before my eyes;” {27} and, the strange interpretation which you have given of “Christian Charity,” is another proof of the _sad_ extent to which this practice has spread. But I could not consent on that account to deprive _you_ of your Bible, nor even to refuse you another if you wanted it. Indeed, Sir, the conduct which you blame, and of which you have condescended to become an example, is a grievous evil: but the remedy which you propose, and which the Council of Trent proposed before you, is abundantly worse than the disease. By the way, Sir, I wonder you were not a little afraid of venturing such sentiments abroad, without first consulting those of your friends who are better acquainted with the principles of the Reformation than you appear to be. You talk of _the church_, in the same language, with the same pride of appropriation, and with the same prerogative of limiting the course and interpretation of Scripture, as if you had never heard that the church of Rome disputes all these things with you, or as if you had never heard of a separation from her. Had no such separation taken place, your observations would have been perfectly in order. You might then have followed them up too with this precautionary proposition, that Bibles should be suppressed; and that every subject of the empire should engage (in the language of the Douay Catechism) to “believe whatsoever the Catholic church proposes to be believed.” This would certainly (if it could have been carried into effect) have rendered “all such elaborate Societies” as confine themselves to “the _bare act of distributing Bibles_, useless;” and consequently the growth of _heresy_, _error_, and _delusion_, impossible. But, Sir, you and I must take things as we find them: and it does so happen, that things _are not_, in the church established in these realms, as they _once were_. Whether it be a wise or an unwise measure to open the Scriptures to the people at large, it is now too late to dispute: to the people at large they _are_ opened; and their distribution is legitimated both by canon and precedent, as an act of the strictest justice, and the purest benevolence.