Now, as this tract is issued by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, I cannot but think it a misfortune, that, as a _Country Clergyman_, you should not have seen it before you wrote your Address to Lord T.: you would scarcely then have challenged the Noble Lord to show that he was “a true churchman,” by fearing and restraining the circulation of the Scriptures. As it is, you can scarcely, I should think, expect to escape rebuke. Like that “officer of the Society,” {31} whose secret history you seem to have studied so well, you have stepped a little out of your regular line, and, like him too, have been guilty of some “indecorum towards the church and its spiritual superiors.” But supposing, Sir, that I could admit your dubious proposition, that the dissemination of truth did not depend upon the _Bible_ which was given, but upon the _hand_ which might give it; a proposition, which, if true to the extent of your statement, would prove equally, that the effect of your pamphlet upon the interests of the Bible Society will depend less upon the merits of your work, than upon the hands through which it may pass;—what expedient would you propose, in the exercise of your sagacity, for providing against the consequences you fear? I am aware of your answer—“_Dissolve the Bible Society_.” Suppose that done; though there would, I think, be difficulties in the way of doing it: still the tares are sowing in a thousand directions, and the business of prevention is scarcely yet begun. Your expedient must provide for putting Bibles into the hands of churchmen _only_, or of those who will _infallibly_ become churchmen by reading them; or it will never succeed. But what will you do with those wholesale Bible-mongers, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and his Majesty’s Printer, and all their subordinate agents and instruments, the book and Bible sellers throughout the country? While such merchants as these may dispose of Bibles _ad libitum_ as an article of trade, and such bodies as the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, and others of the same description, will continue to favor the traffic, I cannot see how you will contrive to dam up the waters of life to any orthodox purpose; or to prevent their irrigating those lands that are alienated from the established church.