Perhaps Mr. Fleming might apprehend that it was “contrary to the word of God,” which enjoins faithfulness in ministers, and sincerity in all, {80b} to adopt indiscriminately, with reference to all who were not unbaptized, excommunicated, or suicides, the form for the Burial of the Dead. He would gladly have availed himself, it may be, always of some portions, and frequently, of the whole of that beautiful and impressive service, if he might have been excused from expressing alike over the saint and the reviler of holiness—over him who had embraced and him who had denied the creed which all were required to receive as expounded by the church on pain of eternal death—over him who had calmly died in the well-grounded hope of acceptance at the bar of God, and him who had been hurried to that bar from scenes of intemperance or brawling—the same “_sure and certain_ hope” of the resurrection of the deceased to eternal life; and if he had not been called upon, however depraved and hopeless the character of the departed, or however irreparable the breach in society occasioned by his removal, to give Almighty God thanks for taking him to Himself—thanks which the lip must profess to be “hearty,” but to which the heart, in the utmost stretch of charity in the one case, or of self-denial in the other, could not respond. The version of the Psalms incorporated with the Book of Common Prayer, differed in many respects from that in the authorized version of the Bible, and in one instance directly contradicted it. {81} He, therefore, who acknowledged the more recent version as the word of God, and had noticed the discrepancy, could not, with strict truth, profess his conviction that the Prayer Book contained _nothing_ contrary to the word of God. Again: one of the Thirty-nine Articles expressly affirmed that “Christ went down into hell.” If Mr. Fleming was not at liberty to assign to this language a meaning such as the words, in the plain literal sense, do not express, and such as the compilers did not intend to convey, he might naturally feel some difficulty in admitting the statement to be “agreeable to the word of God.”