the rise of heresy in Europe, that the people have gained any freedom. The Church of England may say, This is not our work; but it is a branch of the Church of Rome, and ought not to repudiate the trunk it grew from. Nay, it has not even the same right to plead to us as the Church of Rome. The Church of Rome is consistent, and says to its followers, You on religion are unable to think, we will and we do think for you. The Church of England says, You have a right to think for yourselves, but damns you if you think differently from the Church. You say that hospitals are the fruits of Christianity. Where, save in the monasteries, were the hospitals for 1500 years? You boast of schools. Where were these at all for 1500 years? There were even in this country none worthy of the name for little children till Robert Owen set his example at New Lanark. You talk of going into the back streets, but is it not true that squalor, misery, and vice, crowd the back streets because the Bishops and the English Church have taken so much from the people, and have so hindered the populace from self-improvement, that they have only back streets themselves to live in, while they build palaces for the king, and magnificent structures for the Church? I attack the Church of England because the Church has challenged me. I attack it as a leech that for centuries has sucked the life-blood out of the people, and which, with the power to aid and help civilisation, has done nothing but retard it. The Bishop said, Let us suppose the existence of a supremely righteous, true, and holy being; let us suppose a revelation from such a being; what do you suppose such a revelation should be like? and he urged that the Christian possessed such a revelation as groundwork for his faith. I hold the supposed revelation in my hand. What does it reveal? That God made man and woman in the same day, but that he made them separately, the man long before the woman. That God gave them the fruit of every tree for food, but prohibited them from eating the fruit of one tree, and never intended that of another to be eaten by them; that he placed the man and woman in a garden within reach of the tree whose fruit they were forbidden to eat on pain of death, but the fruit of which was made good for food and pleasant to the eyes; that God made a serpent more subtle than all the beasts of the field; that this serpent tempted Eve, and she ate the forbidden fruit, and gave to the man who ate also, and thus both fell; that God, who had foreseen and predestined all this terrible farce, cursed for Adam’s sake all human kind, millions being thus involved in Adam’s ruin. That all this was the work of an all-wise and all-good God, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning. This God, who is not a man that he can repent, afterwards repented that he had made man, and, although not subject to passions, it grieved him at his heart, and he resolved to destroy all mankind.