"The third point is, that there is a preparation of a public mind going forward for the putting of the present Established Church on the same footing as the present Establishments of the Dissenters--the footing of voluntary rather than legal support; and that the preparation of this state of mind is accelerated by the embarrassed state of the country. "The evidence of these three points in prospect is, that the present state of the Church will be entirely overthrown in the course of two or three Sessions of Parliament. "On the principle of dissent from the Established Church, I have to observe, that it is desirable there should be no dissent; but then the Church should be invulnerable. There can be no popular dissent from any Institution that can be defended as good and best; and though I am instructed to allow that the general body of dissenters from the Church have dissented on very frivolous, even on indefensible grounds, (inasmuch as the Dissenters have not corrected in themselves the errors of the Church), there still remains the proof that where the Church has been assailed or dissented from, it has not been in a condition to defend and justify itself. "This incapability of the Church to defend and justify itself, where assailed, must have arisen from a defective state of its doctrine and discipline. "This doctrine and discipline is founded upon the literal reading of the Sacred Scriptures, or the books of the Old and New Testament. "I impugn the literal as an erroneous reading: it claims to be local and temporal history, and is not. Not one of its apparent historical subjects can be verified. Every one of them can be falsified, upon the principle that other things were being done at the time, and that other people dwelt in the places; and that nothing of contemporary character, purporting to be history, has corroborated the historical claims of the Old and New Testament. "It is said of the writings of the Old and New Testament, that they are allegorical, and that they contain the moral of human salvation from evil. Under this view, they may be true, and may be important as a matter of instruction. I so believe them to be true, and to be important as a matter of instruction; but as your Lordship may put me on the task of mentioning some particular facts and grounds on which I impugn the literal reading of the Sacred Scriptures, and may properly suggest that it is necessary this ground should be first cleared before we try them on the other ground, I submit, as two well-weighed and conclusive propositions:-- "1st. That the person of Jesus Christ, or the name, is not in mention by any author of the first century, if the passage in Josephus be excepted as an interpolation; and that this defect in the evidence is fatal to the historical claim.