"A Christian, then," said I, "if human applause be his idol is of all men most miserable. He forfeits his reputation every way. He is accused by the men of the world of going too far; by the enthusiast of not going far enough. While it is one of the best evidences of his being right, that he is rejected by one party for excess, and by the other for deficiency." "What then is to be done?" said Dr. Barlow. "Must a discreet and pious man give up a principle because it has been disfigured by the fanatic, or abused by the hypocrite, or denied by the skeptic, or reprobated by the formalist, or ridiculed by the men of the world? He should rather support it with an earnestness proportioned to its value; he should rescue it from the injuries it has sustained from its enemies; and the discredit brought on it by its imprudent friends. He should redeem it from the enthusiasm which misconceives, and from the ignorance or malignity which misrepresents it. If the learned and the judicious are silent in proportion as the illiterate and the vulgar are obtrusive and loquacious, the most important truths will be abandoned by those who are best able to unfold, and to defend them, while they will be embraced exclusively by those who misunderstand, degrade, and debase them. Because the unlettered are absurd, must the able cease to be religious? If there is to be an abandonment of every Christian principle because it has been unfairly, unskillfully, or inadequately treated, there would, one by one, be an abandonment of every doctrine of the New Testament." "I felt myself bound," said Mr. Stanley, "to act on this principle in our late conversation with Mr. Tyrrel. I would not refuse to assert with him the doctrines of grace, but I endeavored to let him see that I had adopted them in a scriptural sense. I would not try to convince him that he was wrong, by disowning a truth because he abused it. I would cordially reject all the bad use he makes of any opinion, without rejecting the opinion itself, if the Bible will bear me out in the belief of it. But I would scrupulously reject all the other opinions which he connects with it, and with which I am persuaded it has no connection." "The nominal Christian," said Dr. Barlow, "who insists that religion resides in the understanding only, may contend that love to God, gratitude to our Redeemer, and sorrow for our offenses, are enthusiastic extravagances; and effectually repress, by ridicule and sarcasm, those feelings which the devout heart recognizes, and which Scripture sanctions. On the other hand, those very feelings are inflamed, exaggerated, distorted, and misrepresented, as including the whole of religion, by the intemperate enthusiast, who thinks reason has nothing to do in the business; but who, trusting to tests not warranted in the Scripture, is governed by fancies, feelings, and visions of his own.