"Let the Levites of the Lord keep close to their Instructions," he says, "and God will smite thro' the loins of those that rise up against them. I will report unto you a Thing which many Hundreds among us know to be true. The Godly Minister of a certain Town in Connecticut, when he had occasion to be absent on a Lord's Day from his Flock, employ'd an honest Neighbour of some small Talents for a Mechanick, to read a Sermon out of some good Book unto 'em. This Honest, whom they ever counted also a Pious Man, had so much conceit of his Talents, that instead of Reading a Sermon appointed, he to the Surprize of the People, fell to preaching one of his own. For his Text he took these Words, 'Despise not Prophecyings'; and in his Preachment he betook himself to bewail the Envy of the Clergy in the Land, in that they did not wish all the Lord's People to be Prophets, and call forth Private Brethren publickly to prophesie. While he was thus in the midst of his Exercise, God smote him with horrible Madness; he was taken ravingly distracted; the People were forc'd with violent Hands to carry him home. I will not mention his Name: He was reputed a Pious Man."--This is one of Cotton Mather's "Remarkable Judgments of God, on Several Sorts of Offenders,"--and the next cases referred to are the Judgments on the "Abominable Sacrilege" of not paying the Ministers' Salaries. This sort of thing does n't do here and now, you see, my young friend! We talk about our free institutions;--they are nothing but a coarse outside machinery to secure the freedom of individual thought. The President of the United States is only the engine driver of our broad-gauge mail-train; and every honest, independent thinker has a seat in the first-class cars behind him. --There is something in what you say,--replied the divinity-student; --and yet it seems to me there are places and times where disputed doctrines of religion should not be introduced. You would not attack a church dogma--say Total Depravity--in a lyceum-lecture, for instance? Certainly not; I should choose another place,--I answered.--But, mind you, at this table I think it is very different. I shall express my ideas on any subject I like. The laws of the lecture-room, to which my friends and myself are always amenable, do not hold here. I shall not often give arguments, but frequently opinions,--I trust with courtesy and propriety, but, at any rate, with such natural forms of expression as it has pleased the Almighty to bestow upon me. A man's opinions, look you, are generally of much more value than his arguments. These last are made by his brain, and perhaps he does not believe the proposition they tend to prove,--as is often the case with paid lawyers; but opinions are formed by our whole nature,--brain, heart, instinct, brute life, everything all our experience has shaped for us by contact with the whole circle of our being.