But it is time to dismiss this tissue of worthless as well as most mischievous writing;--even to exhibit which, in the words of its misguided author, ought to be its own sufficient exposure. Do men really expect us to "answer" such groundless assertions, and vague speculations as those which go before? A Faith without Creeds: a Clergy without authority or fixed opinions: a Bible without historical truth:--how can such things, for a moment, be supposed to be[99]? What answer do we render to the sick man who sees unsubstantial goblins on the solid tapestried wall; and mistakes for shadowy apparitions of the night, the forms of flesh and blood which are ministering to his life's necessities? If the Temptation, and the Transfiguration, and the Miracles of CHRIST be not true history, but ideological allegories,--then why not His Nativity and His Crucifixion,--His Death and His Burial,--His Resurrection and His Ascension into Heaven likewise? "_Liberty_" (we have been expressly told,) "_must be left to all, as to the extent in which they apply the principle_" (p. 201.)--_Where_ then is Ideology to begin,--or rather, where is ideology to end? "Why then is Strauss to be blamed for using that universal liberty, and '_resolving into an ideal the whole of the historical and doctrinal person of JESUS_?' Why is Strauss' resolution 'an excess?' or where and by what authority, short of his extreme view, would Mr. Wilson himself stop? or at what point of the process? and by what right could he, consistently with his own canon, call on any other speculator, to stay the ideologizing process[100]?"