shall be shewn Bentley in his attack on Collins the freethinker, enjoying "rare sport,"--"rat-hunting in an old rick;" and "laying about him in high glee, braining an authority at every blow." (p. 308.) "Coarse, arrogant, and abusive, with all Bentley's worst faults of style and temper, this masterly critique is decisive." (p. 307.) And yet, you are not to rejoice! "The 'Discourse of Freethinking' was a small tract published in 1713 by Anthony Collins, a gentleman whose high personal character and general respectability seemed to give a weight to his words, which assuredly they do not carry of themselves." (p. 307.) [Why, the man ought to have been an Essayist and Reviewer!] ... "By 'freethinking'" he does but "mean liberty of thought,--the right of bringing all received opinions whatsoever to the touchstone of reason:" (p. 307:) [a liberty which has evidently disappeared from English Literature: a right which no man dares any longer exercise under pain of excommunication!] "Collins was not a sharper, and would have disdained practices to which Bentley stooped for the sake of a professorship." (p. 310.) [O high-minded Collins!] "The dirt endeavoured to be thrown on Collins will cleave to the hand that throws it." (p. 309.) [O dirty Bentley!] And though "Collins's mistakes, mistranslations, misconceptions, and distortions are so monstrous, that it is difficult for us now, forgetful how low classical learning had sunk, to believe that they _are_ mistakes, and not wilful errors," (p. 308,)--yet "Addison, the pride of Oxford, had done no better. In his 'Essay on the Evidences of Christianity,' Addison 'assigns as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as that of the Cock-lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's 'Vortigern;' puts faith in the lie about the thundering legion; is convinced that Tiberius moved the Senate to admit JESUS among the gods; and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a record of great authority.'" (p. 307, quoting Macaulay's _Essays_.) All this and much more you shall see. Remember that it is the history of your immediate forefathers which you will be contemplating,--the morality of the professors of religion during the last century,--"the past history of the theory of Belief in the Church of England!" (p. 329.) The curtain falls; and now, pray how do you like it? I invite you, in conclusion, to "take the religious literature of the present day, as a whole; and endeavour to make out clearly on what basis Revelation is supposed by it to rest; whether on Authority, on the Inward Light, on Reason, on self-evidencing Scripture, or on the combination of the four, or some of them, and in what proportions." (p. 329.) ... After this, you are at liberty to proceed to read 'Jowett on Inspiration,'--with what appetite you may!