one, and the Bible, nevertheless, is the book out of which we must all pretend to teach, we cannot sufficiently praise the cleverness of those gifted individuals, who, by organizing a sort of skirmishing ministry, to take the place of the old uniform heavy phalanx of the Romanists, one fit _to extend the truth of the Bible_, so as to suit the tastes of all sorts of men, have enabled so many of us to extract from the pockets of all a genteel maintenance for our wives and families. I have in this paraphrase found myself obliged to pass over one word when you speak of _God's_ mode of _extending_ the truth of the Bible. This operation, I think, God had never anything to do with. I believe that 1,800 years ago, God did, by his only Son, institute a ministry as his mode of _preserving_ the truth of the Bible, but _extending_ the truth of the Bible is a very different sort of affair. These words, though rather obscure, yet seem to convey very felicitiously the idea of what the Gospel ministers of the present day have accomplished, that is, making the Bible truth so extensive as to embrace all the various contradictory systems--Church of England, High, Low, Evangelical, _et hoc genus omne_. But the time would fail me to tell a tenth part of the glorious variety which the spiritual bill of fare of the nineteenth century presents to the dainty taste of our countrymen. This plan of truth extension is a wonder which was reserved for the wisdom of our preachers to contrive and to develope, under the guidance of a wiser spirit than that of man, and yet certainly not the spirit of God. The ancient saints had no {236} more idea of it than Archimedes had of a hydraulic press. I have taken the liberty of playing upon your exposition of authority, to show how vain it is to attempt to uphold anything like a legitimate authority, and the right of private judgment together. I do not wonder that you got rather into a perplexity in trying to explain how they may be reconciled. The Church of England has tried to explain this matter in her 20th Article, but finds it too hard. She just says, 'the Church hath authority in controversies of faith,' but leaves it to her children to guess whether this authority be divine or human, infallible or fallible, granted her by the King of Heaven or the king of England. She intimates, indeed, that it is not quite to be depended on, by the next words, in which it is said, 'it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything contrary to God's word written:' but again we are left to divine who the judge is, who is to keep the Church in order: is it the king, or every licensed preacher, or every single Christian? ..... Ah! these Articles are troublesome things. I have known what it is to be under those shackles, and what it is to be set free from them."