But perhaps if we venture thus to claim the ascertained truths of any science as dogmas, the scientific answer will be ready. They differ, it will be felt, from the nature of religious dogmas, in two important respects. The first difference is, that they are offered for acceptance with their full proofs, from the first moment that they are offered at all. The student could not, it may be, have discovered for himself the law of gravitation, or the circulation of the blood; but he can, when these discoveries are once set before him by another, see forthwith not only the coherency of the principles, but the cogency of their proof. The second difference is, that when they have been accepted by the student, proof and all, they still claim no allegiance beyond what his intelligence cannot but freely give; he is still free to supersede or upset them, if he can. He accepts them indeed provisionally, as identical with the truth so far as the truth on the subject is yet known; yet not necessarily as final truth. He accepts them as truths which all his further study will comment upon; presumably indeed in the way of continual illustration and corroboration,--so that what he accepts for study will be more and more certainly proved by the study--but also, if you please, in the way of correction; for if his study can supersede, or even in any measure correct or alter them,--why, so much the better both for science and for him! Why should not this be equally true of Theology? Why should religious dogmas be received without these conditions, as certainly and finally true?