Hugh Bronte worked up to his tenant-right doctrines by a series of assertions, negative and positive, on religious, political, and economic questions. His address, in which he set forth his views on such matters, approximated to the form of a lecture more nearly than any of his other talks, which were generally in the narrative form. The following are the chief points of the discourse, as given to me by my old tutor and friend, and the propositions were never varied, except in the mere wording, although the statement had never been formally written out. Hugh Bronte always began with a little black Bible in his hand, or on his knee, and his first negative assertion was: I. "The church is not Christ's." Laying his hand on the little book he would declare that he found grace in the Bible, but in the church only greed. Once and only once he had appealed to a parson. He was hungry, naked, and bleeding, but the great double-chinned, red-faced man had looked on him as if he were a rat, and, without hearing his story, had him driven off by a grand-looking servant, who cracked a whip over his head and swore at him. In Hugh Bronte's eyes the parsons got their livings for political services, and not for learning or goodness. Enormous sums were paid them to do work that they did not do. They rarely visited their parishes, and their duties were performed by hungry and ill-paid curates. When they did return occasionally to their livings they were heard of at banquets, where they ate and drank too freely, and at other resorts, where they gambled recklessly. They were seen riding over the country after foxes and hounds, and sitting in judgment on the men whose grain they had trampled down, and sending them to penal servitude for trapping hares in their own gardens. They were said to be ignorant, but they were known to be irreligious, immoral, arrogant, and cruel. They acted as the ministers of the gentry, before whom they were very humble, and they utterly despised the people who paid for their luxuries, and supported their own priests besides. They gave the sanction of the church to violence, craft, and crime in high places, and they were as far removed as men could be, in origin, position, and practices, from the apostles of the New Testament. And yet, he added, they claimed, in the most haughty manner, that they and they alone were the successors of the apostles, although they showed no signs of apostolic spirituality or apostolic service. Hugh Bronte declared that he could not submit to the Protestant parson, who despised him because he was poor, and could not aid in his promotion, nor could he yield obedience to the Catholic priest, who demanded utter subjection and prostration of both body and mind, and enforced his church's claims by a stout stick. With these views it is not to be wondered at that Hugh Bronte did not belong to any church.