The doctor's sermon had the usual effect of controversial sermons--it convinced everybody that was convinced before and strengthened those who before were strong. Everybody was talking of it. The farmers as they drove their oxen stepped with a vigorous air, like men that were not going to be brought under any yoke of bondage. Old ladies in their tea-drinkings talked about the danger of making a righteousness of forms and rites and ceremonies, and seemed of opinion that the proceedings at the Episcopal church, however attractive, were only an insidious putting forth of one paw of the Scarlet Beast of Rome, and that if not vigorously opposed the whole quadruped, tooth and claw, would yet be upon their backs. But it must not be supposed that this side of the question had all the talk to itself. The Rev. Simeon Coan was a youth of bright parts, vigorous combativeness and considerable fluency of speech, and he immediately prepared a sermon on his side of the question, by which, in the opinion of the Lewises, the Danforths, the Copleys and all the rest of his audience, he proved beyond a doubt that Christmas ought to be kept, and that the 25th of December was the proper time for keeping it. He brought also quotations from Greek and Latin thick as stars in the skies; and as to the quotations of the doctor he ignored them altogether, and talked about something else. The doctor had been heard to observe with a subdued triumph that he really would like to see how "Coan" would "get round" that passage in Clement, but he could not have that pleasure, because "Coan" did not get anywhere near it, but struck off as far as possible from it into a region of quotations on his own side; and as his audience were not particularly fitted to adjudicate nice points in chronology, and as quotations from the Church Fathers on all sides of almost any subject under the sun are plentiful as blackberries in August, Mr. Coan succeeded in making his side to the full as irrefragable in the eyes of his hearers as the doctor's in those of his. But besides this he reinforced himself by proclaiming with vigor the authority of the Church. "The Church has ordained," "The Church in her wisdom has directed," "The Church commands," and "The Church hath appointed," were phrases often on his tongue, and the sound rolled smoothly above the heads of good old families who had long felt the want of some definite form of authority to support their religious preferences in face of the general Congregationalism of the land.