A few years earlier, the case of Noetus was treated in a similar way. The assembled Presbyters, after confessing the orthodox faith, cast out the heretic for _not submitting to it_. The Council of Eliberis, in Spain (before the Nicene Council), put out eighty-one canons, or chapters, of a mixed kind, dogmatical and disciplinary, “et Post _Subscriptiones_ Episcoporum in vetusto codice Urgelensi leguntur sequentes presbyterorum,” &c.—_Routh_, iv. 44. Doctrine of Novatian severity is there put forth: I refer to it not for any other purpose than to adduce the _fact_ of Subscription—(and Subscription, too, in the presence of the laity),—or at least the fact, that there was no authorized laxity in those days, such as Dr. STANLEY’S argument requires. Discipline in the Church. And here I would remark, my Lord, on the obvious difference between a state of the Church in which there was a system of DISCIPLINE holding together the whole body, and a condition like our own, when Discipline is acknowledged to be extinct among us. When bishops met together periodically, as they then did, to regulate the affairs of the Church,—and stood in mutual awe of each other’s spiritual powers;—when dismissal from Communion was a chastisement shrunk from, by laity and clergy, with terror,—it might have been easy to do without such Subscriptions as now attempt to guard the orthodoxy of our people. So again in the Pre-Reformation Church; the organization of the hierarchy, and the necessary submission of the people, might often render Subscriptions more than superfluous—unintelligible. Let those who would take away the present Subscription to our Prayer-book, restore to us, in a fair measure, the active Discipline of the Apostolic and post Apostolic times, and I for one will thankfully hail the change. But to ask to return to the “first three centuries,”—bristling as they do with canons, synodical and episcopal letters, and declarations,—because a volume was not then presented for the signature of every candidate for Orders,—is as reasonable as it would be to propose now to abolish printing, and go back to the simplicity and “freedom” of oral instruction and the scantiest of manuscript literature. There is no fallacy more glittering, but none more unworthy, illogical, and self-condemning than that of false historical parallel. And I again must ask your Lordship, whether Dr. STANLEY’S appeal to the Primitive History has not wholly failed?—I have briefly shown that Constantine was not the originator of Subscriptions to creeds or canons, but that subscribing or professing dogmatic assent was a Christian custom of the earlier ages. It is plain to every one who knows the history, _e.g._, of a great bishop like St. Cyprian or St. Irenæus, or of a great writer like Tertullian or Origen, that to guard dogmatically against heresy, by every means in their power, was the predominating idea of their whole course, however imperfectly attained;