In the name of the Bible, of the Word of God, Luther at first incited the German peasantry to revolt against their rulers, and then, frightened at his own work, he persuaded the princes to massacre the peasants. John of Leyden found, in his studies of the Bible, that he should marry eleven women at once. Herman felt himself clearly designated, in the Bible, as the Envoy of the Lord. Nicholas learned from it that there was no necessity of anything connected with faith, and that we must live in sin in order that grace may abound. Sympson pretends to find in the Scriptures an ordination that men should walk in the streets stark naked, to teach the rich a lesson that they must divest themselves of everything. Richard Hill justified, with the Bible in hand, adultery and manslaughter as deeds never failing to work out some good purpose, especially when joined to incest, in which case more saints are added to the earth and more blessed to the heavens. Even on the avowal of honest Protestants, no crime or abomination has ever failed to find its pretended justification in some scriptural text. What, then, must we think of the reading of the Bible, when its reading, without note or comment, leads to such consequences? Indeed what has been said on the evil consequences of the Public School system on society proves sufficiently that the reading of the Bible is no adequate means at all to stem the torrent of crimes in our country. Nowhere has the Bible been read more frequently, during school-hours, than in the Public Schools of the New England States, and yet nowhere have the results of these schools proved more fatal than in these very States. The reading of the Bible alone, therefore, though it be the Word of God, will _not_ counterbalance the results of Pagan education. There are others who maintain "that religious instruction should be left to parents."