I would then address myself to the heads of your church and say, why is it that you who boast so much of the antiquity of your doctrines—the antiquity of your religious institutions—you, who in the hours of controversial difficulties fly to the traditions of your antients, as the great props of your vacillating arguments—the last hopes of your controversial safety—why you thus mutilate the traditions of antiquity?—why depart from that practice as old as Christianity itself?—why claim to yourselves a greater portion of wisdom than he who has instituted, than he who has ordained, than he who has sanctioned such a sacrament?—why infringe upon some of the most important words of a Saviour?—why violate that last impressive command of a Redeemer, by withholding from the people a right, which, if duly administered, must prove highly beneficial to the receiver? Equivocation may give an answer to such interrogations, but cool and dispassionate reason will receive no apology. THE CONCLUSION. My friends, there was a time when the dungeon or the scaffold would be the temporary but certain award of these my humble efforts for religion—a time when the most exquisite of tortures would follow a similar announcement of principle—a time when the inquisitorial rack would either extort a recantation of such sentiments, or point to some painful death as a necessary consequence of their avowal—a time when the Papal arm had wielded an ungovernable sway over the countries of Europe; and when secular power was so entwined around the ecclesiastical diadem, that a Pontiff’s nod might be once considered as a sufficient guarantee for the deposition of a monarch—a time when a Pope Gregory the Seventh {44} detained a Henry the Fourth, of Germany, for three days naked and fasting at his gates, and suing for mercy and absolution—a time when in the days of a Pope Innocent the Third {45a} the British crown had lain beneath the feet of Papal authority; and when a John of England was forced to yield obeisance to that edict which proclaimed absolution to a people from their due allegiance to a monarch. Yes, my friends, there was another period of time when individuals, under the pretext of religion, and under, if not the influence, at least the sanction of ecclesiastical power, had frequent recourse to acts of punishment which no religious creed should tolerate—a time when the manly and religious sentiments of a Lord Cobham {45b} had enkindled for his body the fire of persecution; and when the open avowal of a Ridley, a Hooper, a Cranmer, and a Latimer, {45c} had impressed upon their brow the indelible sentence of religious martyrdom. But blessed be God for all things, those times are past, and we now live in days when a more refined civilization has contracted the unlawful stretch of Roman church authority, and when the intelligence of mankind points out to a safer way for the glorious spirit of religious toleration.