He who is justly branded with the imputation of such a vice as falsehood, is, in the common estimation of the best part of society, contemptible. But if a minister of the Gospel, a divinely commissioned teacher of truth, shall expose himself to such an imputation; if, in so solemn an act as Subscription to Articles of Faith, or in the interpretation of them, the plain meaning of words is evaded, or a sense put upon them which in common discourse between man and man would be deemed dishonourable and wicked, the character of that person as a teacher of truth must be damaged, and his influence impaired. He may indeed be surrounded by a set of admirers captivated by his talents, and their applauses may preserve his self-complacency, but the final verdict will yet be against him. It is possible that this error of the mind may arise from self-delusion, and then the guilt is diminished, but an evil result must still ensue; for as the root is so will be the plant, and good fruit cannot grow out of falsehood or dissimulation. If we remove the case from one individual to numbers, the general effect will of course be proportionably worse, and the conclusion will be drawn that _many_ of the appointed teachers of truth are not lovers of truth. We may take, however, a less extreme case, and suppose only, that amongst the teachers of truth a great difference of opinion has arisen as to some of the doctrines of which they are called upon to treat, as to the Confession of Faith which they have to maintain, and as to the terms of the Subscription by which they declare their assent to it. Then the conclusion will be—_when this difference is brought in glaring colours before the public eye_—either, that the Confession itself, or the form of assent, is so obscurely worded that it cannot be understood; or that they are intolerable to the conscience of many subscribers, and so must be somehow evaded; or lastly, that words, to which a definite meaning has been assigned in past ages, have now lost that meaning; and that the learned, the pious, the teachers of the nation, are incapable of discovering and fixing the sense which they are now to bear. Let it be fairly considered how far the present state of things in this nation agrees with any of the cases above supposed: and if it does so agree, then it is maintained that, on the principle of a sacred love for truth, Subscription is become the disgrace of the English Church.