Dr. Farrar, like other Protestants, talks about the right of private judgment. But this is only fine and futile verbiage, unless he admits the sinlessness of intellectual error. If judgment depends on the will, it is through the will amenable to motives; consequently, the way to pro-mote correct opinions is to promise rewards and threaten punishments. But if judgment does not depend on the will; if it is necessarily determined by the laws of reason and evidence; then it is an absurdity to bribe and intimidate. Now there is no third alternative. One of these two theories must be right, and the other must be wrong. Dr. Farrar is logically bound to take his choice. If he believes that judgment depends on the will, he has no right to denounce persecution. If he believes that judgment does not depend on the will, he has no right to censure the most absolute freethought. There are but two camps--the camp of Faith and the camp of Reason. Dr. Farrar belongs to the former. But he does not find his position comfortable. He casts a longing eye on the other camp. He wants to be in both. He therefore tries to form an alliance between them, if not to amalgamate them under one banner. Reason, said Bishop Butler, is the only faculty wherewith we can judge of anything, even of revelation itself. Dr. Farrar quotes this statement with approval. He quotes similar sentences from other Protestant writers. Then he turns upon the Roman Church for keeping the Bible out of the hands of the people, and denounces it for this with ultra-Protestant vigor. He imagines that this is a vindication of Protestantism, at any rate relatively, as a champion of reason in opposition to blind faith and absolute authority. But _private_ judgment and _free_ judgment are not identical. When the Protestant puts an open Bible into your hands, and tells you to read it and judge of it for yourself, he is acting like a Freethinker; but when he proceeds to say that if you do not find it to be a divine book, and believe all its teaching about God, and Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, and heaven and hell, you will infallibly be damned, he is acting like a Papist. His right of private judgment, at the finish, always means the right to differ from him on trivial points, and the duty of agreeing with him on every point which he chooses to regard as essential. If this is denied by Dr. Farrar, let him honestly answer this question--Is a Freethinker who has examined the Bible, and rejected it as a divine revelation, liable to any sort of penalty for his disbelief? The answer to this question will decide whether Dr. Farrar is really maintaining the rights of reason, or is merely maintaining the Protestant theory of faith against that of the Catholics, and standing up for the authority of the Book instead of the authority of the Church.