Having now discovered in the Scriptures this truth, to him at that time new and important, he pursued his philosophical researches--continually finding what he sought for in the one, borne out and elucidated by the other. After he had corrected the proof sheets of the 'Christabel', the 'Sibylline Leaves', and the 'Biographia Literaria'; they were brought to London, and published by Rest Fenner, Paternoster Row. [11] One of those periodical distresses, which usually visit this country about once in nine years, took place about this time, 1816,--and he was in consequence requested by his publisher to write on the subject. He therefore composed two Lay Sermons, addressed to the higher and to the middle classes of society, and had the intention of addressing a third to the lower classes. The first sermon he named "the Statesman's Manual, or the Bible the best guide to political skill and foresight." The pamphlet was as might have been expected, "cut up." He was an unpopular writer on an unpopular subject. Time was, when reviews directed the taste of the reading public, now, on the contrary, they judge it expedient to follow it. But it may be well to place before the reader the expression of Coleridge's own feelings, written after these several attacks, it may also serve to show the persecution to which he was liable: "I published a work a large portion of which was professedly metaphysical. (First Lay Sermon.) [12] A delay," said he, "occurred between its first annunciation and its appearance; and it was reviewed by anticipation with a malignity, so avowedly and so exclusively personal, as is, I believe, unprecedented even in the present contempt of all common humanity that disgraces and endangers the liberty of the press. 'After' its appearance the author of this lampoon was chosen to review it in the Edinburgh Review: and under the single condition, that he should have written what he himself really thought, and have criticised the work as he would have done had its author been indifferent to him, I should have chosen that man myself, both from the vigour and the originality of his mind, and from his particular acuteness in speculative reasoning, before all others. But I can truly say, that the grief with which I read this rhapsody of predetermined insult, had the rhapsodist himself for its whole and sole object: and that the indignant contempt which it excited in me was as exclusively confined to his employer and suborner. I refer to this Review at present, in consequence of information having been given me, that the innuendo of my 'potential infidelity,' grounded on one passage of my first Lay Sermon, has been received and propagated with a degree of credence, of which I can safely acquit the originator of the calumny. I give the sentences as they stand in the Sermon, premising only that I was speaking exclusively of miracles worked for the outward senses of men. It was