But in all alike it is the digressions, overgrowths, parenthetic 'obiter et in transitu' sentences, and, above all, his anthropological reflections and experiences--(for example, the inimitable account of a religious dispute, from the first collision to the spark, and from the spark to the world in flames, in his 'Dissuasive from Popery'),--these are the costly gems which glitter, loosely set, on the chain armour of his polemic Pegasus, that expands his wings chiefly to fly off from the field of battle, the stroke of whose hoof the very rock cannot resist, but beneath the stroke of which the opening rock sends forth a Hippocrene. The work in which all his powers are confluent, in which deep, yet gentle, the full stream of his genius winds onward, and still forming peninsulas in its winding course--distinct parts that are only not each a perfect whole--or in less figurative style--(yet what language that does not partake of poetic eloquence can convey the characteristics of a poet and an orator?)--the work which I read with most admiration, but likewise with most apprehension and regret, is the 'Liberty of Prophesying'. If indeed, like some Thessalian drug, or the strong herb of Anticyra, ... that helps and harms, Which life and death have sealed with counter charms-- it could be administered by special prescription, it might do good service as a narcotic for zealotry, or a solvent for bigotry. The substance of the preceding tract may be comprised as follows: 1. During the period immediately following our Lord's Ascension, or the so called Apostolic age, all the gifts of the Spirit, and of course the gift of prayer, as graces bestowed, not merely or principally for the benefit of the Apostles and their contemporaries, but likewise and eminently for the advantage of all after-ages, and as means of establishing the foundations of Christianity, differed in kind, degree, mode, and object, from those ordinary graces promised to all true believers of all times; and possessed a character of extraordinary partaking of the nature of miracles, to which no believer under the present and regular dispensations of the Spirit can make pretence without folly and presumption.