Ib. s. i. p. 88. Of the incompetency of the Church, in its diffusive capacity, to be judge of controversies; and the impertinency of that pretence of the Spirit. Now here begin my serious differences with Jeremy Taylor, which may be characterized in one sentence; ideas 'versus' conceptions and images. I contend that the Church in the Christian sense is an idea;--not therefore a chimera, or a fancy, but a real being and a most powerful reality. Suppose the present state of science in this country, with this only difference that the Royal and other scientific societies were not founded: might I not speak of a scientific public, and its influence on the community at large? Or should I be talking of a chimera, a shadow, or a non-entity? Or when we speak with honest pride of the public spirit of this country as the power which supported the nation through the gigantic conflict with France, do we speak of nothing, because we cannot say,--"It is in this place or in that catalogue of names?" At the same time I most readily admit that no rule can be grounded formally on the supposed assent of this ideal Church, the members of which are recorded only in the book of life at any one moment. In Taylor's use and application of the term, Church, the visible Christendom, and in reply to the Romish divines, his arguments are irrefragable. Ib. s. ii. p. 93, So that if they read, study, pray, search records, and use all the means of art and industry in the pursuit of truth, it is not with a resolution to follow that which shall seem truth to them, but to confirm what before they did believe.