"As to your charge, Mr. Barton, that the lives of our clergy gave occasion to the downfall of our church, you cannot prove it, unless, invested with the attribute of omniscience, you can look into the hearts of men, and estimate the comparative worth of two numerous communities. The claims of our church to apostolical purity rest on her doctrines, constitution, and services. These are capable of proof and investigation, and are not affected by the unworthiness of her ministers. The pretensions of those sects who reject all creeds, forms, and canons, rest solely on the qualities of their members; and those who deny that human institutions can be binding, seem to adopt the common language of reformers, intimating, that they who pull down the old temple must be a wiser and worthier race of beings than those who supported it. Now as each man takes a personal interest in the triumph of his party, he thinks it his duty, not only to give his neighbour credit for whatever portion of graces and abilities he lays claim to, but also makes the same claim for himself; and he must be a bad caterer who cannot make a savoury compound of spiritual delicacies, when he thus traffics in them by barter. Yet I often wonder how they, who positively insist on the absolute depravity of mankind, can reconcile it to consistency, to make so many of their own brethren absolutely saints. They call themselves in the aggregate, the vilest of sinners; yet, when they come to describe particulars, they employ language which even the most eminent of all the Apostles had too humble a sense of his defects to adopt. But on the contrary, we who do not found our claims on the superiority of the earthen vessels in which the heavenly treasure is lodged, are not solicitous to describe the church militant in terms appropriate only to the church triumphant. We see and deplore the vices and errors of each other; and after that acknowledgment, do not, worthy Barton, call us uncandid if I add, we also discover yours. I will go further, and own, that we record that as a blemish which you produce as a beauty; I mean your zeal to promote separation, so plainly contradictory, not merely to a dubious text, a difficult chapter, or even an epistle hard to be understood, but to the whole tenor of the New Testament, which, from St. Matthew to the Revelations, preaches concord, brotherly love, candour, humility, lenity in judgment, meekness, submission, unity in belief, in worship, in our conduct on earth, and in final hope of an eternal reward in heaven."