Gentlemen, you see Mr. Wesley anticipated that his system must yield to philosophy, and do you believe the Church of England can stand when brought to the test of "truth, reason* and philosophy?" A church that will keep a man in prison nearly two years for 5s. 6d. church-rates? If you suppress Biblical examination, and the free publication of opinion, the next step will be to stop inquiry into the _practices_ of the Church, and to make us all the fettered slaves of the priesthood. No, Gentlemen; Methodism and Church-of-Englandism are doomed to fall; and such will be the fate of all systems not based upon the rock of truth. But, Gentlemen, that is no reason for suppressing inquiry, because the more the truth is investigated, the more beautiful it will appear. Gentlemen, has not our country raised itself to the highest pinnacle of human greatness as regards civilization and the arts? What rapid strides--what useful discoveries it has made in the arts and sciences! Consider its vast achievements in steam navigation--in railroad travelling--in the improvement of machinery. To such perfection have they brought machinery, that it is now almost capable of superseding human labour altogether. If all these magnificent improvements in the arts and sciences are good to society, and have resulted from free inquiry--why hesitate to apply it to social, religious, and political subjects? Are we ever to remain drivellers in religion? The true crime is that Haslam’s Letters are sold at a penny. Why should two-guinea blasphemers be tolerated and penny ones prosecuted? How can the learned Attorney-General, whose shelves are, doubtless, adorned with Drummond’s Academical Questions, Voltaire, Gibbon, Volney, and Shelley, uphold this prosecution; and what must that law be which can find the crime, not in the contents of the book, but in the fact of its being sold for a penny? They might for two guineas buy a magnificent book full of blasphemy. The Attorney-General, in his opening speech, had told the Jury that such works were "dangerous to society if addressed to the _vulgar, the uneducated_, and the _unthinking_" but I will appeal to his own witness, who had read the book, and on whom, an uneducated man, it had proved inoperative. It had done no mischief: and I hope the Jury will not consign me to a dungeon for having sold a book which it has been proved by his own witness has done no mischief. Paul said the Bæreans were more noble than those of Thessalonica, because they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so or not. The Attorney-General is about to punish me for doing the same thing. Christ himself said, the truth shall make you free; but the Attorney-General says the truth--or that which you believe to be the truth--shall make you a prisoner. In the parable of the tares, to which I have already referred, Jesus expressly forbade the rooting up of the tares, lest the wheat should be rooted up also.