Yours, Reverend Gentlemen, is a _hard_ lot! I know nothing to equal to it. You glory in liberty of conscience, and are the bound slaves of a _fallible_ Church, as if she were _infallible_. The Bible, and the Bible alone, is your rule of faith, and yet, you are remorselessly compelled, to subscribe to the thirty-nine Articles, which have been _added_ to the Scriptures, and which are in part self-contradictory, and in part, impossible to be understood.[P] You exult in freedom of thought, and in the privilege of private interpretation, but if you _dare_ to exercise _either_, you are dragged to the ecclesiastical courts, to answer for your temerity, at the bar of a Lay Judge. Ah! Reverend Gentlemen, Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley, did an _evil_ thing; they bowed their _own_ necks, and prepared for _your_ necks, a galling yoke, when to rid themselves of the supremacy, of the divinely appointed head of the Church, they cried out, "we have no king but Cæsar." From _that_ day to _this_, Parliament, and Parliamentary leaders, have lorded it, over your inheritance, both _spiritual_ and _temporal_. You _must_ either submit to _Lay_ tribunals, or there are _no loaves_ and _fishes_ for _you_. How beautifully is your Church thus described by the poet,-- "For she was of that stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant, To be the true Church militant: Such as do build their faith upon, The holy text of pike and gun; Decide all controversies by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrines orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks; Which always must be going on, And still be doing, never done: As if religion were intended, For nothing else, but to be mended."