Where are the simplicity, the sincerity, the love of Truth, which alone can make Controversy fruitful of good results, when such a representation of the spirit of our Theology _can_ be given by “thirteen Clergymen” _after_ we had published the following words in our fifth Lecture (p. 9), for their special instruction:—“Let me guard myself from the imputation of rejecting this doctrine _because it is mysterious_; or of supporting a system which insists on banishing all mysteries from religion. On any such system I should look with unqualified aversion, as excluding from faith one of its primary elements; as obliterating the distinction between logic and devotion, and tending only to produce an irreverent and narrow-minded dogmatism. ‘Religion without mystery’ is a combination of terms, than which the Athanasian Creed contains nothing more contradictory; and the sentiment of which it is the motto, I take to be a fatal caricature of rationalism, tending to bring all piety into contempt. Until we touch upon the mysterious, we are not in contact with religion; nor are any objects reverently regarded by us, except such as, from their nature or their vastness, are felt to transcend our comprehension.” Nay, it is not a little remarkable, that the very illustration employed by the “thirteen Clergymen” to exhibit our absurdity in rejecting the incomprehensible, had been previously employed by ourselves to exhibit the necessity of admitting the incomprehensible:— _Trinitarian Preface_, p. xviii. _Unitarian Lecture_, No. V. p. 9. “Much of the great mystery of “The sense of what we do not know godliness, God manifest in the is as essential to our religion, flesh, with all the firmament of as the impression of what we do saving truth and love, whereof know; the thought of the it is the radiant centre, must boundless, the incomprehensible, remain inexplicable to our must blend in our mind with the present capacities. But to argue perception of the clear and true; from thence, that this mystery the little knowledge we have must is a cunningly-devised fable, is be clung to, as the margin of an as illogical as it would be to invisible immensity; _and all our maintain _that there is no positive ideas be regarded as the bottom to the sea, because we mere float to show the surface of have no plumb-line with which it the infinite deep_.” may be fathomed_.” This is bold misrepresentation; a consistent hardihood in the “tactics of holy war.” To persevere, against all remonstrance, in the repetition of a misstatement injurious to an opponent, and to do this so coolly as to use almost his own words in imputing to him the very opposite of what he has said, is at least a convenient, if not an honourable nor yet a formidable policy.