"There were timid men amongst the great divines who brought us out of Babylon, and the 4th article of the Thirty-nine was notoriously drawn up in antagonism to the teaching of the holy Silesian nobleman, Caspar Schwenckfeld, to satisfy the scruples of the sacerdotal party, which clung to the benefices of the Establishment then as now. "The omission of twelve words would remove all doubt as to its interpretation. We may be content to affirm that 'Christ did truly rise again from death' without stating further 'and took again his body with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining.' "It has always been the curse of Christendom that man desired to express in words the ineffable. "'Intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.' "But it need not now be difficult with the aid of a Protestant Parliament, which has so recently and so gloriously determined on the expulsion of sacerdotalists, to modify, in deference to pious scruples, too rigid definitions. Time will suffice for these necessary modifications of sixteenth-century theology. "In the present, the gain is ours. We shall hear less of the cultus of the 'Sacred Heart' in future. The blasphemous mimicry of the Mass will perish from amongst us. "No man, in England at least, will dare to affirm that the flesh in which the Saviour bore our sins upon the Cross is exposed for adoration on the so-called 'altar.' "As Matthew Arnold put it, on the true grave of Jesus 'the Syrian stars look down,' but the risen Christ, glorious in His _Spiritual_ Body, reigns over the hearts of his true followers, and we look forward in faith to our departure from the earthly tabernacle, which is dissolved day by day, knowing that we also have a spiritual house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." As he read the clever trimming article and marked the bitterness of its tone, the priest's face grew red with anger and contempt. This facile acceptance of the Great Horror, this insolent conversion of it to party ends, this flimsy pretence of reconciling statements, which, if true, made Christianity a thing of nought, to a novel and trumped-up system of adherence to it, filled him with bitter antagonism. But, useful as the article was as showing the turn many men's minds were taking, there was no time to trouble about it now. To-morrow the great meeting of those who still believed Christ died and rose again from the dead was to be held. The terrible "Report" had been issued. During the forty hours of its existence everything was already beginning to crumble away. To-morrow the Church Militant must speak to the world. It was said, moreover, that the great wave of infidelity and mockery which was sweeping hourly over the country would culminate in a great riot to-morrow....