On the 5th of November 1828, he wrote to Lord Holland:--
"To-day I have preached an honest sermon before the Mayor and Corporation in the Cathedral--the most Protestant Corporation in England! They stared at me with all their eyes. Several of them could not keep the turtle on their stomachs."
The sermon[94] well deserved the epithet. It glanced, as the occasion demanded, at the civil grievances of the Roman Catholics, and then it went on to lay down some simple but sufficient rules by which men should regulate their judgment on religious forms and bodies with which they do not sympathize.--
"Our holy religion consists of some doctrines which influence practice, and of others which are purely speculative. If religious errors be of the former description, they may, perhaps, be fair objects of human interference; but, if the opinion be merely theological and speculative, there the right of human interference seems to end, because the necessity for such interference does not exist. Any error of this nature is between the Creator and the creature,--between the Redeemer and the redeemed. If such opinions are not the best opinions which can be found, God Almighty will punish the error, if mere error seemeth to the Almighty a fit object of punishment. Why may not a man wait if God waits? Where are we called upon in Scripture to pursue men for errors purely speculative?--to assist Heaven in punishing those offences which belong only to Heaven?--in fighting unasked for what we deem to be the battles of God,--of that patient and merciful God, who pities the frailties we do not pity--who forgives the errors we do not forgive,--who sends rain upon the just and the unjust, and maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and the good.
"I shall conclude my sermon (extended, I am afraid, already to an unreasonable length), by reciting to you a very short and beautiful apologue, taken from the Rabbinical writers. It is, I believe, quoted by Bishop Taylor in his _Holy Living and Dying_. I have not now access to that book, but I quote it to you from memory, and should be made truly happy if you would quote it to others from memory also.
"'As Abraham was sitting in the door of his tent, there came unto him a wayfaring man; and Abraham gave him water for his feet, and set bread before him. And Abraham said unto him, Let us now worship the Lord our God before we eat of this bread. And the wayfaring man said unto Abraham, I will not worship the Lord thy God, for thy God is not my God; but I will worship my God, even the God of my fathers. But Abraham was exceeding wroth; and he rose up to put the wayfaring man forth from the door of his tent. And the voice of the Lord was heard in the tent--Abraham, Abraham! have I borne with this man for three score and ten years, and can'st thou not bear with him for one hour?'"[95]