The obvious inference from the passage in question, if not its express import, is: _Miracula experimenta crucis esse, quibus solis probandum erat, homines non, pecudum instar, omnino perituros esse_. Now this doctrine I hold to be altogether alien from the _spirit_, and without authority in the _letter_, of Scripture. I can recall nothing in the history of human belief, that should induce me, I find nothing in my own moral being that enables me, to understand it. I can, however, perfectly well understand, the readiness of _those_ divines in _hoc Paleii dictum ore pleno jurare, qui nihil aliud in toto Evangelio invenire posse profitentur_. The most unqualified admiration of this superlative passage I find perfectly in character for those, who while Socinianism and Ultra-Socinianism are spreading like the roots of an elm, on and just below the surface, through the whole land, and _here and there_ at least have even dipped under the garden-fence of the Church, and blunted the edge of the labourer's spade in the gayest _parterres_ of our Baal-hamon, who,--while heresies, to which the framers and compilers of our Liturgy, Homilies, and Articles would have refused the very name of Christianity, meet their eyes on the list of religious denominations for every city and large town throughout the kingdom--can yet congratulate themselves with Dr. Paley, in his book on the Evidences, that _the rent has not reached the foundation_[142]--that is, that the corruption of man's will; that the responsibility of man in any sense in which it is not equally predicable of dogs and horses; that the divinity of our Lord, and even his pre-existence; that sin, and redemption through the merits of Christ; and grace; and the especial aids of the Spirit; and the efficacy of prayer; and the subsistency of the Holy Ghost; may all be extruded without breach or rent in the essentials of Christian Faith;--that a man may deny and renounce them all, and remain a _fundamental_ Christian, notwithstanding. But there are many who cannot keep up with Latitudinarians of such a stride; and I trust that the majority of serious believers are in this predicament. Now for all these it would seem more in character to be of Bishop Taylor's opinion, that the belief in question is _presupposed_ in a convert to the Truth in Christ--but at all events not to circulate in the great whispering gallery of the religious public suspicions and hard thoughts of those who, like myself, are of this opinion; who do not dare decry the religious instincts of humanity as a baseless dream; who hold, that to excavate the ground under the faith of all mankind, is a very questionable method of building up our faith, as Christians; who fear, that instead of adding to, they should detract from, the honour of the Incarnate Word by disparaging the light of the Word, that was in the beginning, and which lighteth _every_ man; and who, under these convictions, can tranquilly leave it to be disputed, in some new Dialogues in the shades, between the fathers of the Unitarian Church on the one side, and Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, and Lessing on the other, whether the famous passage in Paley does or does not contain the three dialectic flaws, _petitio principii_, _argumentum in circulo_, and _argumentum contra rem a premisso rem ipsam includente_.