ion of
officials, that some one or more are always below the standard of
efficiency, whence those that depend on their services must suffer
inconvenience. A great amount of dulness in preaching has always to be
tolerated; so also might an occasional deviation from orthodoxy; the
more so, that the severity of the discipline for heresy has a good deal
to do with the dulness.

If heretical tendencies have shown themselves in a Church communion,
either they are absurd, unmeaning, irrelevant--perhaps a reversion to
some defunct opinion,--or they are the suggestion of new knowledge in
theology, or outside of it. In the first case, they will die a natural
death, unless prosecution gives them importance; in the other case, they
are to be candidly examined, to be met by argument rather than by
deposition. An individual heretic can always be neglected; if he is
enthusiastic and able, he may have a temporary following, especially
when the community has sunk into torpor. If two or three in a hundred
adopt erroneous opinions, it is nothing; if thirty or forty in a hundred
have been led astray, the matter hangs dubious, and discretion is
advisable. When a majority is gained, the fulness of the time has
arrived; the heresy has triumphed.

* * * * *

However strong may be the theoretical reasons for the abolition of the
penal sanctions to orthodoxy, they do not dispense with the confirmation
of experience; and I must next refer to the more prominent examples of
Churches constituted on the principle of freedom to the clergy.

[THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH EXEMPLARY.]

The most remarkable and telling instance is that furnished by the
English Presbyterian Church, with its coadjutor in Ireland. The history
of this Church is not unfamiliar to us; the great lawsuit relating to
Lady Hewley's charity gave notoriety to the changes of opinion that had
come over it in the course of a century. But whoever is earnest on the
question as to the expediency of tests should study the history
thoroughly, as being in every way most instructive. The leading facts,
as concerns the present argument, are mainly these:--

First, the great decision at the Salters' Hall conference, on the 10th
of March, 1719, when, by a majority of 73 to 69, it was resolved to
exact no test from the clergy as a condition of their being ordained
ministers of the body. The point more immediately at issue was the
Trinity, on which opinions h