sition until medicine is as free as religion.

"To this it must come. To this the public, which will decide for itself,
has determined it shall come. To this the public has, in fact, brought it,
but on a plan which it is not desirable to make permanent. We will be as
free to take care of our bodies as of our souls and of our goods. This is
the profession of all who sign as I do, and the practice of most of those
who would not like the name

"HETEROPATH."

The motion of the Sun in the Ecliptic, proved to be uniform in a
circular orbit ... with preliminary observations on the fallacy of the
Solar System. By Bartholomew Prescott,[596] 1825, 8vo.

The author had published, in 1803, a _Defence of the Divine System_, which
I never saw; also, _On the inverted scheme of Copernicus_. The above work
is clever in its satire.

THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY.

Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, established Nov. 12, 1824.
Twenty-four plain questions to honest men.

These are two broadsides of August and November, 1826, signed by Robert
Taylor,[597] A.B., Orator of the Christian Evidence Society. This gentleman
was a clergyman, {271} and was convicted of blasphemy in 1827, for which he
suffered imprisonment, and got the name of the _Devil's Chaplain_. The
following are quotations:

"For the book of Revelation, there was no original Greek at all, but
_Erasmus_ wrote it himself in Switzerland, in the year 1516. Bishop
Marsh,[598] vol. i. p. 320."--"Is not God the author of your reason? Can he
then be the author of anything which is contrary to your reason? If reason
be a sufficient guide, why should God give you any other? if it be not a
sufficient guide, why has he given you _that_?"

I remember a votary of the Society being asked to substitute for _reason_
"the right leg," and for _guide_ "support," and to answer the two last
questions: he said there must be a quibble, but he did not see what. It is
pleasant to reflect that the _argumentum a carcere_[599] is obsolete. One
great defect of it was that it did not go far enough: there should have
been laws against subscriptions for blasphemers, against dealing at their
shops, and against rich widows marrying them.

Had I taken in theology, I must have entered books against Christianity. I
mention the above, and Paine's _Age of Reason_, simply because they are the
only English modern works that ever came in my way without my asking for
them.