; and, this being the case, it
certainly was remarkable that so few persons reasoned well.

After this introduction, he proceeded to attribute to this defect the
number of religious differences in the world. He said that the most
celebrated questions in religion were but verbal ones; that the
disputants did not know their own meaning, or that of their opponents;
and that a spice of good logic would have put an end to dissensions,
which had troubled the world for centuries,--would have prevented many a
bloody war, many a fierce anathema, many a savage execution, and many a
ponderous folio. He went on to imply that in fact there was no truth or
falsehood in the received dogmas in theology; that they were modes,
neither good nor bad in themselves, but personal, national, or periodic,
in which the intellect reasoned upon the great truths of religion; that
the fault lay, not in holding them, but in insisting on them, which was
like insisting on a Hindoo dressing like a Fin, or a regiment of
dragoons using the boomarang.

He proceeded to observe, that from what he had said, it was plain in
what point of view the Anglican formularies were to be regarded; viz.
they were _our_ mode of expressing everlasting truths, which might be as
well expressed in other ways, as any correct thinker would be able to
see. Nothing, then, was to be altered in them; they were to be retained
in their integrity; but it was ever to be borne in mind that they were
Anglican theology, not theology in the abstract; and that, though the
Athanasian Creed was good for us, it did not follow that it was good for
our neighbours; rather, that what seemed the very reverse might suit
others better, might be _their_ mode of expressing the same truths.

He concluded with one word in favour of Nestorius, two for Abelard,
three for Luther, "that great mind," as he worded it, "who saw that
churches, creeds, rites, persons, were nought in religion, and that the
inward spirit, _faith_," as he himself expressed it, "was all in all;"
and with a hint that nothing would go well in the University till this
great principle was so far admitted, as to lead its members--not,
indeed, to give up their own distinctive formularies, no--but to
consider the direct contradictories of them equally pleasing to the
divine Author of Christianity.

Charles did not understand the full drift of the sermon; but he
understood enough to make him feel that it was different from any sermon
he