to be tried; for, as Bacon hath
well said, "It is the harmony of any philosophy in itself that giveth it
light and credence." And in the application of this test, we could also
wish, that the reader would so far forget his sectarian predilections, if
he have any, as to permit his mind to be inspired by the immortal words of
Milton, which we shall here adopt as a fitting conclusion of these our
present remarks:--

"Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a
perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his
apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of
deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon, with his
conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin, Truth,
hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the
four winds. From that time ever since the sad friends of Truth, such as
durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled
body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they
could find them. We have not yet found them all, nor ever shall do, till
her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and
member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and
perfection. Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every
place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing them that continue
seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our
martyred saint. We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the sun
itself, it smites us into darkness. Who can discern those planets that are
oft combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude, that rise and set
with the sun, until the opposite motion of their orbs bring them to such a
place in the firmament, where they may be seen morning or evening? The
light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by
it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the
unfrocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop, and the removing him
from off the Presbyterian shoulders, that will make us a happy nation; no,
if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life, both
economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked
so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin have beaconed up to us,
that we are stark blind. There be who perpetually complain of schisms and
sects, and make it such