urely after Bentham's trenchant performance it is idle for an English
journal to pretend that there is anything "extraordinary" in Mr.
Spencer's "erroneous" accusation. The other judicial writer, also
belonging to the English race, is Sir Richard David Hanson, who was for
some time Chief Justice of South Australia. In his able work on _The
Apostle Paul_ there is an admirable summing-up of the hero's character.
After admitting Paul's ability, persistence, courage, and other virtues,
he remarks--"But these are accompanied by what in an uninspired
man would be called pride, jealousy, disdain, invective, sophistry,
time-serving and intolerance." This is pretty strong; and "sophistry"
and "time-serving" are only euphemisms for lying in preaching and
practice.

So much for the Independent, and now for Mr. Spencer. It must be
observed that one part of his "erroneous" statement _cannot_ be
repudiated. The apostle distinctly says, "being crafty, I caught you
with guile" (2 Uor. xii. 16), so that "piquing himself on his craft and
guile" must stand while this text remains in the Epistle. Mr. Spencer
allows that, in the third of Romans, the "presentation of the thought is
a good deal complicated," and "liable to be misunderstood"; but, if read
in the light of the preceding chapter, the passage about lying to the
glory of God "must be taken as part of an argument with an imaginary
interlocutor." Perhaps so; but _which_ is speaking in the seventh verse?
Paul or his opponent? Mr. Spencer does not say. Yet this is the real
point. To us it seems that _Paul_ is speaking. Of course it may be
urged that he is speaking ironically. But this is not Mr. Spencer's
contention. It is not clear what he _does_ mean; in fact, he seems to
have caught a little of Paul's confusion.

We have no objection to reading the seventh verse of the third of Romans
in the light of the preceding chapter. But should it not also be read in
the light of Christian history? Have honest openness and strict veracity
been _ever_ regarded as essential virtues in the propagation of
the gospel? And why is it likely that Paul, of all men, escaped the
contagion of fraud, which has always disgraced the Christian Church? The
ordinary Protestant imagines, or pretends, that the Catholic Church has
been the great impostor; but this is nonsense to the student of early
Christianity. Mosheim remarks that the "pernicious maxim" that "those
who make it their business to deceive with a