This is the blank,
brazen, blushless, or only brass-blushing, impudence of an Old Bailey
Barrister, attempting to browbeat out of Court the better and more
authentic half of the witnesses against him. If I wished to understand
the laws of England, shall I consult Hume or Blackstone--him who has
written his volumes expressly as comments on those laws, or the
historian who mentions them only as far as the laws were connected with
the events and characters which he relates or describes? Nay, it is far
worse than this; far Christ himself repeatedly defers the publication of
his doctrines till after his death, and gives the reason too, that till
he had sent the Holy Ghost, his disciples were not capable of
comprehending them. Does he not attribute to an immediate influence of
especial inspiration even Peter's acknowledgment of his Filiation to
God, or Messiahship?--Was it from the Gospels that Paul learned to know
Christ?--Was the Church sixty years without the awful truths taught
exclusively in John's Gospel?
Part III. p. 5.
The 'nostrum' of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription
of the regular practitioner. Why is this? Because there is something
in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is
overawed.
This is something; and true as far as it goes; that is, however, but a
very little way. The great power of both spiritual and physical
mountebanks rests on that irremovable property of human nature, in force
of which indefinite instincts and sufferings find no echo, no
resting-place, in the definite and comprehensible.
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