DIFFERENCES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 215 



Knox, George Fox, Wesley, &c. are a few among the 

 many instances in point. 



The recent movement in the Anglican Church, 

 seeking to restore that clerical supremacy and cere- 

 monial for which Laud was ready to imperil both 

 Church and State, well illustrates what I have just 

 stated. This movement, apart from mere curiosity or 

 love of change, has segregated to itself a class of tem- 

 peraments, of botli sexes, 'prone to all innovations 

 exciting or soothing the senses ; and prone, as ex- 

 perience has shown, to press yet farther in the same 

 direction. Calvinism also has its specialties of thought 

 and feeling, though the moods of character are perhaps 

 less strongly marked. But even these incongruities of 

 temperament have certain links which bring them near 

 together in the complex network of human existence. 



Going back to the Apostolic age, we find an 

 individuality jDf religious thought and feeling, seve- 

 rally, in Peter, Paul, John, and James, attested alike 

 by their alleged writings and the actions recorded of 

 them. In the contemporary Jewish history, again, we 

 discern, through their several tenets and usages, a 

 similar disparity of mind in the sects of the Pharisees, 

 Sadducees, and Essenes differences existing in Jewish 

 communities even to the present day. And applying 

 this view more broadly to the various races and 

 religions of different ages of the world, we find the 

 same result of sects and superstitions based on the 

 diversities of human temperament. The more tolerant 

 polytheism of Greece and Eome yields least in illustra- 

 tion. But all the religions of the East (including the 



