But the passage about the verse in St. John is yet more extraordinary.  Has Mr. Smith really gone through the controversy upon this subject?  And even if he has, is this the light way in which a man wholly unknown in the learned world, is entitled to contradict the opinion of some of the greatest scholars of Europe?  We have, however, the mere word of the facetious rector of Foston, opposite to the authority and the arguments of a Porson and a Griesbach.  It is at his command, unsupported by the smallest attempt at reasoning, that we are to set aside the opinion of men whose lives have been spent in the study of the Greek language, and of biblical criticism, and which has been acquiesced in by many of the most competent judges both here and abroad.  Such audacity (to call it by no coarser name) is in itself only calculated to excite laughter and contempt:  coupled as it is with a most unprovoked and unwarrantable mention of the name of the Bishop of Lincoln, it excites indignation.  We feel no morbid sensibility for the character of a mitred divine:  but we cannot see a blow aimed at the head of one of the chiefs of the church, a pious, learned, and laborious man, by the hand of ignorance and presumption, without interposing, not to heal the wound, for no wound has been made, but to chastise the assailant.  The Bishop of Lincoln gives up these verses, not carelessly, and unadvisedly, but doubtless because he is persuaded that the cause of true Religion can never be so much injured as by resting its defence upon passages liable to so much suspicion; and because he knows, that the doctrine of the Trinity by no means depends upon that particular passage, but may be satisfactorily deduced from various other expressions, and from the general tenor of holy writ.  Indeed, if we were not prevented from harbouring any such suspicion by Mr. Smith’s flaming profession of the iotal accuracy of his creed; and if we could doubt the orthodoxy of the divine, without impugning the honesty of the man, we should be inclined to suspect that his defence of the verses proceeded from a concealed enemy.  We are not unaware that the question cannot even yet be regarded as finally and incontrovertibly settled, but we apprehend the truth to be that Mr. Smith, not having read one syllable upon the subject, but having accidentally heard that there was a disputed verse in St. John relative to the doctrine of the Trinity, and that it had been given up by the Bishop of Lincoln, thought he could not do better than by one dash of the pen, to show his knowledge of controversy, and the orthodoxy of his belief, at the expense of that prelate’s character for discretion and zeal....