“I do believe,” said Fellowes, “these are the cardinal doctrines of the ‘Absolute Religion,’ as Mr. Parker calls it.  Nor can I conceive that any others are necessary.”

“Well,” said Harrington, “with the exception of the immortality of the soul, on which Lord Herbert has the advantage of speaking a little more firmly, the Deists and such ‘spiritualists’ as you are assuredly identical.  I have simply abridged his articles.  The same project as yours spiritualism’ or ‘naturalism,’ in all its essential features, has been often tried before, and found wanting; that is, of guaranteeing to man a sufficient and infallible internal oracle, independent of all aid from external revelation, and of proving that he has, in effect, possessed and enjoyed it always; only that, by a slight inadvertence (I suppose), he did not know it.  The theory, indeed, is rather suspiciously confined to those who have previously had the Bible.  No such plenary confidence is found in the ancient heathen philosophers, who, in many not obscure places, acknowledge that the path of mortal man, by his internal light, is a little dim.  Many, therefore, say, that the ‘Naturalists’ and ‘Spiritualists’ are but plagiarists from the Bible, and of course, like other plagiarists, depreciate the sources from which they have stolen their treasures.  I think unjustly; for, whatever their obligations to that mutilated volume, I acknowledge they have transformed Christianity quite sufficiently to entitle themselves to the praise of originality; and if the Battle of the Books were to be fought over again, I doubt whether Moses or Paul would think it worth while to make any other answer than that of Plato in that witty piece, to the Grub Street author, who boasted that he had not been in the slighest deuce indebted to the classics:  Plato declared that, upon his honor, he believed him!  Whether the successors of the Herberts and Tindals of a former day are not plagiarists from them, is another question, and depends entirely upon whether the writings of their predecessors are sufficiently known to them.  Probably, the hopeless oblivion which, for the most part, covers them (for the perverse world has been again and again assured of its infallible internal light, and has persisted in denying that it has it) will protect our modern authors from the imputation of plagiarism; but that the systems in question are essentially identical can hardly admit of doubt.  The principal difference is as to the organon by which the revelation affirmed to be internal and universal is apprehended; it affects the metaphysics of the question, and, like all metaphysics, is characteristically dark.  But about this you will not get the mass of mankind to, any more than you can get yourselves to agree; no, nor will you agree even about the system itself.  Nay, you modern spiritualists, just as the elder deists, are already quarrelling about it.  In short, the universal light in man’s soul flickers and wavers most abominably.”