When a confraternity has obtained, no matter how, or by what means, a definite prescriptive right to sell a certain material to the community at large, the latter have certainly a legal power to see that the stuff given is according to contract. If a company of millers engage, for certain privileges, to sell good wheat flour to all comers, the last can deprive them of their exclusive right, provided that it can be proved either that the flour is bad, or that it comes from barley, rye, oats, or potatoes, or is adulterated with gypsum, &c.
Presuming that this argument is tenable, our next inquiry is into that which our national church professes to sell, or to impart, in return for its privileges. In the fewest possible words we may say, that its duty is to impart "truth," or to teach what is, in its learned and educated opinion, the true religion for life and eternity.
The word truth is one which lies at the root of our question respecting honesty. Pilate is reported to have said—"What is truth?" We may put the same question now.
Without saying what "truth" is, we can readily declare what is "untruth." It is not truth if we, in argument, misrepresent an adversary; affirm that he made a certain statement, and then oppose—not the thing said—but some other matter which was not spoken of at all, and then assert that we have confuted him.
It is not truth to affirm, that observations recently made have been oftentimes presented before, and always successfully refuted, when the remarks in question are novel, never have been controverted, and apparently, are not capable of being disproved.
It is not truth to affirm, that human "authority," which, has been long acknowledged, can falsify "a fact," or make an unfounded assertion equal to a reality; or to declare, that one religion is good and another bad, simply because the speaker believes the matter to be so.
It is not truth to assert, that a certain book, and every part of it, is the revealed word of God, when it is known to be contradicted by science—i.e.t by a knowledge of the laws imposed on creation by its Maker, to be inconsistent with itself, and to contain internal evidence that it was composed by men of small knowledge and of grovelling disposition.
It is not truth to affirm, that if God's world proves what is called God's Book to be wrong, science must be neglected and the Bible upheld.
It is not truth to affirm that God spoke exclusively to one people, when it is known that the race in question drew nearly, if not quite, all their religious beliefs, from the neighbours amongst whom they were thrown.
It is not honest to propound in the pulpit the propriety of examining the Scriptures daily, and yet to persecute any one who by doing so becomes convinced of their human origin.