What induces the Times to admit those silly letters of
Dr. Cumming's about the coming (Ecumenical Council? They are not very funny, they are even very dull, and they do not seem to us adapted to impress a very great number of even very foolish people. Dr. Cumming is anxious to be informed by the Pope or his prelates (through the columns of the Times !) on matters of this kind, for example,—what the Roman Church means when it requires people who conform to it to declare that they will never "take and interpret the Scriptures unless according to that sense which the Church has held and does hold,"—on which the reverend gentleman begs to know what that means, since the Church has not set forth the in- fallible sense of any one chapter in the Bible? Why, Dr. Cum- ming's footman might just as well decline his service on the ground that he could not serve without knowing what was wanted, and that Dr. Cumming had not yet told what his bidding would be for every minute, or even hour, of any single day. Dr. Cumming has always been a goose ; but he used to be a lively, or at least entertaining, goose, and is getting to be a dull goose. We had always thought that dull geese were not allowed to cackle in the Times.
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