Excerpt from A Sermon Delivered Before His Excellency Henry J. Gardner, Governor, His Honor H. W. Benchley, Lieutenant-Governor, the Honorable Council, and the Legislature of Massachusetts, at the Annual Election, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 1857 One of the leading ideas of Protestantism is ree thought. A celebrated French writer says: If there be any thing constant in Protestantism, it is undoubtedly the substitution of private judgment for public and lawful authority. It is certainly distinctively Pro testant to prefer private judgment to public authority. Thought, with the Protestant, is not only a privilege. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.