He pretended to read the whole chapter on Offences against Religion in Sir James Stephen's "Digest of the Criminal Law," while in reality he deliberately omitted the very paragraph which damned his contention and supported mine.

He also produced a new statement of the Law of Blasphemy to suit the occasion.

On the previous Thursday he told the jury that any denial of the existence of Deity or of Providence was blasphemy.

But in the meantime the public press had condemned this interpretation of the law as dangerous to high-class heretics.

His lordship, therefore, expounded the law afresh, so as to exempt them while including us.
The only question he now submitted to the jury was, "Are any of those passages put before you calculated to expose to ridicule, contempt or derision the Holy Scriptures or the Christian religion ?" This amended statement of the Law of Blasphemy went directly in the teeth of our Indictment, which charged us with bringing Holy Scripture and the Christian Religion into _disbelief_ as well as contempt.