and it remains for reason and Christianity to subdue the hearts of men to the impulses of mercy and benevolence.

We have said that objections should be answered, not suppressed; and we shall be led, occasionally, to advert to those which have been urged against revelation in general, and Christianity in particular: but we desire to separate ourselves from those who seek other aid than reason and argument, in support of their opinions-and with that view to make a few observations on the folly of persecution, for opinion's sake.

Unless Christians avow their sense of the injustice of persecuting sentiment, they cannot justify an appeal to argument, against what appear to them to be erroneous tenets. Reason and the Statute Book cannot, on subjects of opinion, work together: the object of the one, is to convince of the other, to silence. The use of the one, imports the right to dissent-the effect of the other, is to annul that right.

Man's distinguishing excellence is his power to reason. Christianity is an appeal to reason: it is necessarily established by moral evidence: having moral objects for its end -springing from the source of truth-it cannot need

extrinsic coersive aid.

Jesus came to bear witness of the truth; he and his disciples knew it was mighty and would prevail, and they acted upon this conviction: Christians cannot use other weapons than those which he used. Reason and argument were sufficient in the infancy of Christianity-with these it did prevail; it overthrew the religion and the institutions of the countries in which it originated; in a comparatively short time it spread so greatly as to render it politic in Constantine to profess it; it was sustained under reproach and against persecutions, and surely we who say it is true must allow it will bear examination. He that doeth truth "cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that "that they are wrought in God." Christians were tortured by a Nero, and their descendants have held his character in just detestation; but what difference is there in principle, between the persecutions of that age and those of the present? Principles are the same in all ages. Man cannot make them -they exist in the nature of things. Was persecution right then? If not-it cannot be so now!

It is as impolitic as unjust. Punish a man for publishing his opinions, and you rouse his feelings in their defence. Conviction is then hopeless. The sympathy of the indifferent,

and of the well disposed, is excited in his favour; the obnoxious sentiment is forgotten in the injustice of the punishment.

In the minds of his disciples the sufferer becomes a martyr: they know that truth does not envelop itself in mystery; and they conclude that that argument must be strong, which is suppressed. Punishment canonizes the sufferer and sanctifies his faith.

Punishment spreads a sentiment, whether true or false, by the sympathy which it excites for the sufferer, and by the energy arising from the sense of injustice with which it inspires him. When the proto-martyr, Stephen, was, massacred, "there was a great persecution against the church, which was at Jerusalem; and they" (the disciples) "all scattered abroad, throughout the regions of Judea and "Samaria, except the apostles; and they that were scattered "abroad WENT EVERY WHERE PREACHING THE word."

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Truth, it is said, is omnipotent-then it will subdue error. Revelation is true-then it will subdue irreligion. It proceeds from God-then its course cannot be arrested. It is a message of peace-then it must be conveyed in the spirit of peace. It proceeds from the mercy of God-then it must be conveyed in benevolence to man. Its object is to lead man to virtue and happiness-then, if he neglect it, he does so in his own wrong; he is the creature of motive, and we may safely trust to his adopting that, in the end, which is so manifestly to his advantage!

Persecution can only act upon the open, and so far honest opponent; the insidious adversary escapes. Modern times have evidenced this in our own country, in the instances of Paine and Gibbon. Paine openly attacked revelation; and gave its advocates the opportunity of repelling his abuse, and answering his arguments. Gibbon, in his celebrated historical work, covertly sought to undermine its evidences; but when challenged, by an enlightened and liberal advocate of Christianity, (Dr. Priestley) to the open discussion of its truth, declined it. The insidious adversary was honoured; the open opponent was persecuted. Neither the one nor the other ought to have been persecuted; but least of all should he who fairly and openly challenged the discussion.

Punishment may thus confirm hypocrisy it cannot change or even suppress opinion.

Persecution has been the reproach of nearly all sects, when power has fallen into their hands. The Catholic has

burnt the Protestant- the Protestant the Catholic; and, when that gentle and religious "Defender of the Faith," the Eigth Henry, fell out with the pope, both sects met at the same stake; and through the succeeding reigns of Edward, Mary, Elizabeth, and James, the alternations of power produced only a change in the victims.

Whenever the hireling in religion has abounded, persecution has most flourished. Priests and the inquisition are found associated in the records of history, and where they have had most influence ignorance has most prevailed. Persecution has been, generally speaking, most violent where the power and revenues of the clergy have been the greatest. Crusades against knowledge and liberality, have been proportioned to the wealth, influence, and numbers of the clergy.

The Reformation, however, put the scriptures into the hands of the laity; and the mild benevolence of their spirit, soon produced a change in the spirit of the disinterested professors of Christianity. From that time the influence of the hireling has declined; the spirit of inquiry and benevolence, and the fruits of both, have shewn themselves in the increase of rational religion, and the social affections.

If we compare the persecutions prior to that event, with the prosecutions of our own time, though we shall see cause for deep regret, in that man is not generally emancipated from persecution on subjects of opinion; yet we shall see much to be grateful for in the march of liberality; enough to animate our efforts in its favour; enough to justify a conviction that the time will come when men will neither feel at liberty, nor disposed to go beyond their Master, who commenced his instruction by exhorting men to" Hear and understand;" and who ended them by saying "Why even "of yourselves judge ye not what is right?”

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In order to fortify our views by history, let us, for example, recall to our minds the situation of the Waldenses, and the degree of light to which they had attained. Their origin was about the twelfth century. Their heresy consisted in believing in but one God; and that bishops and pastors ought to be irreproachable in their lives and doctrines; that none should take upon them these offices for the sake of dishonest gain, or as having any lordship over the people, but as being sincerely an example to the flock; and that believers should take heed and beware of false teachers, whose scope and aim is (as they expressed it)" to turn the "people aside from the true worship which belongs to our only

"God and Lord, and to lean upon creatures, and to trust in "them; as likewise to forsake those good works which are contained and required in the holy scriptures, and to do those which are only invented by men."

The corruptions and wickedness of the Romish priests were here too plainly pointed at, not to subject the professors of those sentiments to their tender mercies.

The Romish hierarchy was then in the zenith of its power. Even the forms of law were not necessary as the prelude to torture; and death, and that in its most hideous modes, was, for centuries, the fate of the unfortunate beings, who presumed to worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience.

"During the greatest part of the seventeenth century, those of the Waldenses who lived in the vallies of Piedmont-and who had embraced the doctrine, discipline, and practice, of the church of Geneva--were oppressed and persecuted in the most barbarous and inhuman manner, by the ministers of Rome. This persecution was carried on, with peculiar marks of rage and enormity, in the years 1655, 1656, and 1686, and seemed to portend nothing less than the total extinction of that unhappy people. The most horrid scenes of violence and bloodshed were exhibited in this theatre of papal tyranny. The few Waldenses that survived, were indebted for their existence and support to the intercession made for them by the English and Dutch governments, and also by the Swiss Cantons, who solicited the clemency of the Duke of Savoy on their behalf. Thus were the vallies of Piedmont dispeopled of its ancient inhabitants; and the lamp of heavenly light, which during a long succession of ages had here shined in resplendant lustre, was at length removed *."

Shortly after the Reformation, this wholesale destruction of human agents was changed into the formal destruction of individuals; and we find an important confession of the effect which the spread of the scriptures had produced on the benevolent feelings of society, towards those who were thus persecuted.

. Fuller, in his Church History, in relation to these burnings of heretics, so called, makes the following observations as to the reasons which induced the suspension of these horrid immolations in the reign of James the First.

"About this time," he says, " a Spanish Arian, being condemned to die, was, notwithstanding, suffered to linger out his life in Newgate, where he ended the same. Indeed, such burnings of heretics much startled common people; pitying all in pain, and prone to asperse justice itself with cruelty, because of the hideousness of the punishment. And the purblind eyes of vulgar judgments looked only to what was next to them-the suffering

Gregory's History of the Christian Church.

itself; which they beheld with compassion, not minding the demerit of the guilt which deserved the same. Besides, such being unable to distinguish betwixt constancy and obstinacy, were ready to entertain good thoughts even of the opinions of those heretics who sealed them so manfully with their blood. Wherefore, king James politicly preferred that heretics hereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in the prison, rather than to grace them and amuse others with the solemnity of a public execution, which, in popular judgments, usurped the honour of a persecution."

Time and Christianity have abolished these hideous burnings, and a limited imprisonment now supplies the place of torture unto death; whilst such has been the spread and influence of liberal sentiments that those who inflict even this punishment, feel bound to assign their reasons for its infliction, and to argue in its defence. The object of these prosecutions, as avowed by their supporters, is to prevent religion from being brought into contempt; but let this proposition be put in what terms it may, it is still but punishing men for not being hypocrites. Truth cannot be brought into contempt by abuse; and argument will establish it. Religion is an affair between God and man: it is the independent opinion of each individual man, as to God and his duties. It consists in opinion; the practice of the duties resulting from it constitutes morality. Religion, therefore, in its own nature, is, and must be, independent of the civil magistrate. Error carries within itself the seeds of its own dissolution; it will bring itself—not truth-into contempt. Let us put a case. Blasphemy-that is, as it is defined, to deny the existence or defame the attributes of God-is considered to be the worst species of heresy. Suppose a man were to proclaim, with the most industrious activity, that there is no such luminary as the sun. Should we feel alarmed for the opposite opinion? Would the believers in its existence, fear or smile at his notions? Or, suppose him to publish that its genial rays were destructive to vegetation; should we dread the spread of the sentiment, in opposition to facts and experience? And is not the existence-are not the attributes of God written in the scriptures, and confirmed by the works of creation, with the fullest evidence? Why fear the one, and not the other? The fact is, that persecution always proceeds from a conscious weakness in argument, or from the sinister impulses of interest.

This consciousness of error-influenced by the interest which the scribes, pharisees, and men in authority had in