Would he not feel this language to be an intolerable insult, turn away in an agony of horror, and never offer me again his contemptuous compassion? Nay, more, would he not call this calumny on his notions a blasphemy against heaven, and pronounce the contumely of his opinions, a wilful rebellion against inspiration? Does he not then identify his private mind with the unerring intellect of God, and clothe himself with the attributes of infallibility.1

After all, in the midst of this acrimony, and notwithstanding the dreadful intervals, the appalling contrasts, said to exist between the different creeds, these Christians look so surprisingly like one another! All professing to follow the same guide, and for the most part thinking well of the same actions, and deriving from their faith very much the same comfort; it is astonishing to think of the difference hereafter, among at people that have so strong a resemblance here! When I see one of them rising up before his companions, and telling them, that what he perceives in scripture is the only certain truth, that they are wasting their reverence upon phantasms of their own reason, that they do not discern the same saving faith, or even worship the same God, with himself, I am impelled to think of the following incident. It is a parable of orthodoxy, which perhaps will render my meaning clear.

During a night of interrupted and cloudy moonlight, a company of travellers are journeying over an open plain, towards a city of refuge, which all desire to reach. The plain is wide, and the tracks across it difficult to find; and during some moments of darkness the way seems to be lost, and all further advance to be impossible. The moon, however, breaks partially forth from behind a cloud, and reveals at some distance an elevated object, which promises help to the bewildered pilgrims. They all agree that it is intended as a guide to the wayfarer, and that it is as well to make use of it for that end. This, one would think, should be enough to send them cheerily on their road again; nor could one imagine, that the kind

office of this visible object as a guide can have any particular dependence on its shape. The travellers, however, think otherwise; and as the thing is imperfectly seen by that misty light, they fall into vehement disputes about its form. Every one is perplexing himself about what it is, though they are all agreed what it is for. One pronounces it an obelisk; another takes it for a sign-post; a third is confident that it is a tree. The man who declares it to be an obelisk becomes eager and vociferous; he is persuaded, that the ruler of the country would never set up delusion to guide the wanderer; what he sees before him must then be a real thing; and what he sees is an obelisk; without doubt, therefore, the obelisk is the real thing. That his companions fail to acknowledge this, is owing to their uncommon confidence in their eyesight; they exalt their own impressions above the reality; they attend to the phantasies of their own sensorium, instead of abandoning themselves to the light that is reflected from the object. If they will but try to see the obelisk, instead of retaining so obstinate a preference for a sign-post or a tree, they will find nothing clearer. He warns them to beware of their alarming condition; for a man that sees phantasms, and mistakes his own conceptions for realities, what is he but a madman, or the subject of some dreadful malady? In fact, it is evident, that the true light is intercepted by their own wilful fancies, and, intently as they seem to be looking, not a ray from the real object reaches them.* And when they arrive at the city of refuge, they will find themselves shut out; it is no place for those who see shapes in their own thoughts; and however truly their course may have been steered, and however noble the offering they bring, the city opens its gates to none but those that see the obelisk.2

"The Socinian and Trinitarian, notwithstanding their verbal agreement, having a different object of worship, and a different ground of confidence, must be allowed to be of different religions."-" Robert Hall's Review of Zeal without Innovation,” p. 94.

Behold here a mirror of orthodoxy; and an exposition of the Protestant's notion of a heretic. Every one receives this opprobrious name and all its catalogue of annoyances, who rejects any body's sense of scripture. Every Protestant who produces a creed, as containing ideas necessary to acceptance with God, thereby claims infallibility. He may talk, to save appearances, of the infallibility of the Bible; but he means, as we have seen, his own. Every such creed is virtually a Papal manifesto; nor does any thing protect us from a miserable subjection to spiritual despotism, except the multitude of rival claimants on inspired authority. We live amid a competition of infallibilities, which prevents any one from making successful head against the rest. In the Roman Catholic church there is a priesthood that commands, and a laity that submits the authority claimed on the one hand is recognised on the other. But among Protestants there is no subject class : there is pretension everywhere, submission nowhere; and hence, instead of the apparent unity and real apathy of the ancient faith, we have the busy race of zealots, the contentions of sects, the passions of party, in which, whatever may be the triumphs of faith, the peaceful pursuer of truth is thrust aside

and lost.

"Who are the "How are they

2. Having answered our first question, hereties?" let us proceed to the second: likely to be treated by the churches against which they respectively offend?"

The answer is short and plain: both Catholic and Protestant churches will persecute their heretics till they find out that persecution is of no use. By persecution, I mean the employment of any pains or penalties, the administration. of any uneasiness to body or mind, in consequence of a man's belief, or with a view to change it. Its essential feature is this; that it addresses itself to the will, not to the understanding; it seeks to modify opinion by the use of fears, instead of reasons-of motives, instead of arguments. The

feelings which lead to persecution are very various. It has its origin in the irritation and resentment natural to ignorant and vulgar minds when their opinions are disputed, and harassing doubts suggested to them. This anger is often supported, as well as diffused, by the contagion of sympathy, which leads men who feel their favourite sentiments in danger to herd toge ther, and work up a collective enthusiasm, which, in the single individuals, would be speedily borne away by the increasing inroads of reason. These fanatics, secretly conscious that their own faith is artificially, and not rationally, sustained, attribute the same wilfulness to others, and aim to run down the opinions of opponents, as they have run up their own. And even when the discovery is made, that persecution, offering no evidence to the intellect, cannot operate on the offender's belief, and makes hypocrites instead of converts, it is still kept up as a warning to observers to hold themselves aloof from the hated sentiments, and remove from all chances of being convinced. Every man who has any interest, either personal or fanatical, in the suppression of particular opinions -every one, that is, who imagines that he will himself be injured in this life, or that his fellow-men will be injured in another, by the diffusion of those opinions-is naturally, and almost necessarily, a persecutor.

Now of the personal inducement to persecution, I say nothing. It exists wherever there is an incorporated clergy, whose church embodies a creed in its constitution. The fanatical inducement is found in full strength, wherever the salvation of human beings is held to be dependent on their belief. Where eternity is at stake, and the question is to be decided between heaven and hell, there must be no refined economy of men's happiness; to be over tender to them here, is to sacrifice them hereafter: no pain must be spared, no scrupulosity indulged, no complaint regarded: it is all trifling, compared with the dreadful future; souls are not to be ruined out of good nature; and, at all hazards, the heresy must be

D

stopped. The only question is, how much suffering will be most conducive to the end; for there is no occasion to inflict wanton and gratuitous misery. The whole amount of pain which will tend to arrest the progress of obnoxious tenets, always has been, and always will be, created by those who imagine their consequences to be fatal hereafter. The punishment of death for heresy was not abandoned till it was found that it defeated its own end, and excited sympathy for those whom it was designed to point out to execration. The tendency to sympathize with suffering increasing with the advance of civilization, milder pains are now resorted to. But still the rule is the same; give as much suffering as will help to put down the disagreeable sect.

Now, as the idea of the dependence of salvation on belief belongs to the orthodox Protestant churches no less than to the Roman Catholic, we should expect, if the foregoing remarks are true, to find the spirit of persecution pervading both systems equally. And I affirm that we do, and appeal with confidence to history in proof. The only differences are the two following: the Roman Catholic church has passed through a darker and more ferocious period of society than its rival; and through the greater part of its existence it has been without competitor; so that its cruelties have been more revolting in kind, and less checked by the fear of enemies. But in modern times, and in countries of equal civilization, the two religions have no distinction of merit in this respect. The Reformation, and all the churches it created, are full of the history of persecutions, which for cold-blooded atrocity were never surpassed. I ask in vain for more than a single name among the first Reformers, whose reputation is free from the disgrace of confounding heresy and crime. Socinus defended the use of force in the suppression of error; it; Calvin, Beza, and Melancthon dealt persuasion of the prison and the stake. Their hands were dipped in blood; when we praise them, fetters clank in the ear

Luther employed relentlessly in the