ESSAY VIII.

Such is the iniquity of men, that they suck in opinions as wild asses do the wind, without distinguishing the wholesome from the corrupted air, and then live upon it at a venture: and when all their confidence is built upon zeal and mistake, yet there fore because they are zealous and mistaken, they are impatient of contradiction. TAYLOR's Epist. Dedic. to the Liberty of Prophesying.

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"If," (observes the eloquent Bishop in the 13th section of the work, from which my motto is selected)" an opinion plainly and directly brings in a crime, as if a man preaches treason or sedition, his opinion is not his excuse. man is nevertheless a traitor because he believes it lawful to commit treason; and a man is a murtherer if he kills his brother unjustly, although he should think that he was doing God good service thereby. Matters of fact are

equally judicable, whether the principle of them be from within or from without."

To dogmatize a crime, that is, to teach it as a doctrine, is itself a crime, great or small as the crime dogmatized is more or less palpably so. You say (said Sir John Cheke, addressing himself to the Papists of his day) that you rebel for your religion. First tell me, what religion is that which teaches you to rebel. As my object in the present section is to treat of Tolerance and Intolerance in the public bearings of opinions and their propagation, I shall embrace this opportunity of selecting the two passages, which I have been long inclined to consider as the most eloquent in our English literature, though each in a very different style of eloquence, as indeed the authors were as dissimilar in their bias, if not in their faith, as two bishops of the same church can well be supposed to have been. I think too, I may venture to add, that both the extracts will be new to a very great majority of my readers. For the length I make no apology. It was part of my plan to allot two numbers of The Friend, the one to a selection from our prose

writers, and the other from our poets; but in both cases from works that do not occur in our ordinary reading.

The following passages are both on the same subject: the first from Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery: the second from a Letter of Bishop Bedell's to an unhappy friend who had. deserted the church of England for that of Rome.

1. The Rise and Progress of a Controversy, from the speculative Opinion of an Individual to the Revolution or Intestine War of a Nation.

This is one of the inseparable characters of an heretic; he sets his whole communion and all his charity upon his article; for to be zealous in the schism, that is the characteristic of a good man, that is his note of Christianity; in all the rest he excuses you or tolerates you, provided you be a true believer; then you are one of the faithful, a good man and a precious, you are of the congregation of the saints, and one of the godly. All Solifidians do thus; and all that do thus are Solifidians, the church of Rome herself not excepted; for though in

words she proclaims the possibility of keeping all the commandments; yet she dispenses easier with him that breaks them all, than with him that speaks one word against any of her articles, though but the least; even the eating of fish and forbidding flesh in Lent. So that it is faith they regard more than charity, a right belief more than a holy life; and for this you shall be with them upon terms easy enough, provided you go not a hair's breadth from any thing of her belief. For if you do, they have provided for you two deaths and two fires, both inevitable and one eternal. And this certainly is one of the greatest evils, of which the Church of Rome is guilty for this in itself is the greatest and unworthiest uncharitableness. But the procedure is of great use to their ends. For the greatest part of Christians are those that cannot consider things leisurely and wisely, searching their bottoms and discovering their causes, or foreseeing events which are to come after; but are carried away by fear and hope, by affection and prepossession: and therefore the Roman doctors are careful to govern them

as they will be governed. If you dispute, you gain, it may be, one, and lose five; but if ye threaten them with damnation, you keep them in fetters; for they that are in fear of death, are all their life-time in bondage'* (saith the Apostle :) and there is in the world nothing so potent as fear of the two deaths, which are the two arms and grapples of iron by which the church of Rome takes and keeps her timorous or conscientious proselytes. The easy Protestant calls upon you from scripture to do your duty, to build a holy life upon a holy faith, the faith of the Apostles and first disciples of our Lord; he tells you if you err, and teaches ye the truth; and if ye will obey it is well, if not, he tells you of your sin, and that all sin deserves the wrath of God; but judges no man's person, much less any states of men. He knows that God's judgments are righteous and true; but he knows also, that his mercy absolves many persons, who, in his just judgment, were condemned: and if he had a warrant from God to say, that he should destroy all the papists, as Jonas had concerning the

*Heb. ii. 15.