foundation in fact. The doctrines of our holy religion may be wofully curtailed and corrupted, and its profession sink into formality; but its moral precepts are so plain and striking, and guarded by such clear and awful sanctions, as to render it impossible it can ever be converted into an active instrument of vice. Let the appeal be made to facts. Look through all the different sects and parties into which professed Christians are unhappily divided. Where is there one to be found who has innovated in the rule of life, by substituting vice in place of virtue? The fears entertained from this quarter must be considered as chimerical and unfounded, until they are confirmed by the evidence of facts. In those districts in which the dissenters and Methodists have been most zealous and successful in village preaching, are the morals of the people more corrupted than in other places? Are they distinguished by a greater degree of profligacy, intemperance, and debauchery than the inhabitants of other parts of the country? The advocates of rigorous measures will scarcely have the temerity to put the question upon this issue; and until they do, all their pretended dread of the growth of licentiousness from village preaching will be considered as nothing but artifice. To contend for the legal monopoly of religious instruction, under pretence of securing the morals of the people, is a similar kind of policy with that of the papists, who withhold the Scriptures from the common people lest they should be betrayed into heresy. We all perceive, the design of the papist in this restriction is to prevent the diffusion of knowledge, which would be fatal to ghostly dominion. Is it not equally evident that the prohibition to instruct the populace in the principles of Christianity originates in this jealousy of power? We must at least be permitted to express our surprise at the profound sagacity of those who can discover a design to destroy morality by inculcating religion, and a purpose of making men vicious by making them serious. Plain men must be excused if they are startled by such refined and intricate paradoxes. It highly becomes those who are the advocates for the interference of government to restrain the efforts of Methodists and dissenters to diffuse the principles of knowledge and piety, to advert to the consequences which must result. Those who are conscientious will feel it their duty, in opposition to the mandates of authority, to proceed patiently, enduring whatever punishment the legislature may think proper to inflict. The govern ment, irritated at their supposed criminal obstinacy, will be tempted to enact severer laws accompanied with severer penalties, which the truly conscientious will still think it their duty to brave, imitating the example of the primitive teachers of Christianity, who departed from the presence of the council "rejoicing that they were thought worthy to suffer for the name of Christ." Thus will commence a struggle between the ruling powers and the most upright part of the subjects, which shall first wear each other out,-the one by infliction, the other by endurance; prisons will be crowded, cruel punishments will become familiar, and blood probably will be spilt. The nation will be afflicted with the frightful spectacle of innocent and exemplary characters suffering the utmost vengeance of the law for crimes which the sufferers glory in having committed. It is an inherent and inseparable inconvenience in persecution that it knows not where to stop. It only aims at first to crush the obnoxious sect; it meets with a sturdy resistance; it then punishes the supposed crime of obstinacy, till at length the original magnitude of the error is little thought of in the solicitude to maintain the rights of authority. This is illustrated in the letter of Pliny to Trajan, treating of the persecution of Christians. Their obstinacy in refusing to comply with the mandates of supreme authority [constituted the crime.] In other penal laws a proportion is usually observed between the crime and the punishment, the evil and the remedy; but here the pride of dictating and imposing mingles itself and draws [reasons] for severity even from the insignificance of the error and of the persecuted sect, which should be its protection. As the power of the community is delegated to the magistrate to enable him to punish such delinquencies and to avenge such injuries as it would be unsafe to leave to the resentment of the individual to punish, the voice of law should ever be in harmony with the voice of conscience and of reason. It should punish only those actions which are previously condemned in the tribunal of every man's own breast. The majesty of law, considered as an authoritative rule of action, can only be maintained by its agreement, with the simple and unsophisticated decisions of the mind respecting right and wrong. On these principles law is entitled to profound veneration as a sort of secondary morality, or an application of the principles of virtue and social order to the real situation and actual circumstances of mankind. As the civil magistrate is invested with a portion of divine authority for the government of men, so wise legislation is a reservoir of moral regulation and principles, drawn from the springs and fountains of eternal justice. When government is thus conducted it leagues all the virtues on its side; whatever is venerable, whatever is good rallies round the standard of authority; and to support the dignity of the laws is to support virtue itself. In persecution it is directly the opposite. When innocent persons [suffer] for a resolute adherence to the dictates of conscience, the sentiments of moral approbation are necessarily disjoined from the operation of the laws. The fear of civil punishment is a motive which the wisdom of mankind has superadded to the other motives which operate to restrain men from criminal conduct. The contempt and hatred of our fellowcreatures and the dread of punishment from an invisible Judge are not always found in fact to be of sufficient force to control the unruly passions of bad men. In addition to this, men have contrived so to organize society that the disturbers of other men's peace and the invaders of their rights shall have to dread an adequate punishment from the arm of a public person who represents the community. As * Lib. x. Epis. 97.-ED. the fears with which human laws inspire offenders are superadded motives, they presuppose the existence of an original one. They are a superstructure which can only stand on the foundation of those distinctions of right and wrong which the simplest dictates of the understanding recognise. To disjoin the fear of human [laws] from its natural associates, the forfeiture of public esteem and the dread of Divine wrath, is a solecism of the most glaring nature. Again, the terror of punishment is designed to operate on the community at large, not on a small number of people of a peculiar manner of thinking. But the great body of a people are affected only by what is palpable; they are unable to comprehend subtle and refined reasoning. It is only what is plain and evident that is tangible by their gross conceptions. Admitting, therefore, that the criminality of persisting to follow the dictates of conscience in matters of religion were capable of demonstration, it would remain a very improper object of punishment, because the evidence of its criminality could never be generally understood. The guilt of the sufferer would always be considered as very equivocal, and the sentiments of the community [divided] between the condemnation of the persecuted party and the government. From this will naturally follow two parties in the state, influenced with the most vehement mutual resentment and antipathy, and all the combustible materials already collected are liable to be kindled by the sparks of religious contention. Have not religious persecutions been almost invariably the harbinger of civil wars, alarming commotions, and awful calamities? Persecution in matters of religion raises up the very hydra it is meant to destroy. The only plausible ground on which it can be defended is the danger to the state accruing from a diversity of opinion on matters of the first importance, and the necessity, in order to secure public tranquillity, to establish uniformity of opinion. But when persecutions are adopted, the lawfulness of those very measures becomes a subject of contention as interesting as the dissensions it is designed to terminate. The question of the claim to liberty of conscience is surely a question of this kind. |