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more owing to abominable practices, than to speculative errors. And, if succeeding emperors continued the same rigour, it is that sedition or immorality, or both, kept pace and were incorporated with speculative deviations. Scarce an age, since Theodosius's time until of late years, but brooded some immoral or seditious doctrine, which armed the magistrate's hand with the exterminating sword. Great part of St. Austin's time was taken up in pleading for mercy with the African governors, in favour of the Donatists and Crescellians, who continually exercised the greatest cruelties.

Another age gave rise to the Patarini and Runcaires, who amongst other errors maintained, that no mortal sin could be committed by the lower part of the body. The theory was reduced to practice; and, doubtless, the magistrate was roused to severity.

The Albigenses said that God had two wives. Marriage, however, was condemned, without considering chastity as a virtue. In detestation of the sacrament of the altar, churches were turned into receptacles for the unhappy votaries of venus: and in the sanctuary where the magistrate was accustomed to see the minister of religion officiate, nothing could be seen but offerings to Cloacina. In twelve hundred and thirty, the Stadings of Germany honoured Lucifer; inveighed against God for condemning that rebel-angel to darkness; held that one day he would be re-established, and they should be saved with him. Whereupon, they taught that, until that time, it was not requisite to serve God, but quite the contrary; and reduced their theory to practice.

To write the history of all the sects which gave rise to the severe sanctions of kings, from the time of the Emperor Theodosius down to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, would be to attempt writing a history of all the horrors and abominations of which abandoned man is capable. In this long space of time, the sects most free from any mixture of immorality, gave umbrage to the civil power, by their seditious tenets and insurrections.

Huss's doctrine, in Bohemia, sowed the seeds of civil wars. Wickliff's doctrine, in England, was productive of similar fruits. The fagot did not blaze in England until the Lol

lards began to overturn the state. In the sixteenth century, what wars, what commotions, in Germany, in consequence of fanatical delusion. The most moderate Protestant divines of that age, complain in their writings, of the confusion introduced by sectaries. Heylin, in his cosmography, talks of some of them begotten in rebellion, born in sedition, and 'nursed by faction.' And Doctor Walton, in the preface to his Polyglote, says, that 'Aristarchus heretofore could scarce 'find seven wise men in Greece; but that, in his time, so 'many idiots were not to be found: for all were divinely 'learned.' 'Hence,' continues the Doctor, 'the bottomless 'pit seems to have been set open: and locusts are come out 'with stings, a numerous race of sectaries who have renewed 'all the ancient heresies, and invented many monstrous 'opinions of their own.' In examining, then, the laws enacted against heretics, and tracing them up to their origin; in taking a review of the times and circumstances in which they were enacted, and the tenets of the persons against whom they were levelled-in weighing the Emperor Constantine's words, already quoted-and observing the instability of his opinion, in the change of his laws-we can, with every reason, presume that error in doctrine was never deemed a sufficient title to deprive a man of his life or property, by the most pious and enlightened Christian legislators.

Immorality or sedition, mingling with the speculative opinion unpunishable in itself by any civil tribunal, drew the vengeance of the laws upon the entire system and its abettors; as the circulation of bad coin is punished by the magistrate, not on account of the particles of gold or silver, but on account of the base metal, which predominates and debases it. If time, civilization, commerce, a more extensive knowledge of mankind, and the rights of society, helped the mind to work off the feculence of pernicious opinions, as rough wines work off their tartar: freedom of thought, its inalienable prerogative was at last reconciled amongst most men with the principles of morality, and the peace of society. Men have changed, but long habit and the power of rule. have still, in many places, kept up laws which confound mis. taken notions of a spiritual nature, with practical principles

which disturb the order of society. Heresy is of too indeterminate a signification, to become the object of legal vengeance. And to punish a man for Popery, is to punish him because another pronounces a word of three syllables. Let the Heretic and Papist, who rob, steal, murder, preach up sedition, rebellion, and immorality, suffer like all other felons. But the magistrate who punishes an honest, peaceable man, for following the religion of his education, and the dictates of his conscience; and the legislators who authorise him to do so; both forget themselves and the rights of mankind.

The heathen magistrates punished none for worshipping many gods. But we read of a city whose inhabitants were all drowned, for adopting the impiety of Diagoras, who was a declared atheist.

The Christian magistrate will not punish a man who has no religion; because the versatile conscience of such a man will mould itself into any frame. But the upright man who, from fear of offending God, will not resign his way of thinking, but upon a thorough conviction that he is in error; is deemed unworthy the protection of the laws. His conscience, which it would be a crime to betray, is made a crime by positive institutions. Thus, Tiberius's artifice is revived. It was prohibited by the laws, in his time, to put a virgin to death. A virgin is accused of high treason; and, on conviction, (an easy matter in his days,) her virginity is pleaded, in bar to the execution of the sentence; he ordered the executioner to ravish her, and then the law took its course. Thus guilt and punish

ment were reconciled.

The laws of God command me not to act against the immediate dictates of my conscience. The laws of man make this conformity to the dictates of my conscience a crime, and I am accordingly punished.

Towards people confirmed in the prejudices of their education, and the religion of their fathers, no severity, tending to deprive them of the rights to which nature entitles them, should be used. It is the unanimous opinion of the fathers, and a large volume could be composed of passages, extracted from the works of modern writers of every denomination, in support of the assertion

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We know that faith may yield to persuasion; but it 'never will be controuled.** Remember that the diseases

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of the soul are not to be cured by restraint and violence.'t Indulge every one with civil toleration.'

If, to the spirit of the Gospel, the authority of fathers, councils, the practice of the primitive times, and the opinions of the most learned of the modern writers, we add arguments drawn from the sources of divinity, we expect to disarm the magistrate, and to prevail on him to sheath the sword which God never commanded him to wield against the professors of peaceable errors.

Faith is a gift of God, which it is not in the power of the state either to give or take away. It depends chiefly on the change of the heart, the interior dispositions of the mind, and the grace of the Almighty, which it is in his power alone to give, in greater or lesser abundance to his creatures. We do not pretend to open the gate to error, or to lull mortals asleep in an indifference to the truth. We only beseech the powers of the earth not to add to the calamities of Adam's children, by fines, confiscations, poverty, restraints, or death, for abstruse and speculative matters beyond the reach of human controul. We know that God being every where present to call his creatures to his service, to support them in their hope, to confirm them in his love, to help their endeavours, and to hear their prayers, it is their own fault if they perish. To some he gives the knowledge of his law; but they reject it. Others he inspires with the spirit of prayer: but they neglect it. He speaks to the hearts of all: but few listen to his voice. Some he converts by an effectual grace, who plunge themselves a second time into their disorders. Some he strengthens and fortifies in the constant love of order and justice to the last moment of their lives: and others he gives up to their blindness and corruption. He permitted the first man to sin, and thus to involve us in all the miseries, when it was in his power to prevent sin, without thus destroying his liberty. And this will ever be an insoluble difficulty to man.

Flechier, bishop of Nismes.

+ Cardinal Camus. Fenelon to the Duke of Burgundy.

Faith, then, depending entirely on the interior dispositions of the mind, the quantity of grace, and the measure of spiritual science, which it is in the power of God either to increase, or, from a just but hidden judgment, to diminish; the want of it cannot be punished by any earthly tribunal : because the magistrate's power extends only to outward crimes that disturb the temporal peace of society, but not to the hidden judgments of God, nor to the interior dispositions of the mind, nor to the disbelief of divine truths-the necessary result of both. Death, restraints, and confiscations, then, on the score of religion, are murders and robberies, under the sanction of mandatory.

We were of opinion,' says St. Austin, writing to the Manicheans, that other methods were to be made choice 'of; and that to recover you from your errors, we ought to persecute you with injuries and invectives, or any ill treatment; but endeavour to procure your intention by soft words and exhortations, which would show the tenderness we have for you: according to that passage of holy writThe servant of the Lord ought not to love strife and quarrels: but to be gentle, affable, and patient towards all man'kind; and to reprove with modesty those who differ from him in opinion. Let them only treat you with rigour, who 'know not how difficult it is to find out the truth, and avoid error. Let those treat you with rigour, who know not how 'rare and painful a work it is calmly to dissipate the carnal phantoms that disturb even a pious mind. Let those treat you with rigour, who are ignorant of the extreme difficulty that there is to purify the eye of the inward man, to render him capable of seeing the truth which is the sun and light of the soul. Let those treat you with rigour, who ⚫ have never felt the sighs and groans that a soul must have, 'before it can have any knowledge of the Divine Being. To conclude, let those treat you with rigour, who never have been seduced into errors near akin to those you are engaged in.

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I pass over in silence, that pure wisdom, to which but a * few spiritual men attain in this life; so that though they "know but in part, because they are men; yet, nevertheless,