138 



ON THE GENERAL DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE. 



villain*!, cheats and robbers, deceitful, profligate 

 and profane, to invade the territories of their un 

 offending neighbours, to burn cities and towns, 

 to lay waste provinces, and slaughter thousands 

 of their fellow-creatures, and to pass with impu 

 nity ; while, in numerous instances, the most 

 pious, upright, and philanthropic characters have 

 been hurried like criminals to stakes, gibbets, 

 racks, and flames, merely for holding an opinion 

 different from their superiors respecting a doc 

 trine in religion, or the manner in which the Di 

 vine Being ought to be worshipped. In the 

 early ages of Christianity, under the emperor 

 Nero, the Christians were wrapped up in the 

 skins of wild beasts, and some of them in this 

 state worried and devoured by dogs ; others were 

 crucified, and others dressed in shirts made stiff 

 with wax, fixed to axle trees, and set on fire, and 

 consumed in the gardens at Rome. Such dread 

 ful persecutions continued, under the heathen 

 emperors, with a few intervals, to the time of 

 Constantine, a period of more than two hundred 

 and thirty years. It might not be so much to 

 be wondered at that pagans should persecute the 

 followers of Christ ; but it was not long before 

 pretended Christians began to persecute one 

 another on account of certain shades of differ 

 ence in their religious opinions. The persecu 

 tions to which the Walderises and Albigenses 

 were subjected by the Popish church, and strang 

 ling and burning of supposed heretics, and the 

 tortures inflicted on those suspected of favouring 

 the doctrines of Protestantism by the Spanish 

 inquisition a court whose history is written in 

 flames, and in characters of blood, exhibit a 

 series of diabolical cruelties, the recital of which 

 is enough to make &quot;the ears of everyone to 

 tingle,&quot; and to make him feel as if he were de- 



being eligible as teacher of a parochial school, if 

 he is not connected with the established church &amp;gt; 

 and in many other ways attempts to degrade thou 

 sands of individuals on account of their thinking 

 and acting according to the dictates of their con 

 science ? It is true, indeed, that fires, and racks, 

 and tortures, and gibbets, and thumb-screws are 

 no longer applied as punishments for differences 

 of opinion in religion, for the strong hand of the 

 civil law interposes to prevent them. But were 

 no such power interposed, the principle which 

 sanctions such deprivations as those now men 

 tioned, if carried out to all its legitimate conse 

 quences, might soon lead to as dreadful persecu 

 tions as those which have already entailed idelible 

 disgrace on the race of man. 



Such a spirit of intolerance and persecution is 

 directly opposed to every rational principle, to 

 every generous and humane feeling, to every pre 

 cept of Christianity, and to every disposition in 

 culcated by the religion of Jesus. It is ike height 

 of absurdity to enforce belief in any doctrine or 

 tenet, by the application of physical power , for it 

 never can produce the intended effect ; it may 

 harden and render persons more obstinate in 

 their opinions, but it can never convey con 

 viction to the understanding. And if men had 

 not acted like fools and idiots, as well as like de 

 mons, such a force, in such cases, would never 

 have been applied. And, as such an attempt 

 is irrational, so it is criminal in the highest de 

 gree, to aim at producing conviction by the ap 

 plication of flames, or by the point of the sword ; 

 being at direct variance both with the precepts 

 and the practice of the Benevolent Founder of 

 our holy religion. 



We have, therefore, the strongest reason to 

 conclude, that were the light of science and of 



, , 



graded in belonging to a race of intelligences ca- Christianity universally diffused, the hydra of 



pable of perpetrating such dreadful enormities. 



Even in the British isles such persecutions have 

 raged, and such cruelties have been perpetrated, 

 and that, too, in the name of the benevolent reli 

 gion of Jesus Christ. In our times, the more 

 appalling and horrific forms which persecution 

 formerly assumed, have been set aside by the 

 civil laws of the country, but its spirit still re 

 mains, and manifests itself in a variety of dif 

 ferent shapes. What other name can be given 

 to a power which prevents & numerous and re 

 spectable body of men from holding certain civil 

 offices and emoluments, because they do not be 

 long to an established church, and yet compels 

 them to contribute to the maintenance of the 

 ministers of that church, although they do not 

 recognise them as their religious instructors? 

 that denies to a dissenter, or his children, the 

 privilege of being interred in what is called con 

 secrated ground, and refuses to allow a bell to be 

 tolled at their funerals ? that, in Scotland, pre 

 vents a person, however distinguished for moral 

 qualifications and intellectual acquirements, from 



persecution would never dare, in any shape, to 

 lift up its heads again in the world. As it was 

 during the dark ages that it raged in its most 

 horrific forms, so the light of intelligence would 

 force it back to the infernal regions whence it 

 arose, as the wild beasts of the forests betake 

 themselves to their dens and thickets at the ap 

 proach of the rising sun. Wherever reason 

 holds its ascendancy in the mind, and the bene 

 volence of Christianity is the great principle of 

 human action, persecution will never be resorted 

 to, either for extirpating error or enforcing belief 

 in any opinions. An enlightened mind will at 

 once perceive, that in punishing erroneous opin 

 ions by fines, imprisonment, racks, and flames, 

 there is no fitness between the punishment and t he 

 supposed crime. The crime is a mental error, 

 but penal laws have no internal operation on the 

 mind, except to exasperate its feelings against 

 the power that enforces them, and to confirm it 

 more strongly in the opinions it has embraced. 

 Errors of judgment, whether religious or politi 

 cal, can only be overturned by arguments and 



