VOLTAIRE. 11 



and cast into the flames a lad of eighteen, charged with 

 laughing as its priests passed by. Such dreadful abuses 

 were present to Voltaire's mind when he attacked the 

 Romish superstitions, and exposed the profligacy, as well 

 as the intolerance, of clerical usurpation. He unhappily 

 suffered them to poison his mind upon the whole of 

 that religion of which these were the abuse ; and, when 

 his zeal waxed hot against the whole system, it blinded 

 him to the unfairness of the weapons with which he 

 attacked both its evidences and its teachers. 



The doctrine upon toleration, upon prosecutions for 

 infidelity, even for blasphemy, which I have now ven- 

 tured to propound,. is supported by the very highest 

 authority among persons of the most acknowledged 

 piety, and of the warmest zeal for the interests of re- 

 ligion. It was the constant maxim of my revered friend, 

 Mr. Wilberforce, that no man should be prosecuted for 

 his attacks upon religion. He gave this opinion in 

 Parliament ; and he was wont to say, that the ground 

 of it was his belief in the truths of religion. "If 

 religion be, as I believe it, true, it has nothing to fear 

 from any such assaults. It may be injured by the 

 secular arm interfering." Just so the well-known 

 Duke of Queensberry, when conversing upon the 

 writings of Paine, and other assailants of the consti- 

 tution, made answer to a sycophant, who said of those 

 attacks, "And so false too," " No," said his Grace, "not 

 at all : they are true, and that is their danger, and the 

 reason I desire to see them put down by the law ; 

 were they false, I should not mind them at all." 



In the like spirit we have the unsuspected testimony 

 of men like Dr. Lardner and Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 



