MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 303 



mulgated was wrong ; and, if any man whose mind 

 happened to rise superior to superstition, ventured 

 to publish his opinions of any of them, to show that 

 they were absurd, then racks, tortures, inquisitions, 

 and death, or line and imprisonment, with attendant 

 ruin, stared him in the face in this world, and threat- 

 enings of eternal misery in the next. It is thus that 

 the free exercise of the understanding, and the full 

 use of all the means of advancing in religion, virtue, 

 and knowledge, is checked and debarred ; for, unless 

 the free use of waiting and publishing the well- 

 digested opinions and plans of the lovers of man- 

 kind is allowed to go on without risk, all public 

 improvement, which is or ought to be the chief end 

 of every government to promote, is for want of this 

 liberty, taken away. But in this business, govern- 

 ment itself being entangled and bound by oaths to 

 support present establishments, may perhaps be 

 afraid to meddle with or countenance any writing 

 tending to a reform, or that may have the appear- 

 ance of militating against this order of things. 



But to dwell on this, the gloomy side of the pic- 

 ture, without noticing the other side, may be unfair; 

 for the framers of unaccountable creeds set mankind 

 a-thinking generally upon these and many other 

 matters, which perhaps they would not otherwise 

 have done ; and, besides this, it is on all hands 

 allowed that the monks and friars of old, amidst all 

 their superstitions, preserved in their monasteries 

 many records and much valuable knowledge, which, 

 without their care, would have been lost to the 

 world. Add to these, their charities to the destitute 

 and their constant best endeavours to teach the 

 grossly ignorant, and to reclaim the equally grossly 

 wicked, part of the community, and in examining 



