ON MATTERS OF BELIEF. 59 



renounced the fpirit of its founder, by ftiffly adhering 

 to the letter of fome few harfh expreffions) afferted an 

 cxclufive claim, and in a fhort time tolerated no reli- 

 gion belide. But they went frill farther. Not fatisfled 

 with having declared every other belief, every other 

 kind of religious opinions, dogmas, modes of reprefen- 

 tation and expreffion, concerning incomprehensible 

 objects, to be erroneous, they proceeded to inflict pu- 

 nifhment upon error. They treated conviction as a 

 matter that was dependant on our wills ; whoever had 

 the honefty to contraft their tenets which did not con- 

 vince his mind, with what he held for truth, was im- 

 mediately pronounced a man bold and obftinate in er- 

 ror ; and as fuch condemned to eternal, and (what was 

 far worfe flill) to temporal fire. Thus there arofe in 

 the chriftian religion a new fpecies of crimes, never 

 heard of till now ; malice and felf interefl found out a 

 new branch of denunciations, a new fource of confif- 

 cations to the defpotifm of the byzantine and weftern 

 tyrants, new means for deflroying any one whom they 

 hated or fufpected, and opened to the clergy a new 

 way for acquiring a formidable authority, and an- almoft 

 unbounded influence. 



However, for having fomething of an appearance, 

 as if the dogmas on the belief whereof the temporal and 

 eternal lives of men now depended, relied on irrefra- 

 gable politions, and would fland the teft of every in- 

 veftigation, they invented a fubtile kind of dialectics 

 and terminology, the exprefs ufe whereof was to confer 

 upon the moft glaring abfurdities an air of poffibility, 

 to bring contradictions into a kind of agreement, and 

 to render the path of truth fo laborious and intricate, 



that 



