6% LIBERTY OF REASONING 



pan% and are to be bought at a moderate price If* 

 every bookfeller's fliop. But, if we are enlightened 

 by the torch of reafon, why would we prefer to walk 

 in darknefs, rather than in that light ! Do we feel and 

 confefs the honour and dignity of being men (in the 

 Uricler lignification of the term # ) : why mould we 

 not at leaft have the will to can: away every thing that 

 hinders us from feeling, thinking, and acting, as ge- 

 nuine human creatures ? — Are the maxims which we 

 called to mind at the beginning of this effay-}~, irre- 

 fragable fundamental truths, — is the free ufe of reafon 

 in elucidating and examining every human opinion, 

 every human belief, one of the indefealible rights of 

 mankind, which no man can ravifh from us, without 

 committing the moft heinous of all crimes, the crime 

 of high-treafon againft human nature % : who fliall pre- 

 fume to difturb his brother in the poiTeffion and ufe of 

 this right ! — Is no man infallible ; is to err and to be 

 deceived generally infeparable from our nature ; are there 

 an infinite multitude of objects of knowledge as well as 

 of belief, which, from the bounds that nature has fixed 

 to the human intellect, it is impollible completely to 

 elucidate : then let every man be at liberty to deliver 

 his opinion or his contradiction with reafon and 

 calmnefs and modefty, without vilifying or deriding 

 another who believes he has reafon for thinking other- 



f: Namely, in that wherein the half men, the third part 

 men, and the quarter men, are not comprifed. 

 f See before, p. 44 & fqq. 



J From whence all the majefty of nations and their kings de- 

 rives, if it be not ufurpation and empty pomp. 



Wile, 



