98 LIBERTY OF REASONING 



/)ur fathers, in the fixteenth century, calr off that 

 yoke of implicit belief which their fathers had pretty 

 contentedly borne till then. They recollected the fa- 

 int ary admonition of the prophet, Be ye not like to 

 horfes and mules, which have no undemanding ! and 

 began to remark, that the very real evils by which they 

 were bowed down to the ground, were merely the ef- 

 fects of a fort of inchantment, which is annihilated the 

 very inftant that a man ceafes to think himfelf in- 

 chanted. Prejudices which were impreffed upon the 

 minds of men, by every thing they faw and heard, from 

 their earlier! infancy; idle conceits, which had been fo 

 long guarded by the terrors of temporal and eternal 

 fire, againfi the bare thought of doubting on them, — 

 were brought before the judgement-feat of reafon, taken 

 into examination ; and, being; acknowledged for what 

 they were, for prejudices and idle conceits, were re- 

 jected and condemned. Tradition, porTeilion from 

 time immemorial, decifions of St. Peter's chair, opinions 

 of the holy fathers and doctors of the church, nay even 

 that form, that commands univerfal reverence, of the 

 firft council at Jerufalerri — " It feemed good to the 

 " holy ghoft and to us" — in the mouth of general ec- 

 clefiaftical affemblies, were regarded by the reformers 

 and their adherents,, as nothing, when they were in 

 opposition to their own inward conviction, and the ar- 

 guments whereon it relied. But all this came on in 

 gradual fucceffion : they themfelves knew not at firft, 

 how far and whither the way they had ftruck out would 

 lead; and were very far from intending — as nothing 

 elfe was poffible in the then circumftances — at once 

 to throw off all fubmiilion to the throne of Rome, the 



fathers 



