104 LIBERTY OF REASONING 



ences has enabled them to. obtain ? in a word, to lord 

 it over theii .ads, and to tyrannife over their con- 

 sciences ? 



" This is not what we wifh to do," fay the defenders 

 of formularies and antiquated ordinances of faith : 

 ' f You are at liberty to believe what you can : only get 

 out from among us ; lay down your offices, give up 

 your incomes, quit your houfe, abandon the court, and 

 forfake the country; renounce your whole civil exiftence : 

 go and look out for a place in the fandy wilds of Africa, 

 pr in the uninhabited ifles of the Southern ocean, where 

 you may philofophize without an antagonifr, where 

 you may believe and be hungry as much as you pleafe ; 

 only do not require that we mould acknowledge you 

 for brethren and fellow-chrirtians, and fhare with you 

 the civil advantages to which our terminologies and 

 formularies give us a right, while you yourfelves con- 

 fefs, that, as difTenters, you have no right thereto.'* 

 To proteftants who fo fpeak, or are ready to act as if 

 they fo thought, I have no anfwer to give. But I alk 

 every liberal and honeft man, whether fuch a mode of 

 proceeding with them who think othenvife, on obfcure 

 and myfterious points of faith, than certain doctors of 

 the fixteenth and (even tee nth. centuries, or than the 

 nicene, or any other ecdehaftical affembly, be confif- 

 tent with the fpirit of pro.tcflantifm ? 



Our forefathers, at the time when they mo ok off 

 the bonds of a blind belief and obedience, might have 

 been compelled, from the political relations and exi- 

 gencies of the times, to give a public account of their 

 faith : but neither they nor any other human authority 

 can have a right to make fuch a confeffion the abfolute 

 rale of belief for their unborn descendants. The right 



