io6 



LIBERTY OP REASONING 



mode of expounding what is indeterminate and proble- 

 matical in the facred writings, nor in controverted cafes 

 to give an exclufive fanclion to any one of the va- 

 rious meanings : as the teachers never were author i fed 

 to deliver their private opinions and modes of expoli- 

 tion as the only true ones, and to make them into 

 articles of faith. It is folly to refolve to explain inex- 

 plicable matters, and to demonftrate things incapable 

 of demonstration : but it is both folly and arrogance, 

 in fuch cafes, to force one's explication, one's demon- 

 itration, on others, as truth. The prefidents of com- 

 munities, or rather the magi/lrate, came in time to 

 reward fuch outrages in a mi table manner t but never 

 were, nor never will they be authorifed, nor ever can 

 they be authorifed, to make any opinion which does 

 not manifefUy contradict the fundamental laws of rea- 

 fon and the two chief and fundamental articles of true 

 religion, (i. e. that which was the religion of Chrifc him- 

 felf) under, odious epithets, into a crime, and, as fuch, 

 to punifh it. That there was once a time when thefe fo 

 manifefr. truths were mifunderftood — that people of 

 fuch heads and hearts, as Alexander, bifhop of Alex- 

 andria, with Athanafius, his tfufty fquire, and their 

 followers, proceeded upon other principles, — that the. 

 Arians, who were not a jot better than their adverfa- 

 ries, but, as foon as it was their turn to play the m af- 

 ter, acted juft as injurioufly, inhumanly and unchrif- 

 tianly by the orthodox, who were now become hete- 

 rodox, as the alexandrians and athanalians, had dealt 

 by them, when the plurality of voices and the pro- 

 tection of the temporal arm were in their favour, or 

 their intrigues and violences had made them the or- 

 thodox 



