no 



LIBERTY OP REASONING 



of our lord 1795, to build them churches, and pay 

 their teachers, and to make it his earneft bulinefs to 

 excite every pofiible difference in religious opinions, 

 and carefully to cheriih them. My advice, under 

 correction, — if I had any to give — would be limply 

 this : 



I. To allow unlimited liberty to learned and clear- 

 headed men, efpecially among thofe who are publicly 

 called to the office of inftructing the people, of deli- 

 vering the doctrines of religion according to their per- 

 ceptions and convictions ; a liberty uncircumfcribed by 

 laws, arbitrary, antiquated, and no longer fui table ; 



If. Publicly to prohibit, under fevere penalties, the 

 application of all and every herefy-name or names, al- 

 ready invented, to any perfons now alive, and the in- 

 vention of new herefy -names ; 



III. Not to permit that any heretic, as they are cal- 

 led, of former times, Ihould, on account of his depar- 

 ture frorrv what was eftablilhed in ecclelialtical coun- 

 cils as the true doctrine concerning the myfterious and 

 inexplicable articles of the chriftian faith, be treated in 

 pulpits or in writings, as a foe to God and Jefus 

 (Thrift, or be ftigmatized with any other opprobrious 

 epithets which might raife in the minds of chriftians 

 the notion that it is a fin and a crime to err in matters 

 of religion, or to think differently from us. 



IV. To enact, that none fhall difcourfe on the faid 

 articles of faith which are myfterious and infinitely 

 tranfcend all human reafon, any otherwife than in the 

 words of fcripture ; that they refrain from all expla- 

 nation, and fub.tle fpeculations on thefe fubjects, and 



in 



