LIBERTY OF REASONING 



fanhedrim at Jerufalem 1763 years ago, would have 

 cried out, from a real or affected zeal for the caufe of 

 God, Crucify him ! Crucify him ! probably as loud as 

 Caiaphas and Philo, againft the molt innocent and the 

 beft of men, but the moft enlightened oppofer of all 

 bigotry and fuperftition. Of this kind of men I would 

 caution governments to beware ; and am moreover af- 

 fured, that, in the long run, more unity of faith would 

 arife from the advifed methods, than from thofe which 

 fome zealots would willingly adopt. 



And now — only a couple of well-meant words to 

 the philofophers, for whole liberty I have hitherto im- 

 plicate and explicite been fo loudly pleading. Inftcad 

 of defining philofophy, with Cicero, as the fcience of 

 divine and human things, I would rather chufe to term 

 it, the fcience of all the conceptions men are able to 

 form of divine and natural things, and the critique of 

 all the ideas they have ever actually made of them. It 

 is impoffible I fhould offend againft God or Chrifc, or 

 againft the immortality of the foul, againft heaven and 

 hell, againft good and bad fpirits, againft the fun and 

 moon, nor yet againft the man in the moon (if there be 

 one), by bringing the reprefentations, the fancies and 

 idle conceits which this or the other child of man has 

 formed of them, to the bar of philofophy, and exa- 

 mining by the laws of rational reflection, what parts 

 thereof be true or falfe, what may be wafted away in 

 the air, or float at top like froth and fcum, or fink to 

 the bottom as a caput mortuurru It remains eternally 

 true, that : nothing in the world is fo holy that it 

 Ihould elude the tribunal of reafon, that it fhould 

 dread the inveftigation and not furrender itfelf to the 

 6 teft 



