only for the scene of a ferocious anarchy, or the supply of unceasing hostilities? Europe itself has known no religious wars for some centuries, yet has hardly ever been without war. Are the calamities, which at this day inflict it, to be imputed to Christianity? Hath Poland fallen by a christian crusade? Hath the overthrow in France, of civil order and security, been effected by the votaries of our religion, or by the foes? Amongst the awful lessons, which the crimes and the miseries of that country afford to mankind, this is one: that, in order to be a persecutor, it is not necessary to be a bigot: that in rage and cruelty, in mischief and destruction, fanaticism itself can be outdone by infidelity.

Finally, If war, as it is now carried on between nations, produce less misery and ruin than formerly, we are indebted perhaps to Christianity for the change, more than to any other cause. Viewed therefore even in its relation to this subject, it appears to have been of advantage to the world. It hath humanized the conduct of wars; it hath ceased to excite them.

The differences of opinion, that have in all ages prevailed amongst Christians, fall very much within the alternative which has been stated. If we possessed the disposition which Christianity labors, above all other qualities, to inculcate, these differences would do little harm. If that disposition be wanting, other causes, even were these absent, would continually rise up, to call forth the malevolent passions into action. Dif ferences of opinion, when accompanied with mutual charity, which Christianity forbids them to violate, are for the most part innocent, and for some purposes useful. They promote inquiry, discussion, and knowledge. They help to keep up an attention to religious subjects, and a concern about them, which might be apt to die away in the calm and silence of universal agreement. I do not know that it is in any degree true, that the influence of religion is the greatest, where there are the fewest dissenters.

ANNOTATIONS.

'Christianity, in every country in which it is professed, hath obtained a sensible, though not a complete influence on the public judgment of morals.'

A very intelligent traveller who has resided in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, told me that one of the circumstances that most struck him in all the regions he had visited, was, the effects of the religion professed by each class of men, in reference to their state of civilization, and the superiority obtained-peaceably and silently-by one class over another. He found the Mahometans thus gaining ground everywhere on Pagans; the Jews, on Mahometans; the Christians, on Jews; and the Christians of reformed Churches, on those of the unreformed.

It is from a general and wide view like this, that we can most fairly estimate the true tendency of any cause that is in operation.

'The slave-trade destroys more in a year, than the Inquisition does in a hundred.'

It would be a great mistake, however, to measure the evil of persecution by the amount of destruction of human life which it has occasioned. The chief part of that evil consists in the terror, the suspicions-the mutual distrust-the debasing mental slavery-the insincere profession, and covert infidelity, which spring from it. But as for the destruction of life, we should remember that that will always be the least, wherever the system of persecution has been the most fully and efficiently carried out. No tree is withered by the piercing frosts of the Polar regions, or by the scorching drought of the African deserts; because no tree exists there. And whenever all-socalled-heretics have been either exterminated, or forced into outward conformity, the fires of an Inquisition go out for lack of fuel.

I have mentioned among the evils of persecution the secret infidelity caused by it. When any one is haunted with doubts concerning a religion which he is compelled to profess, he cannot discuss such doubts with persons who might perhaps help to clear them up, because he dares not acknowledge them

at all. And he has always reason to suspect that his neighbors may be secret unbelievers; since he knows, that, if they are so, they dare not avow it.

It is pretty well known accordingly that in those European States where the utmost intolerance prevails, utter disbelief of Christianity among the educated classes, is rather the rule than the exception.

And the like takes place, though in a minor degree, wherever the intolerant principle is less fully carried out: that is, where Christians, or those of a particular Church, claim, as such, a monopoly of political power, and exclude others, merely on the ground of religious error, from civil rights and privileges.

Considering how utterly foreign from the whole character of the Gospel is all intolerance, and how much the Gospel itself was for a long time the subject of persecution, there is no need for any attempt to palliate it by an advocate of Christianity.

But it is important to observe that a strong evidence of the truth of our Religion is afforded by the deplorable spectacle of persecution practised by its votaries. For when we see how strong is the proneness to persecution, in Man in his unregenerate state, so strong, that it is practised, and even vindicated, by the professors of a Religion most emphatically opposed to it, this affords a very strong presumption that such a religion could not have proceeded from Man.1

A religion of human devising, would, we may be sure, have been as intolerant in its principles as the Mahometan. Persecution, therefore, as well as other corruptions which have crept into Christianity in manifest opposition to the spirit of it, while they prove a stumbling-block to the perverse and the thoughtless, furnish to the candid and diligent a confirmation of faith.

IN

CHAPTER VIII.

The Conclusion.

N religion, as in every other subject of human reasoning, much depends upon the order in which we dispose our inquiries. A man who takes up a system of divinity with a

1 See Essays, 4th Series, On the Dangers to the Christian Faith.'

previous opinion that either every part must be true, or the whole false, approaches the discussion with great disadvantage. No other system, which is founded upon moral evidence, would bear to be treated in the same manner. Nevertheless, in a certain degree, we are all introduced to our religious studies under this prejudication. And it cannot be avoided. The weakness of the human judgment in the early part of youth, yet its extreme susceptibility of impression, renders it necessary to furnish it with some opinions, and with some principles, or other. Or indeed, without much express care, or much endeavor for this purpose, the tendency of the mind of man to assimilate itself to the habits of thinking and speaking which prevail around him, produces the same effect. That indifferency and suspense, that waiting and equilibrium of the judgment, which some require in religious matters, and which some would wish to be aimed at in the conduct of education, are impossible to be preserved. They are not given to the condition of human life.

It is a consequence of this situation that the doctrines of religion come to us before the proofs; and come to us with that mixture of explications and.inferences from which no public creed is, or can be, free. And the effect which too frequently follows, from Christianity being presented to the understanding in this form, is, that when any articles, which appear as parts of it, contradict the apprehension of the persons to whom it is proposed, men of rash and confident tempers hastily and indiscriminately reject the whole. But is this to do justice, either to themselves, or to the religion? The rational way of treating a subject of such acknowledged importance is to attend, in the first place, to the general and substantial truth of its principles, and to that alone. When we once feel a foundation; when we once perceive a ground of credibility in its history, we shall proceed with safety to inquire into the interpretation of its records, and into the doctrines which have been deduced from them. Nor will it either endanger our faith, or diminish or alter our motives for obedience, if we should discover that these conclusions are formed with very different degrees of probability, and possess very different degrees of importance.

This conduct of the understanding, dictated by every rule

ours.

of right reasoning, will uphold personal Christianity, even in those countries in which it is established under forms the most liable to difficulty and objection. It will also have the further effect of guarding us against the prejudices which are wont to arise in our minds to the disadvantage of religion, from ob-' serving the numerous controversies which are carried on amongst its professors; and likewise of inducing a spirit of lenity and moderation in our judgment, as well as in our treatment of those who stand, in such controversies, upon sides opposite to What is clear in Christianity we shall find to be suffi cient, and to be infinitely valuable; what is dubious, unnecessary to be decided, or of very subordinate importance; and what is most obscure, will teach us to bear with the opinions which others may have formed upon the same subject. We shall say to those who the most widely dissent from us, what Augustine said to the worst heretics of his age: 'Illi in vos sæviant, qui nesciunt, cum quo labore verum inveniatur, et quam difficile caveantur errores . . . qui nesciunt, cum quantâ difficultate sanetur oculus interioris hominis. . . qui nesciunt, quibus suspiriis et gemitibus fiat, ut ex quantulacunque parte possit intelligi Deus.'1

...

A judgment, moreover, which is once pretty well satisfied of the general truth of the religion, will not only thus discriminate in its doctrines, but will possess sufficient strength to overcome the reluctance of the imagination to admit articles of faith which are attended with difficulty of apprehension, if such articles of faith appear to be truly parts of the revelation. It was to be expected beforehand, that what related to the economy, and to the persons, of the invisible world, which revelation professes to do, and which, if true, it actually does, should contain some points remote from our analogies, and from the comprehension of a mind which hath acquired all its ideas from sense and from experience.

It hath been my care, in the preceding work, to preserve the separation between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as I could; to remove from the primary question all considerations. which have been unnecessarily joined with it; and to offer a defence to Christianity, which every Christian might read, with