were idolizing words to which they attached no ideas.  On several occasions I had distinctly perceived how serious alarm I gave by resolutely refusing to admit any shiftings and shufflings of language.  I felt convinced, that if I would but have contradicted myself two or three times, and then have added, “That is the mystery of it,” I could have passed as orthodox with many.  I had been charged with a proud and vain determination to pry into divine mysteries, barely because I would not confess to propositions the meaning of which was to me doubtful,—­or say and unsay in consecutive breaths.  It was too clear, that a doctrine which muddles the understanding perverts also the power of moral discernment.  If I had committed some flagrant sin, they would have given me a fair and honourable trial; but where they could not give me a public hearing, nor yet leave me unimpeached, without danger of (what they called) my infecting the Church, there was nothing left but to hunt me out unscrupulously.

Unscrupulously! did not this one word characterize all religious persecution? and then my mind wandered back over the whole melancholy tale of what is called Christian history.  When Archbishop Cranmer overpowered the reluctance of young Edward VI. to burn to death the pious and innocent Joan of Kent, who moreover was as mystical and illogical as heart could wish, was Cranmer not actuated by deep religious convictions?  None question his piety, yet it was an awfully wicked deed.  What shall I say of Calvin, who burned Servetus?  Why have I been so slow to learn, that religion is an impulse which animates us to execute our moral judgments, but an impulse which may be half blind?  These brethren believe that I may cause the eternal ruin of others:  how hard then is it for them to abide faithfully by the laws of morality and respect my rights!  My rights!  They are of course trampled down for the public good, just as a house is blown up to stop a conflagration.  Such is evidently the theory of all persecution;—­which is essentially founded on Hatred.  As Aristotle says, “He who is angry, desires to punish somebody; but he who hates, desires the hated person not even to exist.”  Hence they cannot endure to see me face to face.  That I may not infect the rest, they desire my non-existence; by fair means, if fair will succeed; if not, then by foul.  And whence comes this monstrosity into such bosoms?  Weakness of common sense, dread of the common understanding, an insufficient faith in common morality, are surely the disease:  and evidently, nothing so exasperates this disease as consecrating religious tenets which forbid the exercise of common sense.

I now began to understand why it was peculiarly for unintelligible doctrines like Transubstantiation and the Tri-unity that Christians had committed such execrable wickednesses.  Now also for the first time I understood what had seemed not frightful only, but preternatural,—­the sensualities and cruelties enacted as a part of religion in many of the old Paganisms.  Religion and fanaticism are in the embryo but one and the same; to purify and elevate them we want a cultivation of the understanding, without which our moral code may be indefinitely depraved.  Natural kindness and strong sense are aids and guides, which the most spiritual man cannot afford to despise.