be apprehensive of persecution) blasphemy we know is freely spoken a million of times in every coffeehouse and tavern, or wherever else good company meet.  It must be allowed indeed, that to break an English free-born officer only for blasphemy, was, to speak the gentlest of such an action, a very high strain of absolute power.  Little can be said in excuse for the general; perhaps he was afraid it might give offence to the allies, among whom, for aught we know, it may be the custom of the country to believe a God.  But if he argued, as some have done, upon a mistaken principle, that an officer who is guilty of speaking blasphemy, may some time or other proceed so far as to raise a mutiny, the consequence is by no means to be admitted; for, surely the commander of an English army is likely to be but ill obeyed, whose soldiers fear and reverence him as little as they do a Deity.

[Footnote 6:  Tacitus, “Annals,” bk. i., c. lxxiii. [T.S.]]

It is further objected against the Gospel System, that it obliges men to the belief of things too difficult for free-thinkers, and such who have shaken off the prejudices that usually cling to a confined education.  To which I answer, that men should be cautious how they raise objections which reflect upon the wisdom of the nation.  Is not every body freely allowed to believe whatever he pleases, and to publish his belief to the world whenever he thinks fit, especially if it serves to strengthen the party which is in the right?  Would any indifferent foreigner, who should read the trumpery lately written by Asgil, Tindal, Toland, Coward,[7] and forty more, imagine the Gospel to be our rule of faith, and confirmed by parliaments?  Does any man either believe, or say he believes, or desire to have it thought that he says he believes one syllable of the matter?  And is any man worse received upon that score, or does he find his want of nominal faith a disadvantage to him in the pursuit of any civil or military employment?  What if there be an old dormant statute or two against him, are they not now obsolete, to a degree, that Empsom and Dudley[8] themselves if they were now alive, would find it impossible to put them in execution?

[Footnote 7:  John Asgill (1659-1738), became a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and went over to Ireland in 1697, where he practised as a barrister, amassed a large fortune, and was elected to the Irish parliament.  For writing “An Argument, proving that Man may be translated from hence without passing through Death,” he was, in 1700, expelled the House, and the book ordered to be burnt.  On returning to England he was elected to parliament for Bramber, but suffered a second expulsion in 1712, also on account of this book.  He was imprisoned for debt, and remained under the rules of the Fleet and King’s Bench for thirty years, during which time he wrote and published various political tracts.  His “Argument” attempted to “interpret the relations between God and man by the technical rules of English law,” and Coleridge thought no little of its power and style.