to the ulterior consequences of his own act,—­he will infallibly persecute those who deny his doctrine; and the extent of his persecution will be regulated by the extent of his sincerity.  Diminish the sincerity, and you will diminish the persecution; in other words, by weakening the virtue you may check the evil.  This is a truth of which history furnishes such innumerable examples, that to deny it would be not only to reject the plainest and most conclusive arguments, but to refuse the concurrent testimony of every age.  I will merely select two cases, which, from the entire difference in their circumstances, are very apposite as illustrations:  the first being from the history of Paganism, the other from the history of Christianity; and both proving the inability of moral feelings to control religious persecution.

I. The Roman emperors, as is well known, subjected the early Christians to persecutions which, though they have been exaggerated, were frequent and very grievous.  But what to some persons must appear extremely strange, is, that among the active authors of these cruelties we find the names of the best men who ever sat on the throne; while the worst and most infamous princes were precisely those who spared the Christians, and took no heed of their increase.  The two most thoroughly depraved of all the emperors were certainly Commodus and Elagabalus; neither of whom persecuted the new religion, or indeed adopted any measures against it.  They were too reckless of the future, too selfish, too absorbed in their own infamous pleasures, to mind whether truth or error prevailed; and being thus indifferent to the welfare of their subjects, they cared nothing about the progress of a creed which they, as Pagan emperors, were bound to regard as a fatal and impious delusion.  They therefore allowed Christianity to run its course, unchecked by those penal laws which more honest but more mistaken rulers would assuredly have enacted.  We find, accordingly, that the great enemy of Christianity was Marcus Aurelius; a man of kindly temper, and of fearless, unflinching honesty, but whose reign was characterized by a persecution from which he would have refrained had he been less in earnest about the religion of his fathers.  And to complete the argument, it may be added that the last and one of the most strenuous opponents of Christianity who occupied the throne of the Caesars was Julian; a prince of eminent probity, whose opinions are often attacked, but against whose moral conduct even calumny itself has hardly breathed a suspicion.

II.  The second illustration is supplied by Spain; a country of which it must be confessed, that in no other have religiuos feelings exercised such sway over the affairs of men.  No other European nation has produced so many ardent and disinterested missionaries, zealous self-denying martyrs, who have cheerfully sacrificed their lives in order to propagate truths which they thought necessary to be known.  Nowhere