The honorable gentleman, speaking of the heathens, certainly could not mean to recommend anything that is derived from that impure source.  But he has praised the tolerating spirit of the heathens.  Well! but the honorable gentleman will recollect that heathens, that polytheists, must permit a number of divinities.  It is the very essence of its constitution.  But was it ever heard that polytheism tolerated a dissent from a polytheistic establishment,—­the belief of one God only?  Never! never!  Sir, they constantly carried on persecution against that doctrine.  I will not give heathens the glory of a doctrine which I consider the best part of Christianity.  The honorable gentleman must recollect the Roman law, that was clearly against the introduction of any foreign rites in matters of religion.  You have it at large in Livy, how they persecuted in the first introduction the rites of Bacchus; and even before Christ, to say nothing of their subsequent persecutions, they persecuted the Druids and others.  Heathenism, therefore, as in other respects erroneous, was erroneous in point of persecution.  I do not say every heathen who persecuted was therefore an impious man:  I only say he was mistaken, as such a man is now.  But, says the honorable gentleman, they did not persecute Epicureans.  No:  the Epicureans had no quarrel with their religious establishment, nor desired any religion for themselves.  It would have been very extraordinary, if irreligious heathens had desired either a religious establishment or toleration.  But, says the honorable gentleman, the Epicureans entered, as others, into the temples.  They did so; they defied all subscription; they defied all sorts of conformity; there was no subscription to which they were not ready to set their hands, no ceremonies they refused to practise; they made it a principle of their irreligion outwardly to conform to any religion.  These atheists eluded all that you could do:  so will all freethinkers forever.  Then you suffer, or the weakness of your law has suffered, those great dangerous animals to escape notice, whilst you have nets that entangle the poor fluttering silken wings of a tender conscience.

The honorable gentleman insists much upon this circumstance of objection,—­namely, the division amongst the Dissenters.  Why, Sir, the Dissenters, by the nature of the term, are open to have a division among themselves.  They are Dissenters because they differ from the Church of England:  not that they agree among themselves.  There are Presbyterians, there are Independents,—­some that do not agree to infant baptism, others that do not agree to the baptism of adults, or any baptism.  All these are, however, tolerated under the acts of King William, and subsequent acts; and their diversity of sentiments with one another did not and could not furnish an argument against their toleration, when their difference with ourselves furnished none.