r rebellious against
their princes disobey God and procure their own damnation". It can
scarcely be necessary to argue to the citizens of the United States of
America that the origin of their liberties was in the rejection of faith
in the divine right of George III.

Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend that it is not certain gain
to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible doctrine that eternal
torment is the probable fate of the great majority of the human family?
Is it not gain to have diminished the faith that it was the duty of
the wretched and the miserable to be content with the lot in life which
providence had awarded them?

If it stood alone it would be almost sufficient to plead as
justification for heresy the approach towards equality and liberty for
the utterance of all opinions achieved because of growing unbelief.
At one period in Christendom each Government acted as though only one
religious faith could be true, and as though the holding, or at any
rate the making known, any other opinion was a criminal act deserving
punishment. Under the one word "infidel", even as late as Lord Coke,
were classed together all who were not Christians, even though they were
Mahommedans, Brahmins, or Jews. All who did not accept the Christian
faith were sweepingly denounced as infidels and therefore _hors de la
loi_. One hundred and forty-five years since, the Attorney-General,
pleading in our highest court, said (1): "What is the definition of an
infidel? Why, one who does not believe in the Christian religion. Then
a Jew is an infidel." And English history for several centuries prior
to the Commonwealth shows how habitually and most atrociously Christian
kings, Christian courts, and Christian churches, persecuted and harassed
these infidel Jews. There was a time in England when Jews were such
infidels that they were not even allowed to be sworn as witnesses. In
1740 a legacy left for establishing an assembly for the reading of
the Jewish scriptures was held to be void (2) because it was "for the
propagation of the Jewish law in contradiction to the Christian religion
". It is only in very modern times that municipal rights have been
accorded in England to Jews. It is barely thirty years since they have
been allowed to sit in Parliament. In 1851, the late Mr. Newdegate in
debate (3) objected "that they should have sitting in that House an
individual who regarded our Redeemer as an impostor". Lord Chief
Justice