fanaticism? What, gentlemen, would you transform into arbitrary
proscribers the founders of liberty? You will judge, you will exile, you
will imprison, _en masse_, men amongst whom, if there are some guilty,
there are still more innocent! Crimes are no longer individual, and
guilt would be decreed by category; but were they all and all equally
guilty, could you have the cruelty to strike, at the same time, this
multitude of heads; when under similar circumstances the most cruel
despots would be content with decimating them? What then have you to do?
One thing only: to be consistent, and found practical liberty and the
peaceable co-existence of different worships on the bases of tolerance.
Why do not our brethren of the priesthood enjoy the power of worshiping
beside us the same God--whilst in our cities, where we refuse them the
right of celebrating our holy mysteries, we allow heathens to celebrate
the mysteries of Iris and Osiris? Mahometans to invoke their prophet?
the rabbin to make his burnt-offerings? To what extent, I ask, shall
such strange tolerance be permissible? to what extent, I ask also, will
you push despotism and persecution? When the law shall have regulated
the civil arts, births, marriage, burial, with religious ceremonies, by
which Christians consecrate them; when the law will permit the same
sacrifice on two altars, with what consistency can it forbid the virtue
of the same sacraments? These temples, it will be repeated, are the
council-chambers of the factious. True, if they be rendered clandestine,
as the persecutors would make them; but if these temples be open and
free, the eye of the law will penetrate there and every where else: it
will be no longer religious worship, it will be crime they will watch
and detect--and what do you fear? Time is with you; this class of the
nonjurors will be extinct, and never renewed. A worship supported by
individuals, and not by the state, constantly tends to weaken itself; at
least, the factious, who are in their commencement animated by the
divinity of their faith, gradually become reconciled, and identify
themselves with the general freedom. Look at Germany--look at
Virginia--where opposite creeds mutually borrow the same sanctuaries,
and where different sects fraternise in the same patriotism. This is
what we should tend to; these are the principles which ought gradually
to implant themselves widely amongst a people: light ought to be the
great precursor of