es on this subject, to make an
extract from his sermon lately preached at the
consecration of the Bishop of Salisbury. "In his
intercourse with those Christians whose sentiments
do not coincide with our own, the Christian
minister will never by laxity of expression or
conduct encourage in any an indifference to truth
and error, nor countenance the insidious workings
of latitudinarian principles. He will ever maintain
the truth, but never with acrimony; and, whilst his
duty compels him to banish and drive away all false
doctrine, he will feel and show towards the persons
of such as are in error compassionate indulgence
and forbearing tenderness. He knows that truth can
be only on one side, but he acknowledges that
sincerity may be on both; and he will set his mind
on winning back again by mild argument and
conciliatory conduct those who have gone astray,
rather than by severity in exposing their faults,
and a cold, forbidding, and hostile bearing,
indispose them to examine their mistaken views, and
confirm them in their spirit of alienation."]

[Footnote 252: Owen Feltham.]

A Christian legislature is bound by the most solemn of all
obligations to supply with parental care the means which, in the
honest exercise of its wisdom, it deems best fitted for converting the
community into a people serving God; each obedient to his law here,
each personally preparing for the awful change from time to eternity.
But with each individual member of the community, from those who make
its laws or administer them to the humblest labourer for his daily
bread, it must ultimately be left to accept or to reject, to cultivate
or neglect, the offered blessing. The moment compulsion interferes
with the free choice of the individual, the religion of the heart and
the outward observance cease to coincide, and hypocrisy, not faith
working by love, is the result. "Persecution[253] either punishes a
man for keeping a good conscience, or forces him into a bad
conscience; it either punishes sincerity, or persuades hypocrisy; it
persecutes