t not always in the arguments by which it was to be proved;
that we must be tolerant of difference of opinion among ourselves; that
the author of the Tract had a right to his own opinion, and that the
argument in question was ordinarily received; that I did not give my own
name or authority, nor was asked for my personal belief, but only acted
instrumentally, as one might translate a friend's book into a foreign
language. I account these to be good arguments; nevertheless I feel also
that such practices admit of easy abuse and are consequently dangerous;
but then, again, I feel also this,--that if all such mistakes were to be
severely visited, not many men in public life would be left with a
character for honour and honesty.

This absolute confidence in my cause, which led me to the negligence or
wantonness which I have been instancing, also laid me open, not
unfairly, to the opposite charge of fierceness in certain steps which I
took, or words which I published. In the Lyra Apostolica, I have said
that before learning to love, we must "learn to hate;" though I had
explained my words by adding "hatred of sin." In one of my first Sermons
I said, "I do not shrink from uttering my firm conviction that it would
be a gain to the country were it vastly more superstitious, more
bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion than at present it
shows itself to be." I added, of course, that it would be an absurdity
to suppose such tempers of mind desirable in themselves. The corrector
of the press bore these strong epithets till he got to "more fierce,"
and then he put in the margin a _query_. In the very first page of the
first Tract, I said of the Bishops, that, "black event though it would
be for the country, yet we could not wish them a more blessed
termination of their course, than the spoiling of their goods and
martyrdom." In consequence of a passage in my work upon the Arian
History, a Northern dignitary wrote to accuse me of wishing to
re-establish the blood and torture of the Inquisition. Contrasting
heretics and heresiarchs, I had said, "The latter should meet with no
mercy: he assumes the office of the Tempter; and, so far forth as his
error goes, must be dealt with by the competent authority, as if he were
embodied evil. To spare him is a false and dangerous pity. It is to
endanger the souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable towards
himself." I cannot deny that this is a very fierce passage; but Arius
was banis