is replying to an accusation which he is not wholly able to
rebut.

NO FAITH WITH HERETICS.

During the Crusades, when the Christians were wantonly fighting
against their superiors in civilisation and humanity, the doctrine, was
promulgated and obeyed that no faith should be kept with infidels,
and this was subsequently put in force against heretics. Thousands of
Mohammedan prisoners were butchered in cold blood, although their safety
had been confirmed by an oath; and this infamous practice was afterwards
pursued with respect to the "heretical" sects when the Papal troops
desolated some of the fairest parts of Europe. Not only was there
no salvation outside the Church, but even the ordinary laws of human
society were held to be abrogated. This wickedness, perhaps, reached
its culmination in the Spanish conquest of America. Few Christians were
civilised enough to condemn these purjured banditti, but Montaigne in
France, and Raleigh in England, were glorious exceptions, and both of
them were under a just suspicion of heterodoxy.

Protestants as well as Catholics were infected with this infamous
bigotry. Luther himself was not free from taint, and Calvin's treachery
against Servetus is an eternal blot on his character.

"No faith with heretics" took a new form when the downright violation of
an oath became too dissonant to the spirit of an improved civilisation.
It found expression in robbing the heretic of political and social
rights, and above all in treating him as outside the pale of honor.
Slandering him was no libel. Every bigot claimed the right to say
anything against his character, for the purpose of bringing his opinions
into hatred and contempt. All the dictates of charity were cast aside;
his good actions were misrepresented, and his failings maliciously
exaggerated. If Voltaire spent thousands in charity, he did it for
notoriety; if he wrote odes to beautiful or accomplished ladies, he was
a wretched debauchee. If Thomas Paine made sacrifices for liberty,
he did it because he had a private grudge against authority; if he
befriended the wife and family of a distressed Republican, he only
sought to gratify his lust; if he spent a convivial hour with a friend,
he was an inveterate drunkard; and if he contracted a malignant abscess
by lying for months in a damp, unwholesome dungeon, his sufferings were
the nemesis of a wicked, profligate life.

An English precursor of Voltaire and Paine wrote _A Disco