ou find it, curiosity or research is its best security; and in
this way a man is a great deal better justified in saying, Tolerate all
kinds of consciences, than in imitating the heathens, whom the honorable
gentleman quotes, in tolerating those who have none. I am not over-fond
of calling for the secular arm upon these misguided or misguiding men;
but if ever it ought to be raised, it ought surely to be raised against
these very men, not against others, whose liberty of religion you make a
pretext for proceedings which drive them into the bondage of impiety.
What figure do I make in saying, I do not attack the works of these
atheistical writers, but I will keep a rod hanging over the
conscientious man, their bitterest enemy, because these atheists may
take advantage of the liberty of their foes to introduce irreligion? The
best book that ever, perhaps, has been written against these people is
that in which the author has collected in a body the whole of the
infidel code, and has brought the writers into one body to cut them all
off together. This was done by a Dissenter, who never did subscribe the
Thirty-Nine Articles,--Dr. Leland. But if, after all this, danger is to
be apprehended, if you are really fearful that Christianity will
indirectly suffer by this liberty, you have my free consent: go
directly, and by the straight way, and not by a circuit in which, in
your road you may destroy your friends; point your arms against these
men who do the mischief you fear promoting; point your arms against men
who, not contented with endeavoring to turn your eyes from the blaze and
effulgence of light by which life and immortality is so gloriously
demonstrated by the Gospel, would even extinguish that faint glimmering
of Nature, that only comfort supplied to ignorant man before this great
illumination,--them, who, by attacking even the possibility of all
revelation, arraign all the dispensations of Providence to man. These
are the wicked Dissenters you ought to fear; these are the people
against whom you ought to aim the shaft of the law; these are the men to
whom, arrayed in all the terrors of government, I would say, You shall
not degrade us into brutes! These men, these factious men, as the
honorable gentleman properly called them, are the just objects of
vengeance, not the conscientious Dissenter,--these men, who would take
away whatever ennobles the rank or consoles the misfortunes of human
nature, by breaking off that conn