dinner, as at a conventicle. I once caught a great fat doctor at St. Paul's cursing and storming against Presbyterians, whom he consigned in a body over to Satan, with great zeal, and no remorse. Says I, to myself, this reverend ill-tongued parson will certainly quarrel, and kick, over his claret as well as over his cushion. In order to try, I got into his company at the Baptist's head, and by the humility of my behaviour, and the divinity of the hermitage, I sat at tolerable ease with the doctor, till the middle of the third bottle, and then he swore at the drawer for not answering before he was called; and, before it was out, he drank confusion to fanaticks, and a health to sorrel. The doctor then shewed a violent appetite for quarrelling; but meeting no body in the same humour, he only eased himself in oaths; till an honest citizen drank to him the glorious memory of king William; which the doctor pledged by throwing a wild duck just hot from the spit, full in the citizen's face, and got up at the same time to fall upon him with his hands; but as soon as he got up he fell, and we left him upon the floor, to the care of the drawers.

How long are mankind to be deluded with sounds and how long will uncharitableness and outrage, which are enemies to the nature of Christianity, pass for zeal, for religion! Are men to be cursed, or punished, or destroyed, out of zeal for the gospel, by which all severity is forbid? Where are we commanded to quarrel for the peace of the church; or to run mad for the reasonableness of liturgies? Or to fight for the divine original of human forms? Or to deliver men to the devil, for the saving of their souls?

How unlike is our modern zeal to that of the apostles, and how unworthy to be called by that name! They lived under hardships and stripes, and ventured their lives to convert unbelievers: Our present zealots live at ease and in plenty; and their zeal is devoutly employed about tythes, honours, garments, and forms. They do not pretend to venture their livings and their lives to convert either pagan, or papist, or Mahometan. The idolatry and infidelity under which the miserable world lies, do not seem to interrupt their quiet and their enjoyments. But if a dozen harmless Christians presume to worship God in a barn; or to pray to God without book; or to commemorate Christ's death with praises and prayers, such as a devout heart dictates; or to refuse complying with a rote of words, which they judge neither edifying nor warrantable; or to follow their consciences, which alone can justify thêm in the sight of God; and not the authority of men, which cannot justi fy them in the sight of God; they are alarmed; and their church totters, if conscience be protected.

If this be the spirit of Christianity, I must own myself to have been hitherto a stranger to Christianity; and yet these men go on to tell us, that they are the only true church, though they possess not one grain of that charity which distinguishes a Christian from a reprobate, as much as a rational soul does a man from a monkey; and to damn all other churches, that is, the whole world, without taking one step towards bringing them into a state of salvation. G.

NUMBER 24.

Of Persecution.

THERE are but two ways of propagating religion, namely, miracles and exhortation. The one depends upon divine power, and the other upon the strength of reason. Where the finger of God appears, all further testimony is needless; and where the truth is obvious to reason, miracles are needless. God never wills us to believe that which is above our reason, but he at the same time commands our faith by miracles. He does not leave necessary things doubtful; and for this reagon alone it is, that men are said to be left without excuse.

Every point of belief therefore must be supported either by reason or miracle, or else it is no point of belief at all. Both the Jewish and the Christian law were delivered and enforced with manifest signs and demonstrations of God's extraordinary presence and power. And it has been very justly boasted of the Christian religion in particular, that it spread and prospered by miracles, persuasion, and clemency, in opposition to violence and cruelty.

But when Christianity became tainted and defaced by priest-craft, it grew necessary to have many points believed, which contradicted both revelation and common sense: Therefore its foster fathers, who to the worship of God, added the worship of themselves, had no other way to prove their system but by wrath and vengeance. Reason was against them, and miracles not for them; so their whole dominion stood upon falsehood, guarded by force. This force, when it is exercised upon a religious account, is called persecution; which is what I am now to consider and expose.

To punish men for opinions that are even plainly false and absurd, is barbarous and unreasonable. We possess different minds, as we do different bodies; and the same proposition carries not the same evidence to every man alike, no more than the same object appears equally clear to every eye. A cholerick temper, when it is not corrected with reason, and seasoned with humanity, is naturally zealous. A phlegmatick temper, on the other side, as it is naturally slow, so is it Juke-warm and indifferent. Is there any merit in having a warm complexion, or any sin in being dull?

But further; to punish a man for not seeing the truth, or for not embracing it, is in the first place, to make him miserable, because he is already so; and in the second place, to pluck vengeance out of God's hands, to whom alone it belongs, if we will take his word for it. If this severity is pretended to be for his good, I would ask, is manifest cruelty any token of kindness, or was it ever taken for such? Does it not always increase the evil which it is employed to cure? Is destruction the means to happiness? Absurd and terrible!

But what, if, after all, the person persecuted should be found adherent to truth and honesty, and his enemies, should prove their enemies? Would not this be adding cruelty to falsehood, and heaping up guilt with both hands This indeed is often the case. And where it is

not altogether so, the persecutors are still inexcusable. He who, in the search of truth, does all that he can, does as much as he ought. God requires no more, and what man dares do it, who fears him? When he acquits, who is it that condemns?

Besides, he that suffers, or at least dies, for religion, gives a testimony by so doing, that his conscience is dearer to him than ease or interest: Whereas the patrons of persecution have manifestly personal motives and self ends in it. It gratifies their pride, awes mankind, and brings them obedience and gain.

Our blessed Saviour, who had no view but the redemption of the world, never used his omnipotence, or the least force to subdue his eaemies, though he knew their hearts to be malicious and implacable. He neither delivered them to death nor the devil, even for their hellish designs to kill him; much less for points of errour or speculation. He reasoned with all men, but punished none. He used arguments, he worked wonders; but severities be neither practised nor recommended. His was a different spirit. He rebuked his apostles with sharpness, when, being yet full of the spirit of this world, and void of the spirit of God, they were for bringing down fire from heaven upon the heretical Samaritans. The merciful Jesus would not hurt these half heathens, though they rejected him in person, for he came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them: And they who take another method give the lye to the Lord of life, and disown him for their head. His apostles, as soon as they had received the Holy Ghost, grew wiser and more merciful. They shewed by miracles, that they were endowed with the divine power, but they never used either to compel or to burn, though they were beset with false teachers, and oppos ed by gain-sayers. They were so far from giving ill-usage, that they never returned it. The exercise of wholesome severities was no part of their doctrine. Prayers and persuasions were their only arms, and such as became the gospel of peace.

This was the mild and heavenly behaviour of Christ and his apostles towards those who did not believe, or believed wrong; and it was followed by all their successours who aimed at the good of souls; but those who used the sacred function, as a ladder to power and gain, made a new gospel of their own decisions, and forced it upon the world, partly by fighting and partly by cursing. The apostles taught Christ, and their successours taught themselves. It was not enough to believe the doctrine of Christianity, but you must believe it in words of their inventing. To dispute their decrees, though they contradicted common sense and the spirit of God, was heresy; and heresy was damnation. And when, in consequence of this, they had allotted a pious Christian to eternal flames, for his infidelity in them, they dispatched him thither with all speed; because he was to be damned in the other world, therefore he was to be hanged or burned in this. A terrible gradation of cruelty to be cursed, burned, and damned! But it was something natural; it began from persecuting priests, and ended in hell, and the devil was the last and highest executioner.

Thus the became prelates of both worlds, and proprietors of the punishments of both. Even where the civil sword was not at their command, their vengeance was as successfully, and in my opinion, more terribly executed without it, by the temporal effect of their ex

communication. For the person under it was looked upon as a dæ mon, and one in the power of the devil; and so driven out, like a wild beast, from all the comforts of life, and human society; to perish in a desert, by hunger, or the elements, or beasts of prey, And all this, perhaps, for denying a word or a phrase, which was never known in scripture, though impudently pretended to be fetched from thence.

Such dreadful dominion had they usurped over the bodies and souls of men, and so implacably did they exercise it! And, to fill up the measure of their falsehood and cruelty, they blasphemously pretended to be serving God, when they were acting as if there were none.

Those who have set up for infallibility have found a good excuse, if it were true, for the insupportable tyranny, infinite murders, and wide devastations, which their religion has every where introduced. But those, who exact a blind obedience to decrees, which they own to be human, and annex penalties to positions, which we know to be false, and they know to be disputable; and, in fine, act and dictate as if they were infallible, without pretending to be so; are so utterly without all excuse, that I know no language which affords a name proper for their behaviour.

The Mahometan imposture was professedly to be spread by the sword. It had nothing else but that and libertinism to recommend it. But to propagate the Christian religion by terrour or arms is to deny it. It owns no such spirit. It rendered itself amiable, and gained ground by a principle of peace and love. These were the means instituted by Christ, for the recommendation and defence of his Gospel; and they, who would choose contrary ones, charge him with folly, and have ends to serve very different from his. Ambition, pride, and revenge, may make good use of violence and persecution; but they are the bane of Christianity, which always sinks when persecution rises. The vilest and most profligate men, are ever the promoters of it; and the most virtuous are the greatest sufferers by it. Libertines stick at nothing; but they who have the fear of God, cannot comply with all things. Persecution is therefore the war of craft against conscience, and of impiety against truth. Reason, religion, and liberty, are its great foes; but ignorance, tyranny, and atheism, its great seconds and support. We ought then constantly to oppose all claims of dominion in the clergy; for they naturally end in cruelty. I believe it will be hard to shew, that ever the priesthood, at any time, or in any place. enjoyed the power of persecution without making use of it.

G..

NUMBER 25.

Of Consecration

HOLINESS is that character of purity, which originally and essentially appertains to God Almighty, (as a being utterly incapable of

stain and imperfection;) but is also ascribed, in a restrained and relative sense, to every act of devotion, and every person performing it. It is an active and rational thing; and where it is attributed to things inanimate or irrational, it is either merely in a figurative sense, or in no sense at all.

Thus when the elements in the sacrements are said to be holy, it is only meant only of the uses to which they are applied, and the purposes for which they are taken; for, though they were consecrated over and over again, yet, if they are never taken, or never devoutly taken, they have in themselves no more holiness then a common roll, or a cup of cold water.

And thus, when a people are said to be a holy people, it is meant of their sincere love of God, and conformity to his will, and of the actions by them performed in consequence of these good affections. But, if such actions, though seemingly devout, are superstitious or hypocritical; there is no more holiness in them, than in the Indians worshipping the devil, or in a boy's saying his prayers to avoid whipping.

And thus, when a house, or a piece of ground is said to be holy, it is understood only of some mark of holiness there shewn, either by the extraordinary presence of God, or by some act or acts of worship performed there to him. But when these marks of Omnipotence, and these acts of devotion cease, that ground is no more than common ground, and that house is a common house.

And thus, lastly, when the priests are called holy unto the Lord, it is meant only of their assisting at the solemn acts of adoration which are paid to him. At other times they are as other men ; as is evident from their living after the manner of other men.

Holiness, therefore, consists only in a virtuous and pious disposition towards God, and is only shewn by the actions which it produces. But as superstition, especially when governed by craft, never fails to see, or to think that it sees effects and operatious, which neither religion nor common sense can shew; hence men have been generally persuaded that places, buildings, utensils, and garments, did actually possess a real holiness: that stones and brickbats are blessed; and that timber, surplices and bells are exceeding godly bodies.

To help on this wretched and senseless credulity, the pagan and popish priests have gone so far as to compose farces of legerdemain, called by them offices of consecration? the whole end of which was, they pretended, to bestow godliness upon dead earth, and things inanimate. Thus they deceived the people in the name of the Lord, and gravely made speeches (which they called prayers) over wood, stones, and iron; by virtue of which, the said wood, stones and iron were obliged to become good orthodox lumber, and as sanctified bodies as the other members of the congregation.

If one was to demand of these reverend worthies, who required these things at their hands? I doubt it would prove a hard question; and probably the impertinent enquirer would be dispatched for satisfaction to satan, or the inquisition. An effectual and orthodox answer to such busy unbelievers, and often practised with terrible success !

But as I live in a nation where such superstitions and cruelties are, I bless God, at an end; I take leave to be amazed at the assurance of those popish consecrators, who thus impiously pretend to draw down