lished Universal Right Of Conscience.

Toleration is not the opposite of Intolerance, but is the counterfeit
of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of
withholding Liberty of Conscience, and the other of granting it. The
one is the Pope armed with fire and faggot, and the other is the Pope
selling or granting indulgences. The former is church and state, and the
latter is church and traffic.

But Toleration may be viewed in a much stronger light. Man worships not
himself, but his Maker; and the liberty of conscience which he claims is
not for the service of himself, but of his God. In this case, therefore,
we must necessarily have the associated idea of two things; the mortal
who renders the worship, and the Immortal Being who is worshipped.
Toleration, therefore, places itself, not between man and man, nor
between church and church, nor between one denomination of religion and
another, but between God and man; between the being who worships, and
the Being who is worshipped; and by the same act of assumed authority
which it tolerates man to pay his worship, it presumptuously and
blasphemously sets itself up to tolerate the Almighty to receive it.

Were a bill brought into any Parliament, entitled, "An Act to tolerate
or grant liberty to the Almighty to receive the worship of a Jew or
Turk," or "to prohibit the Almighty from receiving it," all men would
startle and call it blasphemy. There would be an uproar. The presumption
of toleration in religious matters would then present itself unmasked;
but the presumption is not the less because the name of "Man" only
appears to those laws, for the associated idea of the worshipper and the
worshipped cannot be separated. Who then art thou, vain dust and ashes!
by whatever name thou art called, whether a King, a Bishop, a Church,
or a State, a Parliament, or anything else, that obtrudest thine
insignificance between the soul of man and its Maker? Mind thine own
concerns. If he believes not as thou believest, it is a proof that
thou believest not as he believes, and there is no earthly power can
determine between you.

With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if every
one is left to judge of its own religion, there is no such thing as
a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other's
religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and
therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong. But with
re