n of paramount importance there is ever a secret influence
urging me earnestly to desire to find one side of the question right and
the other wrong. Shall I be a whig or a tory, believe a republic or
a mixed monarchy most conducive to the improvement and happiness of
mankind, embrace the creed of free will or necessity? There is in all
cases a "strong temptation that waketh in the heart." Cowardice urges
me to become the adherent of that creed, which is espoused by my nearest
friends, or those who are most qualified to serve me. Enterprise and
a courageous spirit on the contrary bid me embrace the tenet, the
embracing of which shall most conduce to my reputation for extraordinary
perspicuity and acuteness, and gain me the character of an intrepid
adventurer, a man who dares commit himself to an unknown voyage.

In the question of religion, even when the consideration of the
profession of an ecclesiastic does not occur, yet we are taught to
believe that there is only one set of tenets that will lead us in
the way of salvation. Faith is represented as the first of all
qualifications. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not
had sin." With what heart then does a man set himself to examine, and
scrupulously weigh the evidence on one side and the other, when some
undiscerned frailty, some secret bias that all his care cannot detect,
may lurk within, and insure for him the "greater condemnation?" I well
remember in early life, with what tingling sensation and unknown horror
I looked into the books of the infidels and the repositories of unlawful
tenets, lest I should be seduced. I held it my duty to "prove all
things;" but I knew not how far it might be my fate; to sustain the
penalty attendant even upon an honourable and virtuous curiousity.

It is one of the most received arguments of the present day against
religious persecution, that the judgments we form are not under the
authority of our will, and that, for what it is not in our power to
change, it is unjust we should be punished: and there is much truth in
this. But it is not true to the fullest extent. The sentiments we shall
entertain, are to a considerable degree at the disposal of inticements
on the one side, and of menaces and apprehension on the other. That
which we wish to believe, we are already greatly in progress to embrace;
and that which will bring upon us disgrace and calamity, we are more
than half prepared to reject. Persecution however is o