duty.

That our street and field preaching Christians, with very few
exceptions, heartily sympathise with the fire and faggot sentiments of
Robert Hall, is well known; but happily, their absurd ravings are
attended to by none save eminently pious people, whose brains are
unclogged by any conceivable quantity of useful knowledge. In point of
intellect they are utterly contemptible. Their ignorance, however, is
fully matched by their impudence, which never forsakes them. They claim
to be considered God's right-hand men, and of course duly qualified
preachers of his 'word,' though unable to speak five minutes without
taking the same number of liberties with the Queen's English. Swift was
provoked by the prototypes of these pestiferous people, to declare that,
'formerly, the apostles received the gift of speaking several languages,
a knowledge so remote from our dealers in the art of enthusiasm, that
they neither understand propriety of speech nor phrases of their own,
much less the gift of tongues.'

The millions of Christian people who have been trained up in the way
they should _not_ go, by this active class of fanatics, are naturally
either opposed to reason or impervious to it. Hence, arguing with them
is sheer waste of brains and leisure--a casting of pearls before swine.
They are convinced not only that the wisdom of the world is foolishness
with God, but that wisdom with God is foolishness with the world; nor
will any one affirm their 'moderation' in respect to unbelievers one
tittle more moderate than Robert Hall's; or that they are one tittle
less disposed than 'that good and great man,' to think those who bring
heretics to the stake at Geneva or elsewhere, 'do well approve
themselves to God's Church.' Educated, that is to say, _duped_ as they
are, they cannot but think unbelief highly criminal, and when
practicable, or convenient, deal with it as such. Atheists would, be
'astonished with a great astonishment' if they did not. Their crafty
teachers adjure them to do so 'on peril of their souls;' and if, as Mr.
Jay, of Bath, said in one of his best sermons, 'the readiest way in the
world to thin heaven, and replenish the regions of hell, is to call in
the spirit of bigotry,' the Author of this Apology would not for all the
treasures of India stand in the shoes of these men, whose whole time and
energies are employed in generating and perpetuating that detestable
spirit. But when your Rylands, and Balguys and Beat