gy. This was the well-known character of these two great
counsellors; yet such is the prevalence of temper above system, that
the benevolent disposition of Pole led him to advise a toleration of
the heretical tenets which he highly blamed; while the severe manners of
Gardiner inclined him to support by persecution that religion which, at
the bottom, he regarded with great indifference.[*] This circumstance of
public conduct was of the highest importance; and from being the object
of deliberation in the council, it soon became the subject of discourse
throughout the nation. We shall relate, in a few words, the topics by
which each side supported, or might have supported, their scheme of
policy; and shall display the opposite reasons which have been employed,
with regard to an argument that ever has been, and ever will be, so much
canvassed.

* Heylin, p. 47.

The practice of persecution, said the defenders of Pole's opinion, is
the scandal of all religion; and the theological animosity, so fierce
and violent, far from being an argument of men's conviction in their
opposite sects, is a certain proof that they have never reached any
serious persuasion with regard to these remote and sublime subjects.
Even those who are the most impatient of contradiction in other
controversies, are mild and moderate in comparison of polemical divines;
and wherever a man's knowledge and experience give him a perfect
assurance in his own opinion, he regards with contempt, rather than
anger, the opposition and mistakes of others. But while men zealously
maintain what they neither clearly comprehend nor entirely believe, they
are shaken in their imagined faith by the opposite persuasion, or even
doubts, of other men; and vent on their antagonists that impatience
which is the natural result of so disagreeable a state of the
understanding. They then easily embrace any pretense for representing
opponents as impious and profane; and if they can also find a color for
connecting this violence with the interests of civil government, they
can no longer be restrained from giving uncontrolled scope to vengeance
and resentment. But surely never enterprise was more unfortunate than
that of founding persecution upon policy, or endeavoring, for the sake
of peace, to settle an entire uniformity of opinion in questions which,
of all others, are least subjected to the criterion of human reason.
The universal and uncontradicted prevalence of one opinion i