leman, if you suffer them to go on, they
will shake the fundamental principles of Christianity. Let it be
considered, that this argument goes as strongly against connivance,
which you allow, as against toleration, which you reject. The gentleman
sets out with a principle of perfect liberty, or, as he describes it,
connivance. But, for fear of dangerous opinions, you leave it in your
power to vex a man who has not held any one dangerous opinion
whatsoever. If one man is a professed atheist, another man the best
Christian, but dissents from two of the Thirty-Nine Articles, I may let
escape the atheist, because I know him to be an atheist, because I am,
perhaps, so inclined myself, and because I may connive where I think
proper; but the conscientious Dissenter, on account of his attachment to
that general religion which perhaps I hate, I shall take care to punish,
because I may punish when I think proper. Therefore, connivance being an
engine of private malice or private favor, not of good government,--an
engine which totally fails of suppressing atheism, but oppresses
conscience,--I say that principle becomes, not serviceable, but
dangerous to Christianity; that it is not toleration, but contrary to
it, even contrary to peace; that the penal system to which it belongs is
a dangerous principle in the economy either of religion or government.
The honorable gentleman (and in him I comprehend all those who oppose
the bill) bestowed in support of their side of the question as much
argument as it could bear, and much more of learning and decoration than
it deserved. He thinks connivance consistent, but legal toleration
inconsistent, with the interests of Christianity. Perhaps I would go as
far as that honorable gentleman, if I thought toleration inconsistent
with those interests. God forbid! I may be mistaken, but I take
toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would
sacrifice: I would keep them both: it is not necessary I should
sacrifice either. I do not like the idea of tolerating the doctrines of
Epicurus: but nothing in the world propagates them so much as the
oppression of the poor, of the honest and candid disciples of the
religion we profess in common,--I mean revealed religion; nothing sooner
makes them take a short cut out of the bondage of sectarian vexation
into open and direct infidelity than tormenting men for every
difference. My opinion is, that, in establishing the Christian religion
wherever y