chuse to refer these and many more calamities, which stream forth from this bitter fountain, to your own reflection, which may easily enlarge on the melancholy subject.

Now when so much must be sacrificed to public orthodoxy and uniformity, who can wonder if such a degree of oppression make a wise man mad, and force multitudes into desperate measures, most destructive to the community? Who can wonder if an injured and persecuted people rise up, I will not say in rebellion, for it deserves not that infamous name, but in a just and generous vindication of their liberties; and even when the event is most hazardous, chuse rather to die warm with their swords in their hands, than to perish perhaps by the artificial cruelties of a lingering execution, or to starve in the darkness and solitude of a dungeon?

How many wars, and how great confusions have by this means arisen in Great Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, the Low Countries, and various other places, even since the opening of the reformation; it is not for a few moments, or indeed a few hours, to recount. But I take it for granted, that few of you are entirely unacquainted with these things, which make up one of the most instructive, though at the same time, the most melancholy parts of history. As the consequence of all, it has generally been found both at home and abroad, that ecclesiastical and civil tyranny has been either established or expelled together; and that wherever this dragon has kept its seat, it has devoured the glory of the land around it, and heaped infamy and misery on its inhabitants. It has marked its way by desolations; so that one may well apply to the bands of persecutors, what Joel says of the armies of locusts and caterpillars, when the country is Like the garden of Eden before them, it is behind them a desolate wilderness*. And surely were not the remainder of their wrath to be restrained, religion and truth would be buried in the ruins. Which leads me to add,

5. The christian religion, which we here suppose to be the cause of truth, must, humanly speaking, be not only obstructed but destroyed, should persecuting principles universally prevail.

Let us for argument's sake suppose, what I am sure we have no reason to believe, that in some particular countries it might be a means of promoting and establishing the purity of the gospel, yet it must surely be a great impediment to its progress. What wise prince, who was a heathen or a mahometan, would ever admit christian preachers, if he knew that it was a principle of

* Joel ii. 3.

their religion, that as soon as the majority of the people were converted by arguments, the rest, and himself amongst them, if he continued obstinate, must be proselyted or extirpated by fire and sword? Surely if this were known to be the case, the secular power would at once seize on such missionaries as public enemies, and condemn the whole sect on this single tenet, whatever their other doctrines or precepts might be.

Nay farther, if it be, as the advocates for persecution generally suppose, a dictate of the law of nature, that the true religion is to be propagated by the sword, then it is certain that a mahometan or an idolater with the same notion, supposing himself to have truth on his side, as no doubt many of them do suppose, and also admitting the principle we contest, must think himself obliged in conscience, if he have an opportunity to do it, to arm his powers for the extirpation of christianity. Thus a holy war must commence over the face of the whole earth, in which nothing but a miracle could render christians successful against so vast a disproportion in numbers. Now I think it hard to believe that to be a truth, which would naturally lead to the extirpation of truth in the world; or that a divine religion should carry in its bowels the principle of its own destruction.

If these reasonings be admitted, then persecution will by the light of nature appear so absurd, so unjust, and so mischievous a thing, that it ought to be rejected with abhorrence; unless it should be warranted and required by a divine revelation, which had such degrees of evidence as should be sufficient to overbalance that strong objection against it, which would arise from the consideration we have now been urging. But on this head we need have no apprehension, for I am to shew you,

6. That persecution is so far from being required, or encouraged by the gospel, that it is most directly contrary to many of its precepts, and indeed to the whole genius of it.

A mahometan may perhaps prove from his Alcoran, that the true faith is to be propagated by the sword, and that heretics and unbelievers are to be cut off or made tributary; but if a christian plead in favour of persecution, while he has his New Testament in his hand, in an intelligible language, he must be condemned out of his own mouth. It is condemned by the example of Christ, Who went about doing good †, who came not to destroy men's lives but to save them: who waved the exercise of his miraculous power against his enemies, not only in this instance in the text, but even when they most unjustly and

* Alcoran, Cap. 2, 4, 5, ad pass.

† Acts x. 38.

cruelly assaulted him*; and never exerted it in one single in. stance that we read of, to inflict death or any corporal punishment even on those who had almost justly deserved it: his doctrine also as well as his example has taught us, to be harmless as doves, to Love our enemies, to do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute ust. And will a maxim like that allow us to persecute others? When Peter desired leave to smite with the sword, though drawn in so just a cause, Christ commanded him to Put it up in its sheath again; and he declared before Pilate, that His kingdom was not of this world §; which he expressly mentions as a reason why he did not arm secular power to plant or to defend it.

As for the apostles they declared, agreeably to the example and precepts of their master, that the power they had received was For edification and not for destruction, that The weapons of their warfare were not carnal¶, And that the servant of the Lord, the christian minister, was not to strive, but in meekness to instruct those who opposed themselves **. They inculcated it as of the highest importance, that religion must be a Reasonable service++, and that Bodily exercise, which is the utmost persecution can extort, profited but little ‡‡, and was a thing of a most different nature from true godliness. That the strong ought to bear with the infirmities of the weak §§. And in a word, that christians must in the whole of their conversation be Harmless, as well as holy and undefiled, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, shining amongst them, by these amiable examples, as lights in the world, and so hold forth the word of life.

You well know, that these passages are but a little specimen of those which might be produced on such an occasion. Most prudently therefore do the popish clergy wrest the New Testament out of the hands of their people, before they venture to arm them with a sword, to destroy others for their religious opinions.

These are the principal arguments against persecution which have occurred to my mind. You easily see they are chiefly pointed at high severities; but if you consider them attentively, you will find that they proportionably conclude against

every degree of it, not excepting the lightest pecuniary fines, or civil incapacities. I am,

III. To touch on the chief arguments which are urged in defence of penal laws enacted for the pretended security and advancement of religion.

Persecution is so harsh and so infamous a word, that few will defend it. Bat under this milder name they maintain the thing, by pleading the glory of God and the good of mankind, (sacred prostituted names) the penal laws of the Jewish constitution, and a few tortured passages of the New Testament; which one would think mentioned to expose the cause, rather than seriously to serve it.

1. The glory of God is generally pleaded as an apology for persecution.

The time is come, when those that slay his servants are supposing they offer him an acceptable service. "God, say they, is the God of truth; and therefore the cause of truth is his cause; and the magistrate, who is in his sphere the Minister of God, is to be a Nursing Father + to his church, and to point the sword he has received from him against those impious persons, who will no otherwise be restrained from perverting the right ways of the Lord."

Now it is most evident, this is taking for granted the innocence and morality of the thing in the general, as well as the infallibility of the magistrate, or of the priest, whose executioner he must be. But if, as we have endeavoured to prove above, persecution in general is contrary to the light of nature and to the christian revelation, it must be great impiety to pretend to consecrate it to the divine glory. And a man might on the same principle lie and plunder, or even murder his neighbour, could he but persuade himself that God would be honoured, as the truth might be promoted by it, and take it for granted that the goodness of the end must sanctify the badness of the means. Paul evidently determines the matter otherwise, when he introduces a man as excusing his own lie, by its tendency to promote the truth of God; and overrules that plea by observing, that if it were allowed, we might Do evil that good may come. Which he accounted so abominable a maxim, that he says that the damnation of such is just‡.

Yet, after all, if the preceding arguments were to be waved, and we were to begin our enquiry with examining what would be most for the glory of God, and the advancement of truth, I

Rom. xiii. 4.

Isa. xlix. 23.

Rom. iii. 8.

am fully persuaded, that persecution, instead of being established, must, on this foundation, be exploded, and condemned. For, not to repeat what I said above, of the improbability of fixing any rational conviction by this means; it is plainly a dishonour to truth, and therefore to God, to suppose, that it needs the supports of secular terrors, and that its enemies must be suppressed by violence. We then Sanctify the Lord our God in our hearts, when we are ready to give an answer to those that enquire into the foundations of our religion, and our hope, with meekness and fear*; and when we use those methods with others, which are likely most effectually to engage them to render him a rational service. But when we drag men to his altars, as unwilling victims, and attempt to bind them otherwise than With the cords of a man, and the bonds of love +, he may surely reject our forward and officious zeal, as an affront; and say, Who has required these things at your hands? The same answer will, in a great measure, serve for the second plea in favour of persecution: which is,

2. That it may tend to promote the happiness of mankind. If we will believe those, who have sometimes a crocodile's tear to shed over those whom they are devouring, all the severity they use to men's bodies, is in mere mercy to their souls. But it is hard to say, how this can be an argument for putting them to death, in what they call a damnable error; as an illnatured man may call any error, and an inquisitor must, of course, call that which he makes capital. I know they will answer, it is for the good of others, that they may be deterred from the like pestilent heresy. But I endeavoured to shew before, that such a course was much more likely to prejudice and to exasperate, and to debauch men's minds, than to recover or secure them. And here their most plausible answer is, that though it should be granted, that the first converts of violence are insincere, yet at least succeeding generations, being educated in the bosom of the church, and the forms of the true religion, may cordially imbibe it, even to their everlasting salvation. A rich equivalent, as some may think, for the present inconveniences to others! But I see not that we can be obliged to introduce so much confusion and misery in our own days, out of regard to posterity, any more than to burn up the produce of our own fields and plantations, that the ashes may meliorate the soil, and render it more fruitful to those that come after us.

* 1 Peter iii. 15.

t.Hos. xi. 4.

Isa. i, 12.