a man thinks to please God by parting with But this does not affect the

his property. civil government, nor make the magistrate lefs able to do juftice, or to fecure his fubjects in the enjoyment of their civil interests. When indeed the magiftrate refufes to tolerate any who diffents from the established religion, oppreffion that inftant begins: but as the caufe of all difturbance is removed when oppreffion is removed, innovations in religion, where there has been no perfecu ion, nor any attempts to enslave the fubjects minds, can never affect the ftate, or caufe any disturbances. When any ftate affumes a power over the confciences of its fubjects, they are forced into a state of war with their civil government; and they continue fo long in that fate, as they are injured in a property over which the civil government never had any power. In this cafe the peace of the fociety is broke but then 'tis not broke by those who reform from any public error, but by the magistrate, who affumes a power which never was committed to him. Nor are these evils, thefe difturbances, feuds, or animofities, chargeable on innovations in religion, but on tyranny, and ufurpation, on unjust pretenfions to power, and arbitrary dominion over the minds of men.

At

At moft therefore, innovations in religion, are but the occafions, not the caufes, of difturbances to the state; and a man can with no more juftice impute to them, as to the caufe, the breach of public peace, than he can impute to christianity all that hatred and variance that has abounded in the chriftian world. Suppofe a man should warn any one against the doctrines of the gospel, because they have unhappily occafioned much hatred, much dispute, and many abominable practices, which otherwife would not perhaps have been heard of. Would fuch advice be good and fit? Or ought any man, notwithstanding. thefe accidental inconveniencies, to refufe hisfubmiffion to it purely on those accounts?

There is not a greater, nor a more common impofition on mankind, than to affign a wrong cause of any event, and to argue from thence as if it were the true one. Macenas, I beg your lordship to remember that Mecenas was an heathen, imputed to innovations in religion the great disturbances of ftate; whereas the cause of diforders in the public was fomething very different; either the perfecutions which men had undergone, which upon occafion given they refolved to retaliate; or elfe fome selfish intereft which the pretence of religion ferved to cover. Macinas confounded

therefore,

therefore, either artfully, or ignorantly enough, the cause with the accidental occafion of diforder; which is, as if any one nowa days, should lay the hatred of nearest friends upon christianity itfelf; or charge enmity, malice and revenge upon that very gospel that defigned to root thofe evils out. His advice therefore is wrong in every view; 'tis founded upon a very falfe principle; it naturally tends to prevent the propagation not only of truth in general, but of chriftianity in particular, It will justify all the perfecutions for religion which have been in the world; and after all,. it fuppofes innovations in religion to be the caufes of evils, of which they are not the causes. Your lordship will judge if fuch advice is fit to be either given, or taken, or recommended.

A fecond point your lordship argues for is this, that because fevere laws were made against idolatry and blafphemy, words which had then one clear and determinate fignification in the Jewish dispensation, therefore the laws of any particular country may punish as idolaters or blafphemers, men who according to the different notions that prevail in different countries, may on different and perhaps contrary accounts be called by these

names.

For

For this your lordship thus argues If the "Lord Jefus be a creature and you worship "him, 'tis idolatry: if he be God and you "deny him, 'tis blafphemy: and what punishment Almighty God ordained for both thefe forts of offenders you know,' p. 159.

The punishment in the Mofaic law for idolatry was honing to death, and the fame was inflicted for blafphemy, v. Lev. xxiv. 10-23

and Deut. xiii. 1-10.

Upon this your lordship proceeds, and afks this question; "What texts have you to quote for an exemption from those penalties, or * at leaft fuch as the laws of the land inflict.'

I answer, all the fame texts which any religious and good man has to quote for an exemption from the penalties to be inflicted on the greatest of criminals. The blafphemy against which the penalty of death was denounced in the law of Mojes, was a prefumptuous, irreligious, contemptuous reproaching or reviling of God. The idolatry against which the like punishment was denounced in the fame law, was, the departing from the worship of the known true God to the wor-fhip of the heathen idols or fictitious deities. Does your lordship now think, that because

under

under the Jewish theocracy, God Almighty thought fit, by an exprefs and particular command, to punish in fuch a manner these crimes, about the nature of which there was no room for difpute, and into the commiffion of which no Jew could poffibly fall by a mere error of the understanding, that therefore the civil government in other nations, (affixing these names according to their own particular notions in difputable queftions upon perfons and things which have no fimilitude to those mentioned in the law of Mofes,) may juftly inflict by their own authority the like penalties with those commanded in the law of Mofes? One man thinks Jefus Chrift to be himself the One Supreme God; and worships him as fuch another thinks Jesus Christ not to be himself the One Supreme God, but the One Mediator between God and man, and worfhips him as fuch a Mediator to the glory of the One Supreme God and Father of all. Does your lordship now fincerely think, that by virtue of the law of Mofes against blafphemers and idolaters, one of these men has a right to put the other to death for worshipping Christ only as a mediator; and that the other has a right to put this first man to death for worshipping Chrift as the One Supreme God? Each of them thinks he has an equal

right