being said over you. Of course then a second murder will be forgiven you at the same easy rate, and so a third; and a hundred murders will only cost you a hundred black sheep, and a hundred ablutions! Poor mortals! away with such conceits; the best way is, commit no murder, and so save your black sheep.

How scandalous is it to imagine that a priest of Isis and Cybele can reconcile you to the deity, by playing on cymbals and castanets! And what is this priest of Cybele, this vagrant gelding, who lives by your weakness, that he shall set up to be as a mediator between heaven and you? Has he any commission from God? He takes money from you only for muttering some strange words; and you can think that the Being of Beings ratifies what this hypocrite says.

Some superstitions are innocent; you dance on Diana or Pomona's festivals, or those of any of the secondary gods in your calendar: be it so; dancing is pleasant, healthy, and exhilarating; it hurts no body; but do not take it into your head that Pomona and Vertumnus are mightily pleased at your having frolicked in honour of them; and that should you fail to do so, they would make you smart for it. The gardener's spade and hoe are the only Pomona and Vertumnus. Don't be so weak as to think that your garden will be destroyed by a tempest, if you omit dancing the pyrrhic or the cordax.

There is another superstition which perhaps is excusable, and even an incentive to virtue; I mean deifying great men who have been signal benefactors to their own species. To be sure it would be better only to look on them as venerable personages, and especially to endeavour to imiᏃ

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tate them: therefore revere, without worshipping, a Solon, a Thales, a Pythagoras; but by no means do not pay thy adorations to Hercules for having cleansed Augeas's stables, and lying with fifty girls in one night.

Especially forbear setting up a worship for wretches without any other merit than ignorance, enthusiasm, and nastiness; who made a vow of idleness and beggary, and gloried in such infamy: fit subjects indeed for deification after their death; who were never known to do the least good when living!

Observe that the most superstitious times have ever been noted for the greatest enormities.

TOLERATION,

WHAT is toleration? It is a privilege to

which human nature is entitled: we are all made up of weakness and errors, it therefore behoves us mutually to forgive another's follies. This is the very first law of nature.

Though the Gueber, the Banian, the Jew, the Mahometan, the lettered Chinese, the Greek, the Roman Catholic, the Quaker, traffic together on the 'Change of Amsterdam, London, Surat, or Bassora; they will never offer to lift up a poniard against each other, to gain proselytes: wherefore then, since the first council of Nice, have we been almost continually cutting each other's throats?

Constantine began with issuing an edict, allowing the exercise of all religions; and some time after turned persecutor. Before him, all the severe treatment of the Christians proceeded purely from their beginning to make a party in the state.

The

The Romans permitted every kind of worship, even of the Jews and Egyptians, both which they so very much despised. How then came Rome to tolerate these forms? It was because neither the Egyptians nor the Jews themselves went about to exterminate the ancient religion of the empire; they did not cross seas and lands to make proselytes; the getting of money was all they minded; whereas it is indisputable, that the Christians could not be easy, unless their religion bore the sway. The Jews were disgusted at the statue of Jupiter being set up in Jerusalem; but the Christians would not so much as allow it to be in the capitol of Rome. St. Thomas candidly owns, that it was only for want of power that the Christians did not dethrone the emperors: they held that all the world ought to embrace their religion; this of course made them enemies to all the world, till its happy conversion,

Their controversial points likewise set them at enmity one against another concerning the divinity of Christ: they who denied it were anathematized as Ebionites; and these anathematized the worshippers of Jesus.

If some would have all goods to be in common, as they alledged was the custom in the Apostles time; their adversaries call them Nicolaitans, and accuse them of the most horrid crimes. If others set up for a mystical devotion, they are branded with the appellation of Gnostics, and opposed with extreme vehemence and seve rity. Marcion, for disputing on the Trinity, got the name of an idolater.

Tertullian, Praxeas, Origen, Novatus, Novatianus, Sabellus, and Donatus, were all persecuted by their brethren before Constantine's time:

and no sooner had Constantine established the Christian religion, than the Athanasians and Eusebians fell foul of one another; and ever since, down to our own times, the Christian church has been deluged with blood.

The Jewish people were, I own, extremely barbarous and merciless; massacring all the inhabitants of a little wretched country, to which it had no more right (1) than their vile descendants have to Paris or London. However, when Naaman is cured of his leprosy by dipping seven times in the river Jordan, and by way of expressing his gratitude to Elijah, from whom he had the secret of that easy cure, he tells him that he will worship the God of the Jews; he yet reserves to himself the liberty to worship his sovereign's God likewise; and asks Elisha's leave, which the prophet readily grants (2). The Jews worshipped their God, but never were offended at, or so much as thought it strange, that every nation had its own Deity. They acquiesced in Chamoth's giving a tract of land to the Moabites,

provided

(') This is a mistake of M. Voltaire. The Israelites treated the Cananites with great severity by the express command of God, who would have these nations extirpated because of their horrid impiety, which soon made them unworthy of the lands they possessed and was the cause of their being given away to the Israelites.

(2) This story of Naaman is not fairly represented. Naaman does not ask Elisha's permission to worship his master's God, but to bow himself down along with his master, who leaned upon his hand; so that it was not a religious, but a civil ceremony, in the discharge of his office. Thus Abraham, Gen. xxiii. 7. bowed himself to the people of the land.

provided they would let them quietly enjoy what they held from their god. Jacob made no difficulty of marrying an idolater's daughter; for Laban had another kind of god than he whom Jacob worshipped. These are instances of toleration among the most haughty, most obstinate, and most cruel people of all antiquity; and we, overlooking what little indulgence was among them, have imitated only their sanguinary ran

cour.

Every individual persecuting another for not being of his opinion, is a monster; this is evident beyond all dispute: but the government! men in power, princes! how are they to deal with those of a different worship from theirs? If foreigners and powerful, it is certain a prince will not disdain entering into an alliance with them. Francis I. though his most Christian majesty, unites with the Musselmen against Charles V. likewise a most Christian monarch. Francis supplies the German Lutherans with money to support their revolt against the emperor; but, according to custom, burns them in his own country: thus, from policy, he pays them in Saxony; and, from policy, makes bonfires of them at Paris. But what was the consequence? Persecution ever makes proselytes. France came to swarm with new Protestants, who at first quietly submitted to be hanged, and afterwards hung others; civil wars came on; and St. Bartholomew's day, or the massacre of Paris, crowned all. Thus this corner of the world became worse than all that ever the ancients or moderns have said of hell.

Ye fools, never to pay a proper worship to the God who made you! wretches, on whom the example

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