each in its turn persecuting the other. The student may see in the pages of Gibbon the disgraceful and often bloody hostilities of contending sects; and he will much more easily comprehend the guilt of the rival disputants than the subjects of their unchristian animosity.

I do not detain you with any allusions to particular passages in Gibbon, in Mosheim, or in any other ecclesiastic historian. You will read them yourselves; and this is one of the many occasions that will occur in the delivery of these lectures, where I am obliged to dispatch in a single sentence a mass of reading that may afterwards very properly occupy you for many days and weeks. It is sufficient for me, at present, that I may safely assume the general fact, that the specimens of the natural intolerance of the human mind to be found in such writers, are perfectly innumerable.

We have hitherto spoken, first, of the intolerance of the Jews to the early Christians; afterwards of the pagans to the followers of Christ; lastly, of the Christians to each other. But as we descend through the history of Europe, we shall next have to observe how lamentable and totally unrelenting has been the persecutions which the Christians have in their turn exercised upon the Jews. To speak literally and without a figure, this unhappy race seems not to have been considered by our ancestors as within the pale of humanity; and our great poet, who drew mankind just as he found them, puts into the mouth of Shylock a train of reasoning that proceeds upon this dreadful supposition:-" Has not a Jew eyes? has not a Jew hands," &c. &c. " Fed with the same food, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is?"

As we descend to times a little later, we at length perceive even a regular tribunal created for the avowed purposes of persecution, the tribunal of the Inquisition.

And who, let us ask, was among its earliest approvers? Louis IX. of France, the most generous and just of men.

And here I pause; it cannot be necessary that I should proceed any further.

Calling, therefore, to mind what we have passed through in this brief review, and what we before endeavoured to show, I may now finally observe, that such appears to me, in the

first place, the explanation and the theory of the natural intolerance of every human mind on every subject, and more particularly on religious subjects; and such, in the second place, the leading facts of history to exemplify this last intolerance on religious subjects, prior to the time of the Reformation.

At that epoch, therefore, mankind had very fully exhibited their real nature; and it was very evident, if differences in religious opinions were to arise, how afflicting would be the consequences.

But it must have been clear, in the next place, that such differences must arise; for the spirit of religious inquiry was to be called into action: and upon what was it to be exercised? Upon the Scriptures themselves, and upon the works of the fathers writings composed in what to the inquirers were dead languages.

Now, whenever the human mind exercises its powers with freedom, different men will take different views of the same subject; they will draw different conclusions, even where the materials presented to their judgment are the same. Not only this, but in points of religious doctrine, from the very awfulness of the subject, the mind scarcely presumes to exercise its faculties; and in these disquisitions men have no longer the chance (whatever it may be) which they have on other subjects, of arguing themselves into agreement. Again, the evidence which the reformers had to produce to each other for their respective opinions, was their respective interpretation of one or many different texts of Scripture, of one or many different passages in the writings of the fathers.

Now, of all such evidence it must be observed, that it never, from the very nature of it, could be demonstrative. In mathematical questions, where the relations of quantity are alone concerned, a dispute can be completely terminated; because from wrong premises or false reasoning, a contradiction can be at last shown to result: some impossibility appears; the greater is equal to the less, or the less to the greater.

The same may be said of many parts of the sciences, because a question can here always be asked which admits of a precise answer, and is, at the same time, decisive of the contest-What is the fact ?-what says the experiment?

But when a question is to depend on the interpretation of texts and passages in Scripture, the case is totally altered; for of the different meanings that can be affixed, no one can be shown to be (strictly speaking) impossible. They may be shown to be more or less reasonable, but no more: the scale of evidence here is reasonableness; metaphysically speaking, is probability. Men cannot be proved in these, as in mathematical disquisitions, to be totally right or totally wrong; they cannot be left at once without an argument or without an opponent. A reasoner on such subjects may from inferiority of judgment, or what is called perversity of judgment, or any other cause, adopt that meaning which is the less sound and just of any two that may be proposed to him; but if he does, he can never, by any consequent impossibility, be absolutely compelled to admit the more reasonable opinion of his opponent.

It is very true that this probable evidence is sufficient for men to reason and act upon; but it is not sufficient to preclude the possibility of dispute; and this is all that is here contended for. When the nature of the evidence is this of probability, the varying powers of judgment and the ready passions of mankind have full liberty to interfere; men may be more or less reasonable, as these causes direct. No such interference is possible in discussions that concern matters of experiment and fact, and the relations of quantity.

We have, therefore, no sects or parties in mathematics, but they abound in every other department of human opinion.

We have now, therefore, to present to the consideration of the student two observations; they are these; not only, in the first place, that the human mind was naturally intolerant ; but that, in the second place, the evidence that could be laid before it never, from the nature of it, could be demonstrative; and that, therefore, this intolerance had full opportunity to

act.

But there is yet another observation to be made.

It was not only that disputes could not be necessarily terminated even when exercised upon the great and proper topics of debate, but it was clear, both from the nature of the human mind and from the testimony of history, that men, when

awakened to the consideration of religious subjects, would assuredly engage in the most subtle metaphysical inquiries, and, by their vain efforts to know and to teach more than the Scriptures had taught them (or than, it may be presumed, the Almighty Creator intended their faculties to comprehend), would involve themselves and their followers in disputes, which it would be more than ever impossible to set at rest by reasoning, and which, on that very account, would be only the more calculated to exasperate their passions.

In addition to these considerations, there is another; we must reflect on the situation of the world at this particular epoch.

Europe had no doubt improved during several of the preceding centuries, and was even rapidly improving at the time. But it must still be noted, that literature had made as yet little progress, science still less; men had not been softened by the fine arts, and the peaceful pleasures which they afford; they had not been humanized by much intercourse with each other; martial prowess was their virtue; superstitious observances their religion. In this situation, they were on a sudden to have their passions roused, and their intellectual talents exercised upon subjects which require to their adjustment all the virtues and all the improvement of which the human character is capable.

On these accounts the prospect for mankind on the opening of the Reformation was very awful; it was evident much. misery must result from the natural intolerance of the mind, from the materials, with which that intolerance was now to be supplied, and from the general ignorance and rudeness of society.

But there was yet another consideration to be taken into

account.

We have hitherto endeavoured to estimate the evils to which the breaking out of the Reformation would give occasion, by stating its more natural and appropriate effects upon the human mind; but the religious principle which was thus to be awakened was sure to intermingle itself in all earthly concerns; it was sure to give names to parties, to multiply afresh the causes of irritation and offence, and to add new restlessness and motion to the politics of the world.

Again, there was even an inherent and inevitable difficulty in the subject, by whatever unexpected influence of moderation and reason mankind had chosen to be controlled. The Roman hierarchy were the spiritual instructors of the people, and as such had ecclesiastical revenues.

evident, that if there arose a set of men who disputed the doctrines of that hierarchy, these last would no longer think it reasonable that such revenues should be so applied; they would represent them as devoted only to the unrighteous purposes of superstition and error; they would insist upon at least a share, if not the whole, for the support of themselves, while engaged in the propagation of truth and genuine Christianity. The established teachers would, therefore, be disturbed in their possessions, deprived of their benefices, some perhaps thrown naked and defenceless into the world at advanced periods of age and infirmity. Such mutations of property, it was but too clear, could neither be attempted nor executed without violence: and violence, so exercised, could not but be attended by the most furious animosities, disturbance, and calamity.

Again, when these revenues had been converted to the support of the first reformed preachers, these were likely to be in their turn opposed by new and succeeding descriptions of religious inquirers; the same reasoning would, therefore, again be urged, the same struggle be repeated, the same force be employed. On the whole, therefore, statesmen, and princes, and warriors were sure from the first, to be engaged in all these disputes, and to kindle in the general flame; and the controversies of religion were sure to be decided, like the ordinary contests of mankind, by the sword-by the sword, indeed, but amid a conflict of passions rendered more than ever blind and sanguinary from the materials which were now added of more than human obstinacy, intrepidity, and rancour.

Such were the evils that were to be expected at the breaking out of the Reformation, from the intolerance of men, from the nature of the evidence that could be produced to them in their new subjects of dispute, from the particular metaphysical turn which these disputes would probably take, from the unimproved state of society in Europe, from the