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    iiQt , permit us to concur in their opinion . , All disabilities whatever , that a member of the community lies under , as such , by reason of his religious faith , ate of the essence of persecution * The authority which enacts them , is

    no other than the authority which , once , upon our own shores , and even yet in some foreign lands , has consigned and consigns reputed heretics to the dungeon and the stake . It is civil authority , stepping far beyond its

    proper sphere , violating the eternal laws of equity , and doing infinite wrong to the interests both of religion and of civil government . We live , it is true , in an advanced period of the world : we are inhabitants of a

    country pre-eminent in the general and practical liberty which its sons enjoy . Yet the fine gold of Freedom is still alloyed : dark spots are found in the almost noon-day beams of our prosperity . Coercive and penal statutes in the concerns of religion disgrace our code of laws , and occasionally are car-Tied into execution . This is not all .

    Even what public men denominate toleration , and consider as a mighty boon granted by the State , ought to be better understood and better practised * A right or , as some call it , a favour , should not wear the aspect of injury and insult . What , although Dissenters , both Catholic and

    Protestant , severally assemble for worship , without fear and molestation ? What , although for thus assembling no magistrate drags them to the bar of criininal justice , but protects them in the

    act ? Will you maintain that even toleration is complete , when for this very worship we are pronounced ineligible to offices and honours , from which neither the occasional nor the

    habitual conformist is excluded , and which only they forego who obey the dictates of a conscience at least sincere and tender , and , as we believe , enlightened ? Do we then repine at the sacrifice and the privation ? Unquestionably not : religious

    consistency , Christian honesty , peace of mind , the hope of the Divine favour , the esteem of wise and good men , would be cheaply purchased by more extensive privations and by costlier sacrifices . What we insist upon is , that a sacrifice and a privation there are : and we add , that the award of them

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    cannot be ckfead ^ d > if Persecution i 8 indefensible . r ^ - To speak of religion * toleration , and of political toleration , is , on this subject , to frame a distinction without a difference . Ought religious

    sentiments or practices to create political disabilities ? The feet that they create them , is the matter of our complaint : this fact it is which Mr . Tate with reason stigmatizes as flagrantly unjust .

    Our best writers on toleration , mean by it universal and mutual fortaarance , and equity in the concerns of religion We adopt the terrn ^ with much pleasure in this sense . If , on the contrary , toleration import the mere sufferance or endurance of what we cannot

    approve , i % has something- of usurpation in its aspect , and of mischief ia its tendency . It then becomes precarious and imperfect , on which ground we are now arraigning it : for precarious and imperfect it is , as understood by numbers of mankind , and as exercised

    by the State . Such indeed it cannot fail to be , when it is not equal justice . Are the ineligibilities , of which both the Catholic and the Protestant Nonconformist complains , enacted or continued in return for defects in his civil

    obedience ? . That , vrfc think , will not be pretended : or , if it be , the imputation may easily be repelled . On the other hand , do dissidents lie under this proscription , as the effect of their religious creeds and discipline ? If

    they do , then we say that human authority here interferes most unjustly in cases of religion , and , incurs the guilt of what , however modified , is nothing short of persecution For in what terms shall persecution be defined ? Take the definition in the

    words of a writer who never was too partial to Nonconformists : " persecution , " according to Dr . Samuel Johnson , ' * is the infliction of

    penalties for opinions . " And shall we be told that disabilities are not penalties ? We envy neither the judgment nor the feelings of the man , who will hazard the assertion . It may as well be alleged that they are privileges .

    But we are informed that " the safety , nay the welfare , of the State demands the enactment or , which is the same thing , the continuance , ot such disabilities * wnd a ready submission to them . ' Prove , nevertheless ,

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    684 Review ** - * T < tfe ' s A $ si&e Sermon && Yor / i .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1825, page 684, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2542/page/44/