it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man.
It may fix him obftinately in his errors, but will not cure them.
Reafon and free inquiry are the only eifeftual agents againft error. Give a loofe to them, they will fupport the true rehgion, by bringing every falfe one to their tribunal, to the teft of their inveftigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only.
- Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Chriftianity could never have been introduced.
- Had not free inquiry been indulged at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Chriftianity could not have been purged away.
If it be reftrained now, the prefent corruptions will be protected and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prefcribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once for- bidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food.
Government is juft as infallible too when it fixes fyftems in phy- fics. GaUleo was fent to the Inquifitioii for affirming that the earth was a fphere:
el gobierno había declarado que era tan plano como una artesesa, y Galileo se vio obligado a abjurar de su error. Este error, sin embargo, a la postre prevaleció, la tierra se convirtió en un globo y Descartes declaró que era devuelta en torno a su eje por un vórtice. El gobierno en el que vivía fue lo suficientemente sabio como para ver que esto no era cuestión de jurisdicción civil, o todos nos habríamos visto envueltos por la autoridad en vórtices. De hecho, los vórtices han sido defenestrados, y el