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 fuch keeping as our fouls 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:
the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Defcartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex. The government in which he lived was wife enough to fee that this was no queftion of civil jurifdiftion, or we fhould all S s have been involved by authority in vor- tices. In fadl, the vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly eftablifhed, on the bafis of reafon, than it would be were the government to ftep in, and to make it an article of neceflary faith. Reafon and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the fupport of government. Truth can fland by itfelf. Subjeft opinion to coercion : whom will you make your inquifitors? Fallible men; men go- verned by bad paffions, by private as well as public reafons. And why fubjeft it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion defirable? No more than of face and ftature. Introduce the bed of Procruftes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the fmall, make us all of a fize, by lopping the former and ftretching the latter. Dif- ference of opinion is advantageous in reli- crion. The feveral fedls perform the office of a cenfor moritm over each other. Is uni- formity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, fince the intro- dudlion of Chriftianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprifoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards