Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/100

 in Power. A vigorous and effectual Attack was made on the Advocates for Despotism. But in their Zeal against Tyranny, these Writers supplanted Freedom.

They assailed Superstition with such Weapons as destroyed Religion: They opposed Intolerance by Arguments and Ridicule which tended to sweep away all public Establishments: While they only aimed (perhaps) to contend for Freedom of Thought, they unwarily sapped the Foundation of all salutary Principles.

's Letters, and the Independent Whig, among many other Tracts of less Note, seem palpable Instances of this Truth: The one was written in Defence of civil, the other, of religious Liberty. Yet both tended, in their general Tour, to relax those Principles by which alone Freedom, either civil or religious, can be sustained: By their intemperate Insults on religious Institutions; by their public