Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/120

96 the whole earth, who can think that God will examine him on points of theology, not judge him by his deeds?

What is a theological opinion? It is an idea that may be true or false; but morality has no interest in it. It is clear that you should be virtuous, whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father by spiration, or from the Father and the Son. It is not less clear that you will never understand any proposition of this nature. You will never have the least idea how Jesus could have two natures and two wills in one person. If he had wished you to know it, he would have told you of it. I choose these examples among a hundred others, and I pass in silence over other controversies in order that I may not reopen wounds that still bleed.

God has given you understanding; he cannot wish that you should pervert it. How could a proposition of which you can never have an idea be necessary to you? It is a fact of daily experience that God, who gives everything, has given one man more light and more talent than another. It does not offend our good sense that he has chosen to link one man more closely to himself than others; that he has made him a model of reason or virtue. No one can deny that it is possible for God to shower his finest gifts on one of his works. We may, therefore, believe in Jesus as one who taught and practised virtue; but let us take care that in wishing to go too far beyond that, we do not overturn the whole structure.

The superstitious man puts poison in the most