Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/147

Rh ion is divine, that the gates of hell will never prevail against it, that the whole world will one day embrace your opinion, that the world will be subject to you, and that you will rule from Mount Atlas to the islands of Japan. How, then, can my opinion hurt you? You do not fear me, and you persecute me! You despise me, and do away with me!

What reply can we make, my brethren, to these modest and forceful reproaches? Only the reply of the wolf to the lamb, "You have disturbed the water that I drink." Thus have men treated each other—the gospel in one hand and sword in the other; preaching disinterestedness and accumulating treasures, praising humility and walking on the heads of prostrate princes, recommending mercy and shedding human blood.

If these barbarians find in the gospel any parable that may be distorted in their favour by fraudulent interpretation, they fasten upon it as an anvil on which they may forge their murderous weapons.

Is there a word about two swords hung above a wall? They arm themselves at once with a hundred swords. It is said that a king has killed his fatted beasts, compelled the blind and the lame to come to his feast, and cast into outer darkness him who had no wedding garment; is that, my brethren, a reason that justifies them in putting you in prison like this guest, tearing your limbs asunder on the rack, plucking out your eyes to make you blind like those who were dragged to the feast, or slaying you as the king slew his fatted beasts? Yet it is to such equivocal passages that men have so often