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Rh  their blunders. It is not believed in France that the Pope is infallible, even with the assistance of his cardinals ; we might just as well admit that  eight judges of Toulouse are not. All other people, more reasonable and disinterested, said that the  Toulouse verdict would be reversed all over Europe,  even if special considerations prevented it from  being reversed by the Council.

Such was the position of this astonishing adventure when it moved certain impartial and reasonable persons to submit to the public a few reflections on the subject of toleration, indulgence, and pity, which  the Abbé Houteville calls "a monstrous dogma," in  his garbled version of the facts, and which reason  calls an "appanage of nature."

Either the judges of Toulouse, swept away by the fanaticism of the people, have broken on the wheel an innocent man, which is unprecedented; or the  father and his wife strangled their elder son, with  the assistance of another son and a friend, which  is unnatural. In either case the abuse of religion has led to a great crime. It is, therefore, of interest to the race to inquire whether religion ought to be  charitable or barbaric.

 

If the white penitents were the cause of the execution of an innocent man, the utter ruin of a family, and the dispersal and humiliation that attach 