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248 enjoined, by what is acknowledged to be their highest authority, a general council, so called, with the pope at the head of it; and is practised in all of them, I think, without exception, where it can be done safely. Thus they go on to substitute force instead of argument; and external profession made by force instead of reasonable conviction. And thus corruptions of the grossest sort have been in vogue for many generations, in many parts of Christendom, and are so still, even where popery obtains in its least absurd form; and their antiquity and wide extent are insisted upon as proofs of their truth;—a kind of proof which, at best, can be only presumptive, but which loses all its little weight, in proportion as the long and large prevalence of such corruptions has been obtained by force.

Indeed, it is said in the book of Job, that the worship of "the sun and moon was an iniquity to be punished by the judge," Job xxxi. 26—28. And this, though it is not so much as a precept, much less a general one, is, I think, the only passage of Scripture which can, with any colour, be alleged in favour of persecution of any sort; for what the Jews did, and what they were commanded to do, under their theocracy, are both quite out of the case. But, whenever that book was written, the scene of it is laid at a time when idolatry was in its infancy, an acknowledged novelty, essentially destructive of true religion, arising, perhaps, from mere wantonness of imagination. In these circumstances, this greatest of evils, which afterwards laid waste true religion over the face of the earth, might have been suppressed at once, without danger of mistake or abuse. And one might go on to add, that if those to whom the care of this belonged, instead of serving themselves of prevailing superstitions, had in all ages and countries opposed them in their rise, and adhered faithfully to that primitive religion, which was received "of old, since man was placed upon earth," Job xx. 4, there could not possibly have been any such difference of