صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

truth; you confess your thod to no purpose. To conclude, your system is, in short, this: You would have all men, laying aside prejudice, humour, passion, &c. examine the grounds of their religion, and search for the truth. This, I confess, is heartily to be wished. The means that you propose to make men do this, is that dissenters should be punished to make them do so. It is as if you had said, Men generally are guilty of a fault; therefore let one sect, who have the ill luck to be of an opinion different from the magistrate, be punished. This at first sight shocks any who has the least spark of sense, reason, or justice. But having spoken of this already, and concluding that upon second thoughts you yourself will be ashamed of it, let us consider it put so as to be consistent with common sense, and with all the advantage it can bear; and then let us see what you can make of it: "Men are negligent in examining the religions they embrace, refuse, or persist in; therefore it is fit they should be punished to make them do it." This is a consequence, indeed, which may, without defiance to common sense, be drawn from it. This is the use, the only use, which you think punishment can indirectly, and at a distance, have, in matters of religion. You would have men by punishments driven to examine. What? Religion. To what end? To bring them to the knowledge of the truth. But I answer,

rule to be false, and your me

1. Every one has not the ability to do this.

2. Every one has not the opportunity to do it.

Would you have every poor protestant, for example, in the Palatinate, examine thoroughly whether the pope be infallible, or head of the church; whether there be a purgatory; whether saints are to be prayed to, or the dead prayed for; whether the Scripture be the only rule of faith; whether there be no salvation out of the church; and whether there be no church without bishops; and an hundred other questions in controversy between the papists and those protestants; and when he had mastered these, go on to fortify himself against the

opinions and objections of other churches he differs from? This, which is no small task, must be done, before a man can have brought his religion to the bar of reason, and given it a fair trial there. And if you will punish men till this be done, the countryman must leave off ploughing and sowing, and betake himself to the study of Greek and Latin; and the artisan must sell his tools, to buy fathers and schoolmen, and leave his family to starve. If something less than this will satisfy you, pray tell me what is enough. Have they considered and examined enough, if they are satisfied themselves where the truth lies? If this be the limits of their examination, you will find few to punish; unless you will punish them to make them do what they have done already: for, however he came by his religion, there is scarce any one to be found who does not own himself satisfied that he is in the right. Or else, must they be punished to make them consider and examine till they embrace that which you choose for truth? If this be so, what do you but in effect choose for them, when yet you would have men punished, "to bring them to such a care of their souls, that no other person might choose for them ?" If it be truth in general, you would have them by punishments driven to seek; that is to offer matter of dispute, and not a rule of discipline; for to punish any one to make him seek till he find truth, without a judge of truth, is to punish for you know not what; and is all one as if you should whip a scholar to make him find out the square root of a number you do not know. I wonder not therefore that you could not resolve with yourself what degree of severity you would have used, nor how long continued; when you dare not speak out directly whom you would have punished, and are far from being clear to what end they should be under penalties.

Consonant to this uncertainty, of whom, or what to be punished, you tell us, "that there is no question of the success of this method. Force will certainly do, if duly proportioned to the design of it."

What, I pray, is the design of it? I challenge you, or any man living, out of what you have said in your

book, to tell me directly what it is. In all other punishments that ever I heard of yet, till now that you have taught the world a new method, the design of them has been to cure the crime they are denounced against, and so I think it ought to be here. What I beseech you is the crime here? Dissenting? That you say not any where is a fault. Besides you tell us, "that the magistrate hath not authority to compel any one to his religion:" and that you do "not require that men should have no rule but the religion of the country." And the power you ascribe to the magistrate is given him to bring men, "not to his own, but to the true religion." If dissenting be not the fault, is it that a man does not examine his own religion, and the grounds of it? Is that the crime your punishments are designed to cure? Neither that dare you say; lest you displease more than you satisfy with your new discipline. And then again, as I said before, you must tell us how far you would have them examine, before you punish them for not doing it. And I imagine, if that were all we required of you, it would be long enough before you would trouble us with a law that should prescribe to every one how far he was to examine matters of religion; wherein if he failed and came short, he was to be punished; if he performed, and went in his examination to the bounds set by the law, he was acquitted and free. Sir, when you consider it again, you will perhaps think this a case reserved to the great day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open; for I imagine it is beyond the power or judgment of man, in that variety of circumstances, in respect of parts, tempers, opportunities, helps, &c. men are in, in this world, to determine what is every one's duty in this great business of search, inquiry, examination; or to know when any one has done it. That which makes me believe you will be of this mind is, that where you undertake for the success of this method, if rightly used, it is with a limitation, upon such as are not altogether incurable. So that when your remedy is. prepared, according to art, which art is yet unknown;

and rightly applied, and given in a due dose, all which are secrets; it will then infallibly cure. Whom? All that are not incurable by it. And so will a pippin posset, eating fish in Lent, or a presbyterian lecture, certainly cure all that are not incurable by them; for I am sure you do not mean it will cure all, but those who are absolutely incurable; because your yourself allow one means left of cure, when yours will not do, viz. the grace of God. Your words are, "what means is there left (except the grace of God) to reduce them, but lay thorns and briars in their way." And here also, in the place we were considering, you tell us, "the incurable are to be left to God." Whereby, if you mean they are to be left to those means he has ordained for men's conversion and salvation, yours must never be made use of: for he indeed has prescribed preaching and hearing of his word; but as for those who will not hear, I do not find any where that he has commanded they should be compelled or beaten to it.

There is a third thing that you are as tender and reserved in, as either naming the criminals to be punished, or positively telling us the end for which they should be punished: and that is with what sort of penalties, what degree of punishment, they should be forced. You are indeed so gracious to them, that you renounce the severities and penalties hitherto made use of. You tell us, they should be but moderate penalties. But if we ask you what are moderate penalties, you confess you cannot tell us. So that by moderate here you yet mean nothing. You tell us, "the outward force to be applied should be duly tempered." But what that due temper is, you do not or cannot say; and so in effect it signifies just nothing. Yet if in this you are not plain and direct, all the rest of your design will signify nothing; for it being to have some men, and to some end, punished; yet if it cannot be found what punishment is to be used, it is, notwithstanding all you have said, utterly useless. You tell us modestly, that "to determine precisely the just measure of the punishment will require some consideration." If the faults were pre

cisely determined, and could be proved, it would require no more consideration to determine the measure of the punishment, in this, than it would in any other case, where those were known. But where the fault is undefined, and the guilt not to be proved, as I suppose it will be found in this present business of examining; it will without doubt require consideration to proportion the force to the design. Just so much consideration as it will require to fit a coat to the moon, or proportion a shoe to the feet of those who inhabit her; for to proportion a punishment to a fault that you do not name, and so we in charity ought to think you do not yet know; and a fault that when you have named it, will be impossible to be proved who are or are not guilty of it; will I suppose require as much consideration, as to fit a shoe to feet whose size and shape are not known.

However, you offer some measures whereby to regulate your punishments; which, when they are looked into, will be found to be just as good as none; they being impossible to be any rule in the case. The first is "so much force, or such penalties as are ordinarily sufficient to prevail with men of common discretion, and not desperately perverse and obstinate, to weigh matters of religion carefully and impartially, and without which ordinarily they will not do this." Where it is to be observed:

1. That who are these men of common discretion is as hard to know, as to know what is a fit degree of punishment in the case; and so you do but regulate one uncertainty by another. Some men will be apt to think, that he who will not weigh matters of religion, which are of infinite concernment to him, without punishment, cannot in reason be thought a man of common discretion. Many women, of common discretion enough to manage the ordinary affairs of their families, are not able to read a page in an ordinary author, or to understand and give an account what it means, when read to them. Many men, of common discretion in their callings, are not able to judge when an argument is conclusive or no; much less to trace it through

« السابقةمتابعة »