The honorable gentleman, speaking of the heathens, certainly could not
mean to recommend anything that is derived from that impure source. But
he has praised the tolerating spirit of the heathens. Well! but the
honorable gentleman will recollect that heathens, that polytheists, must
permit a number of divinities. It is the very essence of its
constitution. But was it ever heard that polytheism tolerated a dissent
from a polytheistic establishment,--the belief of one God only? Never!
never! Sir, they constantly carried on persecution against that
doctrine. I will not give heathens the glory of a doctrine which I
consider the best part of Christianity. The honorable gentleman must
recollect the Roman law, that was clearly against the introduction of
any foreign rites in matters of religion. You have it at large in Livy,
how they persecuted in the first introduction the rites of Bacchus; and
even before Christ, to say nothing of their subsequent persecutions,
they persecuted the Druids and others. Heathenism, therefore, as in
other respects erroneous, was erroneous in point of persecution. I do
not say every heathen who persecuted was therefore an impious man: I
only say he was mistaken, as such a man is now. But, says the honorable
gentleman, they did not persecute Epicureans. No: the Epicureans had no
quarrel with their religious establishment, nor desired any religion for
themselves. It would have been very extraordinary, if irreligious
heathens had desired either a religious establishment or toleration.
But, says the honorable gentleman, the Epicureans entered, as others,
into the temples. They did so; they defied all subscription; they defied
all sorts of conformity; there was no subscription to which they were
not ready to set their hands, no ceremonies they refused to practise;
they made it a principle of their irreligion outwardly to conform to any
religion. These atheists eluded all that you could do: so will all
freethinkers forever. Then you suffer, or the weakness of your law has