Protestantism as 'fierce and burning.' Nothing can go beyond that--it is
the _ne plus ultra_ of bigotry, and just such hatred is displayed
towards Atheists by at least nine-tenths of their opponents. Strange to
say, in Christians, in the followers of him who is thought to have
recommended, by act and word, unlimited charity, who is thought to have
_commanded_ that we judge not, that we be sat judged; the Atheist finds
his most active foe, his bitterest and least scrupulous maligner. To
exaggerate their bigotry would be difficult, for whether sage or simple,
learned or unlearned, priests or priest-led, they regularly practise the
denunciation of Atheists in language foul as it is false. They call them
'traitors to human kind,' yea 'murderers of the human soul,' and unless
hypocrites, or much better than their sentiments, would rather see them
swing upon the gibbet than murderers of the body, especially if like
John Tawell, 'promoters of religion and Christian Missions.'

Robert Hall was a Divine of solid learning and unquestionable piety,
whose memory is reverenced by a large and most respectable part of the
Christian world. He ranked amongst the best of his class, and generally
speaking, was so little disposed to persecute his opponents because of
their heterodox opinions, that he wrote and published a Treatise on
Moderation, in the course of which he eloquently condemns the practice
of regulating, or rather attempting to regulate opinion by act of
parliament: yet, incredible as it may appear, in that very Treatise he
applauds Calvin on account of his conduct towards Servetus. Our
authority for this statement is not 'Infidel' but Christian--the
authority of Evans, who, after noticing the Treatise in question, says,
'he (Bishop Hall) has discussed the subject with that ability which is
peculiar to all his writings. But this great and good man, towards the
close of the same Treatise, forgetting the principles which he had been
inculcating, devotes one solitary page to the cause of intolerance: this