Judge,--instead of their being under the tolerance of a judgment not
instructed to condemn them, or, (as ignorance is sure to quicken into
error,) perverted to abet them.




Section II.



From this view of the prevalence and malignant effects of ignorance among
the people of the ancient world, both Jews and Gentiles, we may come
down, with a few brief notices in passing over the long subsequent
periods, towards our own times. For any attempt to prosecute the object
through the ages and regions of later heathenism, (with the infatuated
Judaism still more destructive to its subjects,) would be to lose
ourselves in a boundless scene of desolation, an immense amplitude of
darkness, frightfully alive throughout with the activity of all noxious
and hideous things.

But by this time we are become aware how continually we are driven upon
what will be in hazard of appearing an exaggerated phraseology; insomuch
that we are almost afraid of accepting the epithets of description and
aggravation which offer themselves as most appropriate to the subject.
There are some self-complacent persons whose minds are so unapt to
recognize the magnitude of a subject, or so averse perhaps to the
contemplation of it if it be of tragical aspect, that strong terms
accumulated to exhibit even what surpasses in its plain reality all the
powers of language, offend them as declamatory exaggeration. Let it then