It is true, that inoculation for the smallpox, which has preserved so many mortals, caused some to perish, to whom the smallpox had been inconsiderately given; and in like manner the inoculation of thunder ill-performed would be dangerous. There are great lords whom we can only approach with the greatest precaution, and thunder is of this number. We know that the mathematical professor Richmann was killed at St. Petersburg, in 1753, by a thunderbolt which he had drawn into his chamber: "_Arte sua periit._" As he was a philosopher, a theological professor failed not to publish that he had been thunderstruck like Salmoneus, for having usurped the rights of God, and for wishing to hurl the thunder: but if the physician had directed the brass wire outside the house, and not into his pent-up chamber, he would not have shared the lot of Salmoneus, Ajax Oileus, the emperor Carus, the son of a French minister of state, and of several monks in the Pyrenees. TOLERATION. SECTION I. What is toleration? It is the appurtenance of humanity. We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies--it is the first law of nature. When, on the exchange of Amsterdam, of London, of Surat, or of Bassora, the Gueber, the Banian, the Jew, the Mahometan, the Chinese Deist, the Brahmin, the Christian of the Greek Church, the Roman Catholic Christian, the Protestant Christian, and the Quaker Christian, traffic together, they do not lift the poniard against each other, in order to gain souls for their religion. Why then have we been cutting one another's throats almost without interruption since the first Council of Nice? Constantine began by issuing an edict which allowed all religions, and ended by persecuting. Before him, tumults were excited against the Christians, only because they began to make a party in the state. The Romans permitted all kinds of worship, even those of the Jews, and of the Egyptians, for whom they had so much contempt. Why did Rome tolerate these religions? Because neither the Egyptians, nor even the Jews, aimed at exterminating the ancient religion of the empire, or ranged through land and sea for proselytes; they thought only of money-getting; but it is undeniable, that the Christians wished their own religion to be the dominant one. The Jews would not suffer the statue of Jupiter at Jerusalem, but the Christians wished it not to be in the capitol. St. Thomas had the candor to avow, that if the Christians did not dethrone the emperors, it was because they could not. Their opinion was, that the whole earth ought to be Christian. They were therefore necessarily enemies to the whole earth, until it was converted. Among themselves, they were the enemies of each other on all their points of controversy. Was it first of all necessary to regard Jesus Christ as God? Those who denied it were anathematized under the name of Ebionites, who themselves anathematized the adorers of Jesus.