Such is bigotry in the most hideous aspect she assumes. But if the principle be admitted, that faith or practice in religion is a fit subject for magisterial interference, it surely savours of harshness to censure Mary for affording her patronage to the creed she had sincerely imbibed, and to the rites she had been taught by maternal lips to hold sacred. Nor can there be any security that the supreme power in a state, if invested with authority in matters of faith, shall not prefer the licentious speculations of deism, or the delusions of the false prophet. It is in vain to contend that the establishment of the true religion alone is justifiable, for who is to solve the question, What is truth? If the ruler; shall Henry, or Edward, or Mary, or Elizabeth decide? Or shall the prince be guided in his selection by the majority? In England the suffrages may be in favour of episcopacy; in Scotland of presbyterianism; in Ireland and in Canada of Catholicism; in India of polytheism. Accordingly, with the exception of the last, these several forms of religion are at present established under the authority of the crown of Great Britain. Why does not the majority prevail in Ireland or in India? Is the alleged idolatry of the sister island less tolerable than that of the transatlantic colony? or are numbers of less account on the banks of the Ganges than of the St. Lawrence? But how multifarious and inconsistent a thing would thus be made of religion! How are its beauty tarnished, its name degraded, and its influence neutralized, by this admixture of earthly elements, this rude and needless effort to grasp and to uphold its etherial principles! Is truth thus mutable, or can it be thus bandied from hand to hand? Whatever is established by the authority, should also be supported by the sanctions of government. And if gentle methods prove insufficient to check an offence _cognizable by the magistrate_, it is his duty to augment severity in proportion to the obstinacy of the offender. If even the dread of death fail to accomplish the desired reformation; to mitigate the punishment is to exchange the character of a judge for that of a tormentor, to lay aside the semblance of a wise and beneficent discipline, and to indulge the gratification of a wanton and useless cruelty. {48a} It would be easier, in such a case, to justify the infliction of superadded torture, than of the lightest penalty.