To base toleration on the uncertainty of truth is a very insecure method of proceeding. The alliance of scepticism damages the cause of freedom. Colour is given to the charge, that religious liberty springs from religious indifference. It has cost two centuries of experience and discipline to indoctrinate society with the lesson, that the decision of religious questions without any imposition of human authority is a right of conscience; and that the more earnest we are in the love of truth, the more careful we should be not to sully its sanctity by the unrighteous enforcement of its principles. Taylor fought manfully for freedom, but he did not see the highest vantage ground within his reach. Moreover, in his Essay, comprehension within the Church often seems confounded with religious liberty in the State. No clear distinction is maintained between principles which regulate the one, and principles which vindicate the other. Yet the reader of the treatise may pick out and sort them, for there they are. Taylor teaches the doctrine--that the duty of faith is completed in believing the Articles of the Apostles' Creed; that to multiply tests of orthodoxy and to require assent to points of doubtful disputation "is to build a tower on the top of a bulrush;" and "that the further the effect of such proceedings doth extend, the worse they are." With an amiable self-delusion, characteristic of his pure and child-like nature, he dreamed of a church, combining all varieties of belief consistent with faith in the fundamental verities of the gospel. Though protesting against persecution, he contended for discipline, but confined excommunication simply to an act of spiritual severance. It is difficult to catch exactly what he means by "communicating with dissenting churches"--yet the tone of his remarks, and his reference to the Greek Church, prevent us from supposing that he used the appellation in the way it is commonly employed at present. The division of kingdoms seems to have been with him the only justification of a division of churches; and probably his theory of a national church would not be very different from Dr. Arnold's. He, at the same time, claims toleration for all _opinions_, not expressed in overt acts injurious to the State; and though he hampers his principle with certain qualifications, which threaten the civil rights of some persons hostile to Christianity, yet his views, if consistently carried out in his own gentle and charitable spirit, would leave little to be complained of by any one. On the whole, Jeremy Taylor was fuller and more satisfactory in his views of comprehension and liberty than was either Chillingworth or Hales. [Sidenote: 1643.]