Let us extend a courageous indulgence towards those unfortunate beings, who are victims of long continued errors. Enough will be ready to assume the office of their accusers. Let us draw round them the veil of charity. I am aware that gloomy moralists will object to these views; and call them easy principles, that encourage the vices, flatter the passions, and excuse disorders. Believe me, the most easy and successful mode of reclaiming the wandering, is to carry encouragement and hope to their hearts, and to have faith in their repentance.[25] Born in an age when every one professes to applaud toleration, far from adopting the real spirit, we scarcely know how to practise indulgence even towards abstract opinions, that differ from our own. Let us never forget the weakness and error of our own judgment and understanding; and then we shall possess an habitual temper of candor towards the views of others. In most instances, when we say ‘that man thinks rightly,’ the phrase, when translated, imports, ‘that man thinks as I do.’ Let us never forget that chance may have given us the opinions most dear to us. The ardent patron of this party, had he only been in a house contiguous to his own, would have had opinions and prejudices, the exact reverse of those he now reveres. It is not improbable that he might have died in the opposite ranks. A particular idea, which you formerly deemed correct, at present seems false. Perhaps you may one day return to your first judgment. Let us accord, to our antagonist, a right which we frequently exercise for ourselves, the right to be deceived. During the contests of party, I have more than once seen the spectacle of two men changing their principles almost at the same moment, in such a manner, that one of them takes the place of the other in the faction, which, but a short time since, he professed to detest. Taking human nature as it is, into view, this does not astonish me. What I find strange is, that these two men should hate each other more than ever, and that it has become impossible to reconcile them, now that the one has espoused the opinion which the other held but a moment before.[26] An essential truth that ought to be constantly announced, is, that both political and religious opinions have much less influence than is commonly imagined upon the qualities of the heart. No verity has been so completely demonstrated to my conviction. I have been conversant with men of all parties. In every one I have met with persons full of disinterestedness and integrity. To esteem them, it was only necessary to remark the noble and unshrinking courage with which they were willing to suspend everything on the issue of their convictions.[27]