From these accounts it evidently appears, that the Christian world alone is not chargeable with the guilt of persecution on the score of religion. It was practised long before Christianity was in being, and first taught the Christians by the persecuting heathens. The most eminent philosophers espoused and vindicated persecuting principles; and emperors, otherwise excellent and good, made no scruple of destroying multitudes on a religious account, such as Trajan, and Aurelius Verus. And I think I may farther add, that the method of propagating religion by cruelty and death, owes its invention to lay policy and craft; and that how servilely soever the priesthood hath thought fit to imitate them, yet that they have never exceeded them in rigour and severity. I can trace out the footsteps but of very few priests in the foregoing accounts; nor have I ever heard of more excessive cruelties than those practised by Antiochus, the Egyptian heretic eaters, and the Roman emperors. I may farther add on this important article, that it is the laity who have put it in the power of the priests to persecute, and rendered it worth their while to do it; they have done it by the authority of the civil laws, as well as employed lay hands to execute the drudgery of it. The emoluments of honours and riches that have been annexed to the favourite religion and priesthood is the establishment of civil society, whereby religion hath been made extremely profitable, and the “gains of godliness” worth contending for. Had the laity been more sparing in their grants, and their civil constitutions formed upon the generous and equitable principle of an universal toleration, persecution had never been heard of amongst men. The priests would have wanted not only the power, but the inclination to persecute; since few persons have such an attachment either to what they account religion or truth, as to torment and destroy others for the sake of it, unless tempted with the views of worldly ambition, power and grandeur. These views will have the same influence upon all bad minds, whether of the priesthood or laity, who, when they are determined at all hazards to pursue them, will use all methods, right or wrong, to accomplish and secure them.