If, as I admit, persecution will put down opinion, what objection's there to its employment when it puts down error? I answer, 'Beware of its use, because it may put down the truth also.' Persecution is not an ordeal. Free discussion is the only test capable of distinguishing and establishing the truth. The proper condemnation of persecution is, that it is an illegitimate opposition which is sure to be discountenanced as men become manly and refined. The armies of a civilised people observe, even in the deadly strife of battle, some rules of honourable warfare, and do not descend to the arts of treachery or tactics of savages. We may surely hope that in the battle for religious truth, a sense of honour will prevent the dominant party from taking against its opponents the undue advantage of persecution. Montaigne relates that when Polyperchon advised Alexander to take advantage of the night for attacking Darius, 'By no means,' answered the noble general; 'It is not for such a man as I am to steal such an advantage; _I had rather repent me of my fortune than be ashamed of my victory_,' It is not too much to expect that Christianity will always be less refined than War. Persecution, always a disaster, was not however with us a defeat. We were not put down by persecution; we continued the _Oracle_ a hundred and four weeks, then the Movement, sixty-eight weeks, and the _Reasoner_ will soon have completed ten volumes. Besides having written in our publications, we have, in almost all the principal cities and towns in the kingdom, spoken, since the trial at Gloucester, with the utmost explicitness. The imprisonment has at least been of this service--and this is all--it has enabled me to speak accredited by the sincerity which otherwise could not have been so satisfactorily manifest to the multitude. To have spent, without shrinking, some portion of life in prison in defence of public liberty, gives the same authority among the people as having graduated at a university does among scholars.* The fact is a sad illustration of the brutal manner in which the people are condemned to win the enlargement of their liberties. In cases where clergymen have menaced me with renewed imprisonment, I have always answered--'I consider myself as having taken out a license to speak freely. The government made a charge to me of six months' imprisonment for that privilege, and I paid the price. If you have renewed demands upon me, let me know them, and I will endeavour to meet them; but do not interrupt me.'