Gentlemen of the Jury,--I now come to the next point in the argument. Having, I hope, successfully proved the right of free inquiry and the free publication of opinions, I will proceed to show, by a reference to past events, that it is highly important that this right should be preserved, and handed down to our latest posterity unimpaired. Gentlemen, it has been a uniform practice, from the earliest records of time, to stigmatize those who introduce new truths, or who attack the existing institutions of a country, as infidels, and to fix upon them all sorts of opprobious epithets. "In all ages _new doctrines_ have been branded as impious; and Christianity itself has offered no exception to this rule. The Greeks and Romans charged Christianity with ’impiety and novelty.’ In _Cave’s Primitive Christianity_ we are informed ’that the Christians were everywhere accounted a pack of _Atheists_, and their religion _the Atheism._’ _They were denominated; ’mountebank impostors,’ and ’men of a desperate and unlawful faction.’ They were represented as ’destructive and pernicious to human society,’ and were accused of ’sacrilege, sedition, and high treason.’ The same system of misrepresentation and abuse was practised by the Roman Catholics against the Protestants at the Reformation. Some called their dogs Calvin; and others transformed Calvin into Cain,’ In France, ’the old stale calumnies, formerly invented against the first Christians, were again revived by Demochares, a doctor of the Sorbonne, pretending that all the disasters of the state were to be attributed to Protestants alone.’"--*Combe on the Constitution of Man_. In our own enlightened country, where the importance of truth--and free inquiry as a means of its attainment--is beginning to be appreciated, a different practice should prevail. We ought not to persist in this unmanly course. Recollect, Gentlemen, the Prophets of the Jews were _blasphemers_ against the established religions of their day. Did that deter them from denouncing the idolatry and false religions of the surrounding nations? Elijah is represented as ridiculing the God of the Moabites in a most offensive manner: "_And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, ’Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking f or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked._’" 1 Kings xviii. 27. And in Judea, Jesus and his Apostles were charged as blasphemers against Judaism, or the religion established by Moses. We have a remarkable proof of this in the case of Stephen, recorded in the 6th and 7th chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. "And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. "Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak _blasphemous_ words against Moses, and against God. "And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council,