Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There — John Shaqi
Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written ThereHazlitt, William
General
Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There
Hazlitt, William
English essays
wish to develop till he _does_ get into place.
We may be intolerant even in advocating the cause of toleration, and
so bent on making proselytes to freethinking as to allow no one to
think freely but ourselves. The most boundless liberality in
appearance may amount in reality to the most monstrous ostracism of
opinion--not condemning this or that tenet, or standing up for this or
that sect or party, but in a supercilious superiority to all sects and
parties alike, and proscribing in one sweeping clause, all arts,
sciences, opinions, and pursuits but our own. Till the time of Locke
and Toland a general toleration was never dreamt of: it was thought
right on all hands to punish and discountenance heretics and
schismatics, but each party alternately claimed to be true Christians
and Orthodox believers. Daniel De Foe, who spent his whole life, and
wasted his strength, in asserting the right of the Dissenters to a
Toleration (and got nothing for his pains but the pillory), was
scandalised at the proposal of the general principle, and was equally
strenuous in excluding Quakers, Anabaptists, Socinians, Sceptics, and
all who did not agree in the _essentials_ of Christianity--that is,
who did not agree with him--from the benefit of such an indulgence to
tender consciences. We wonder at the cruelties formerly practised upon
the Jews: is there anything wonderful in it? They were at that time
the only people to make a butt and a bugbear of, to set up as a mark
of indignity, and as a foil to our self-love, for the _feræ naturæ_
principle that is within us, and always craving its prey to run down,
to worry and make sport of at discretion, and without mercy--the
unvarying uniformity and implicit faith of the Catholic Church had
imposed silence, and put a curb on our jarring dissensions,
heartburnings, and ill-blood, so that we had no pretence for
quarrelling among ourselves for the glory of God or the salvation of
men:--a JORDANUS BRUNO, an Atheist or sorcerer, once in a way, would
hardly suffice to stay the stomach of our theological rancour; we
therefore fell with might and main upon the Jews as a _forlorn hope_
in this dearth of objects of spite or zeal; or when the whole of
Europe was reconciled to the bosom of holy Mother Church, went to the
Holy Land in search of a difference of opinion, and a ground of mortal
offence: but no sooner was there a division of the Christian World,
than Papist fell on Protestants or Schismatics, and Schismatics upon
one another, with the same loving fury as they had before fallen upon
Turks and Jews. The disposition is always there, like a muzzled
mastiff; the pretext only is wanting; and this is furnished by a name,
which, as soon as it is affixed to different sects or parties, gives
us a licence, we think, to let loose upon them all our malevolence,
domineering humour, love of power, and wanton mischief, as if they
were of different species. The sentiment of the pious English Bishop
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