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been made more manifest by every new examination and discussion of its nature , pretensions and claims . Left to itself , under the Divine blessing , the reasonableness and innate excellence of Christianity will infallibly promote its influence
over the understandings and hearts of mankind ; but when the angry passions are suffered to rise in its professed defence , these provoke the like passions in hostility to it , and the question is no longer one of pure truth , but of power on the one side , and of the capacity of endurance on the other .
It appears to your Petitioners that it is altogether unnecessary and impolitic to recur to penal laws in aid of Christianity . The judgment and feelings- of human nature , testified by the history of man in
all ages and nations , incline mankind to religion ; and it is only when they erringly associate religion with fraud and injustice that they can be brought in any large number to bear the evils of scepticism and unbelief . Your Petitioners
acknowledge and lament the wide diffusion amongst the people of sentiments unfriendly to the Christian faith : but they cannot refrain from stating to your Honourable House their conviction that this unexampled state of the public mind is mainly owing to the prosecution of the holders aud propagators of inndel opinions . Objections to Christianity have thus become familiar to the readers of
the weekly aud daily journals , curiosity bas been stimulated with regard to the publications prohibited , aifCadventitious , unnatural and dangerous importance has been given to sceptical arguments , a suspicion has been excited in the minds of
the multitude that the Christian religion can be upheld only by pains and penalties , and sympathy lias been raised on behalf of the sufferers , whom the uninformed and unwise regard with the reverence and confidence that belong to the character of martyrs to the truth .
Your Petitioners would remind your [ night ] Honourable House , that all history testifies the futility of all prosecutions for mere opinions , unless such prosecutJous proceed the length of exterminating the holders of the opinions prosecuted , — an extreme from which the liberal spirit and the humanity of the present times revolt .
The very same maxims and principles that are pleaded to justify the putiishuient of Unbelievers would authorize Christians of different denominations to vex harass each other on the alleged Ki-ound of want of faith , and likewise * oi m an apology for Heathen persecutions against Christians , whether the persecutions that were anciently carried on
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against the divinely-taught preachers of our religion , or those that may now be instituted by the ruling party in Pagan countries , where Christian missionaries are so laudably employed , in endeavouring to expose the absurdity , folly and mischievous influende of idolatry . Your Petitioners would entreat your [ Right ] Honourable House to consider
that belief does not in all cases- depend upon the will , and that inquiry into the truth of Christianity will be wholly prevented if persons are rendered punishable for am given result of inquiry . Firmly attachea as your Petitioners are to the religion of the Bible , they cannot but
consider the liberty of rejecting , to be implied in that of embracing it . The unbeliever may , indeed , be silenced by his fears , but it is scarcely conceivable that any real friend to Christianity , or any one who is solicitous for the
improvement of the human mind , the diffusion of knowledge and the establishment of truth , should wish to reduce any portion of mankind to the necessity of concealing their honest judgment upon moral and theological questions , and of making an outward profession that shall be inconsistent with their inward
per-. Your Petitioners are not ignorant that a distinction is commonly made between those unbelievers that argue the question of the truth of Christianity calmly and dispassionately , and those that treat the sacred subject with levity and - ridicule ; but although they feel the strongest
disgust at every mode of discussion which approaches to indecency and profaneness , they cannot help thinking that it is neither wise nor safe to constitute jthe manner and temper of writing an object ' of legal visitation ; inasmuch as it is
impossible to define where argument ends and evil speaking begins . The reviler of Christianity appears to your Petitioners to be the least formidable of its enemies ; because his scoffs can rarely fail of arousing against him public opinion , than which nothing more is wanted to defeat his end . Between freedom of discussion and
absolute persecution there is no assignable medium . And nothing seems to your Petitioners more impolitic thap to single out the intemperate publications of modern unbelievers for legal reprobation , and thus by implication to give a licence to the grave reasonings of those that
preceded them in the course of open hostility to the Christian religion , which reasonings are much move likely to make a dangerous impression upon the minds of their readers . But independently of considerations of expediency- and policy , your Petitioners cannot forbear recording
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against the Prosecution of Unbelievers . 363
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1823, page 363, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1785/page/51/
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