When any dissenters, or any body of people, come here with a petition,
it is not the number of people, but the reasonableness of the request,
that should weigh with the house. A body of dissenters come to this
house, and say, Tolerate us--we desire neither the parochial advantage
of tithes, nor dignities, nor the stalls of your cathedrals. No! let the
venerable orders of the hierarchy exist with all their advantages.
And shall I tell them, I reject your just and reasonable petition, not
because it shakes the church, but because there are others, while you
lie grovelling upon the earth, that will kick and bite you? Judge which
of these descriptions of men comes with a fair request--that, which
says, Sir, I desire liberty for my own, because I trespass on no man's
conscience;--or the other, which says, I desire that these men should
not be suffered to act according to their consciences, though I am
tolerated to act according to mine. But I sign a body of articles, which
is my title to toleration; I sign no more, because more are against my
conscience. But I desire that you will not tolerate these men, because
they will not go so far as I, though I desire to be tolerated, who will
not go as far as you. No, imprison them, if they come within five miles
of a corporate town, because they do not believe what I do in point of
doctrines. Shall I not say to these men, "Arrangez-vous, canaille?"
You, who are not the predominant power, will not give to others the
relaxation, under which you are yourself suffered to live. I have as
high an opinion of the doctrines of the church as you. I receive them
implicitly, or I put my own explanation on them, or take that which
seems to me to come best recommended by authority. There are those of
the dissenters, who think more rigidly of the doctrine of the articles
relative to predestination, than others do. They sign the article
relative to it ex animo, and literally. Others allow a latitude of
construction. These two parties are in the church, as well as among the
dissenters; yet in the church we live quietly under the same roof. I do
not see why, as long as Providence gives us no further light into this
great mystery, we should not leave things as the Divine wisdom has left
them. But suppose all these things to me to be clear (which Providence
however seems to have left obscure), yet whilst dissenters claim a
toleration in things which, seeming clear to me, are obscure to them,
without entering into the merit of the articles, with what face can
these men say, Tolerate us, but do not tolerate them? Toleration is good
for all, or it is good for none.
The discussion this day is not between establishment on one hand,
and toleration on the other, but between those, who being tolerated
themselves, refuse toleration to others. That power should be puffed
up with pride, that authority should degenerate into rigour, if not
laudable, is but too natural. But this proceeding of theirs is much
beyond the usual allowance to human weakness; it not only is shocking to
our reason, but it provokes our indignation. Quid domini facient,
audent cum talia fures? It is not the proud prelate thundering in his
commission court, but a pack of manumitted slaves with the lash of the
beadle flagrant on their backs, and their legs still galled with their
fetters, that would drive their brethren into that prison-house from
whence they have just been permitted to escape. If, instead of puzzling
themselves in the depths of the Divine counsels, they would turn to the
mild morality of the Gospel, they would read their own condemnation:--O
thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desiredst
me: shouldest not thou also have compassion on thy fellow-servant, even
as I had pity on thee?