A regardless contempt of infidel writings is usually the fittest
answer; _Spreta vilescerent_. But where the holy profession of
Christians is likely to receive either the main or the indirect blow,
and a word of defence may do any thing to ward it off, there we ought
not to spare to do it.
Christian prudence goes a great way in the regulating of this. Some
are not capable of receiving rational answers, especially in Divine
things; they were not only lost upon them, but religion dishonoured by
the contest.
Of this sort are the vulgar railers at religion, the foul-mouthed
beliers of the Christian faith and history. Impudently false and
slanderous assertions can be met only by assertions of their impudent
and slanderous falsehood: and Christians will not, must not,
condescend to this. How can mere railing be answered by them who are
forbidden to return a railing answer? Whether, or on what
provocations, such offenders may be punished or coerced on the score
of incivility, and ill-neighbourhood, and for abatement of a nuisance,
as in the case of other scolds and endangerers of the public peace,
must be trusted to the discretion of the civil magistrate. Even then,
there is danger of giving them importance, and flattering their
vanity, by attracting attention to their works, if the punishment be
slight; and if severe, of spreading far and wide their reputation as
martyrs, as the smell of a dead dog at a distance is said to change
into that of musk. Experience hitherto seems to favour the plan of
treating these _bêtes puantes_ and _enfans de diable_, as their
four-footed brethren, the skink and squash, are treated[60] by the
American woodmen, who turn their backs upon the fetid intruder, and
make appear not to see him, even at the cost of suffering him to
regale on the favourite viand of these animals, the brains of a stray
goose or crested _thraso_ of the dunghill. At all events, it is
degrading to the majesty, and injurious to the character of Religion,
to make its safety the plea for their punishment, or at all to connect
the name of Christianity with the castigation of indecencies that
properly belong to the beadle, and the perpetrators of which would
have equally deserved his lash, though the religion of their
fellow-citizens, thus assailed by them, had been that of Fo or
Juggernaut.
On the other hand, we are to answer every one that _inquires a
reason_, or an account; which supposes something receptive of it. We
ought to judge ourselves engaged to give it, be it an enemy, if he
will hear; if it gain him not, it may in part convince and cool him;
much more, should it be one who ingenuously inquires for satisfaction,
and possibly inclines to receive the truth, but has been, prejudiced
by misrepresentations of it.
[60] About the end of the same year (says Kalm), another of these
Animals (_Mephitis Americana_) crept into our cellar; but did not
exhale the smallest scent, _because it was not disturbed_. _A foolish
old woman, however, who perceived it at night, by the shining, and
thought, I suppose, that it would set the world on fire, killed it:
and at that moment its stench began to spread._
We recommend this anecdote to the consideration of sundry old women,
on this side of the Atlantic, who, though they do not wear the
appropriate garment, are worthy to sit in their committee-room, like
Bickerstaff in the Tatler, under the canopy of their grandam's
hoop-petticoat.