JB/015/542/001

Click Here To Edit

228

Intolerance in language for difference in religious
opinions is less more to be tolerated than intolerant deeds. Persecution
in action is the exhibition of this lamentable species of
maleficence. And next to the mischiefs of war comes the
mischief of religious hatred. To say nothing more than
has been said of the immorality of the act of punishing men for
holding opinions different to our own – let the absurdity
of the pretence be suffe investigated. Why are they to
be punished? Because they will not submit to your
authority, – will not blindly submit to the faith you would
impose upon them.

Faith Now a blind faith can operate only by suppressing evidence. It cannot change
sensation. It cannot change the sentiment of truth and falsehood.
It is ignorance of the powers of nature, of the extent of them, and of their
limits that is the cause of the credulity of the common people. Miracles
and the secrets of nature to them appears to stand upon the same footing.
To remove mountains by a word may seem as easy as to draw fire from
the clouds, that is according to vulgar speech, from heaven, or to make
iron swim.

To say believe this proposition rather than its contrary, is to say, do
all that is in your power to believe it. Now what is in a man's
power to do in order to believe a proposition, and all that all that is
so, is to keep back and stifle the evidences that are opposed to it.
For when all the evidences are equally present to his observation, and
equally attended to, belief or disbelief is no longer in his power. It is
the necessary result of the preponderance of the evidence on one side
over that of the other. MS Vol V. p.39-40.

Identifier: | JB/015/542/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 15.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	015	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	542	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f228
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	c wise 1829
Marginals		Paper Producer	pasha of egypt
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1829
Notes public		ID Number	5758
Box Contents