JB/063/004/002

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C Miscell Why no Laws against
Heresy.

There would be no inconvenience in [the common]
people's a man's believing the moon to be made of green
cheese, provided the absurdity stopped there. But
there would be a great deal of harm in a man's peoples being
obliged to say, much more to swear that he
believes the moon to be made of green cheese. If he
does say so either he is sincere or he is not.
If he is not, then the following mischiefs take place
1. First of all here is a abuse falshood Perjury, or at
the least a public silence and deliberate act of falshood
which a man committs. this is already one
evil in as much as it contributes to lessen among the the regard
people the regard for paid to truth. 2. In the next place here is a
manifest act of tyranny committed by the ruling
powers: who it is tyranny to oblige a man to do
any act whatever which he has no mind to do without a reason,
much more to oblige him to do such such an act, as like
that in question is of no use to any one.

Here state the mischiefs of an act of tyranny end of ch.

If he is not sincere, this can not have taken place
without a total debasement of his intellectual faculties,
without an absolute disregard to of the suffrage of his
own reason, and an unlimited reliance on the opinion
or pretended opinion of some other man or set of
men upon whose credit he embraces this persuasion.
If then he can be brought to believe embrace this opinion this to be true
upon their word, there is no other opinion [how absurd
or mischievous soever] that he would not embrace upon
their word. These people will be either his sovereigns
or not: if they be his sovereigns, so far is well. But
this in practise is never found to be the case. A man's
temporal sovereigns as such are no where supposed
to be possessed of any such infallibility. If they be not
his temporal sovereigns, then they are another set of people

Identifier: | JB/063/004/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 63.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering	17-28
Box	063	Main Headings	penal code
Folio number	004	Info in main headings field	miscell.
Image	002	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	4
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f13 / f14 / f15 / f16
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks	[[watermarks::gr [crown motif] [britannia with shield motif]]]
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	20193
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