form; for that which begins with inflammatory symptoms, subsides into a chronic derangement. In its earlier state it attaches chiefly to minds of inferior quality; but in its latter it insidiously invades the most generous, vigorous, and accomplished; and from these it draws a thousand recommendations that ensure to it credit and perpetuity. So was it (as we have seen) with the frenzy of asceticism, which, after raging among the vulgar the Anthonys and the Symeons of Egypt and Syria, became epidemic in the high places of the Church, and overpowered the sense and piety of Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom, Jerom. So again the fanatic cruelty of intolerance, at first entertained only by the basest natures, crept at length upon the noble; and a Ximenes is seen to take up the tools of a Torquemada. And so with the fanaticism of religious war;-where Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless led the way, Godfrey and Louis follow, with Bernard as their guide.

The very same kind of progression has had place, and even with worse consequences, in the history of the Fanaticism of dogmas and creeds. The authors and prime agitators of controversythe men whose plebeian names descend as an obloquy to after ages, have (with a few exceptions) possessed but a poor title to celebrity; and, apart from the turbulence of their tempers, or their insatiable ambition, could never have attracted the attention of mankind. But the

agitation so engendered spreads; and at length none can well avoid ranging themselves on this side or on that of the question: great talents and solid virtues are drawn into the vortex; and so it happens that, while the ostensible mischiefs of strife-the rancour and the violence of the feud are moderated, its essential evils are deepened, and rendered permanent.-A christian country, or a community, is in this manner cast into a factious condition, and in that state abides age after age. But factious religionism, how much soever it may have been tamed and curbed, will not fail to be encircled by wide spread impiety, and infidelity, as the direct effects of the scandal of division.-Factions, moreover, benumb the expansive powers of Christianity, and prevent its spread.-They create too a universal confusion, entanglement, and perversion of religious notions. No inquiry can be calmly prosecuted, no results of solitary meditation can be safely reported, nothing can be looked at in its native form, so long as the jealousies and the interests of eight or ten ancient and corporate factions spread themselves over the field of theology. Even those few insulated articles of Christian belief or speculation, or of abstruse science, which have not been claimed by party zeal, are often found to alarm the wakeful fears of this or that guardian of sectarism, merely because the method of argument which may have been employed in such instances is fore

seen to have a bearing upon matters that are to be held inviolable.-The opinion in itself may be innocent enough; but the logic that sustains it is dangerous. Better then quash at once the suspicious novelty, which, though it may be good and true, is not momentous, than favour it, and so open the door to no one can say what innovations!

So poor, so timid, so feeble, so inert, so grovelling, so infatuated, is the human mind! Truth, which alone can be permanently advantageous, and which alone can reward labour or compensate losses, is looked at and listened to with eagle-eyed alarm; nor is entertained until she has protested, ten times over, that she means to rob us of nothing we dote upon.

Less than two hundred years ago-even so late as the close of the seventeenth century, this very same sectarian infatuation, this fanaticism of the creed and symbol, enthralled the physical and abstruse sciences, throughout Europe. No process of nature, no mechanic law, could be investigated or discussed apart from the interference of the fierce jealousies of rival schools.-A chemical mixture could not change from blue to red, from transparent to opaque-an apple could not fall to the ground, nay, the planets might not swing through their orbits, without kindling angry feuds in colleges. Not only was the method of obtaining knowledge utterly misunderstood; but it was not

believed, or not felt, that Knowledge is always the friend of man, and his coadjutor; Error his enemy. This degraded condition of the human mind was at last remedied by nothing but the bringing to bear upon the METAPHYSICPHYSICS of Des Cartes and Aristotle, a method of reasoning so absolutely conclusive that resistance was found to be useless. Prejudice and antiquated jealousy did not freely yield themselves up and dissolve :---they were undermined, they fell in, and were seen no more.

This deliverance of Philosophy-a very recent deliverance, though effected within a particular precinct of inquiry only, rapidly extended itself over the entire field of the sciences. Whether or not immediate success attended the pursuit of knowledge, every thing was scouted but its attainment. The scientific community blushed at the fond folly of ranging itself under rival leaders;--it coalesced as one body or phalanx, advancing under one banner.

Can it be conceived of as a thing even possible that pure reason should have had sway in philosophy so long as the interests of sects were to be cared for? Those two powers, Truth and Party, were not in fact contemporary scarcely a year; or contemporary only as Night and Day are so, through the hasty moments of twilight. Indeed the mere existence of factions in any department of opinion, is a conclusive proof that the method of inquiry, in that department, has

not yet been found; or at least is not generally understood.

Causes which need hardly be specified, have hitherto excluded from the precincts of Theology the reform that has spread through every department of natural science.-The dogmatic fanaticism which raged at the time of the Reformation, passed down uncorrected upon the political and ecclesiastical constitutions of the northern nations of Europe, and especially upon those of England, and it now firmly grasps the religious commonwealth. The violence of religious strife has indeed long died away; or it breaks out only for a moment; but no relief has yet been administered to the settled ill consequences of that delirium. So far as we are religious at all, the English people is a nation of sects, and our theology is necessarily the theology of faction.-Not a false theology-thank God; but a theology that is confused, entangled, imperfect, gloomy ;-a theology which, while it abundantly breeds infidelity among the educated classes, fails to spread through the body of the population, and but dimly, or only as a flickering candle, illumines the world.

The recent consolidation of religious liberty, while it may fairly be hailed as an auspicious event, and likely to bring about at length the disappearance of faction, is utterly misunderstood by those who regard it as equivalent to the emancipation of Christianity. Far from being