choose to make it the pretext. But that there ever was, or ever can be, a preponderance of evil, I defy either the historian to instance, or the philofopher to prove. "Let it fly away, all that chaff of light faith that can fly off at any breath of temptation; the cleaner will the true grain be ftored up in the granary of the Lord," we are entitled to fay with Tertullian :* and to exclaim with heroic Luther, — "Scandal and offence! Talk not to me of scandal and offence. Need breaks through stone walls, and recks not of scandal. It is my duty to spare weak consciences as far as it may be done without hazard of my foul. Where not, I must take counfel for my foul, though half or the whole world should be fcandalized thereby."+ Luther felt and preached and wrote and acted, as befeemed a Luther to feel and utter and act. The truths, which had been outraged, he re-proclaimed in the spirit of outraged truth, at the beheft of his confcience and in the fervice of the God of truth. He did his duty, come good, come evil! and made no question, on which fide the preponderance would be. In the one scale there Avolent, quantum volent, paleæ leves fidei quocunque afflatu tentationum! eo purior massa frumenti in horrea Domini reponetur. De Præfcript. adverf. Hæretic. I. c. 3.— Ed. + Aergernifs hin, Aergernifs her! Noth bricht Eifen, und hat kein Aergernifs. Ich foll der fchwachen Gewiffen fchonen fo fern es ohne Gefahr meiner Seelen gefchehen mag. Wo nicht, fo foll ich meiner Seelen rathen, es aergere fich daran die ganze oder halbe Welt. was gold, and impressed thereon the image and superscription of the universal Sovereign. In all the wide and ever-widening commerce of mind with mind throughout the world, it is treason to refuse it. Can this have a counter-weight? The other scale indeed might have seemed full up to the very balance-yard; but of what worth and fubstance were its contents? Were they capable of being counted or weighed against the former? The conscience, indeed, is already violated when to moral good or evil we oppose things poffeffing no moral intereft. Even if the conscience dared waive this her preventive veto, yet before we could confider the twofold results in the relation of lofs and gain, it must be known whether their kind is the fame or equivalent. They must first be valued, and then they may be weighed or counted, if they are worth it. But in the particular cafe at present before us, the lofs is contingent and alien; the gain essential and the tree's own natural produce. The gain is permanent, and spreads through all times and places; the lofs but temporary, and owing its very being to vice or ignorance, vanishes at the approach of knowledge and moral improvement. The gain reaches all good men, belongs to all that love light and defire an increase of light: to all and of all times, who thank Heaven for the gracious dawn, and expect the noon-day; who welcome the first gleams of spring, and fow their fields in confident faith of the ripening fummer and the rewarding harvest-tide! But the lofs is confined to the unenlightened and the prejudiced -say rather, to the weak and the prejudiced of a fingle generation. The prejudices of one age are condemned even by the prejudiced of the fucceeding ages for endless are the modes of folly, and the fool joins with the wife in paffing sentence on all modes but his own. Who cried out with greater horror against the murderers of the Prophets, than those who likewise cried out, Crucify him! Crucify him! - Prophet and Saviour, and Lord of life, Crucify him! Crucify him!— The truth-haters of every future generation will call the truth-haters of the preceding ages by their true names for even these the ftream of time carries onward. In fine, truth confidered in itself and in the effects natural to it, may be conceived as a gentle spring or water-fource, warm from the genial earth, and breathing up into the fnow drift that is piled over and around its outlet. It turns the obstacle into its own form and character, and as it makes its way increases its ftream. And should it be arrested in its course by a chilling feafon, it suffers delay, not lofs, and waits only for a change in the wind to awaken and again roll onwards : I femplici paftori Che 'l Adda, che'l Tefino 'The fimple fhepherds grown bent and hoaryheaded on the fnowy Vefolo, are mute with deep aftonishment, gazing in the overshadowed fountain on the Po with his scanty waters; then hearing of the honours of his confined and narrow urn, how he receives as a fovereign the ADDA and the TESINO in his courfe, how ample he haftens on to the fea, how he foams, how mighty his voice, and that to him the crown is affigned.' *Chiabrera Rime, xxviii. "But falfehood," continues Mr. C., "is fire in ftubble; it likewife turns all the light ftuff around it into its own fubftance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment,-and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them."-Lit. Rem. vol. I. Omniana.-Ed. ESSAY IX. Great men have liv'd among us, heads that plann'd * Even fo doth Heaven protect us! WORDSWORTH. N the preceding effay I have explained the good, that is, the natural confequences of the promulgation to all of truths which all are bound to know and to make known. The evils occafioned by it, with few and rare exceptions, have their origin in the attempts to suppress or pervert it; in the fury and violence of imposture attacked or undermined in her ftrong holds, or in the extravagances of ignorance and credulity roused from their lethargy, and angry at the medicinal disturbance—awaking, not yet broad awake, and thus blending the monfters of uneafy dreams with the real objects, on which the drowsy eye had alternately half-opened and closed, again half-opened and again closed. This re-action of deceit and fuperftition, with all the trouble and tumult incident, I would compare to a fire which burfts forth from fome ftifled and fermenting mass on the first admiffion of light and air. It roars and blazes, and converts the already |