must unavoidably be for a time resisted by intelligence, by custom, and by interest: which, without the protection of enlightened rulers, may prolong any error for ages. How true is that most severe threatening of the Almighty, “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them!" What an awful reflection is this force of custom to all who, from their situation in life, can by their power preserve old, or introduce new habits! It matters not how absurd the custom is—be it the Obi or the worship of images, or any other absurdity, when it is once introduced, an artful or an unenlightened statesman may prolong it for centuries.

Prejudice persecutes the Reformer.

It condemned Socrates to death for attempting to raise his countrymen from idolatry; it condemned him in the presence of his two dear pupils, Xenophon and Plato, who, when he took the hemlock, were the greatest sufferers. It imprisoned Galileo, for asserting that the earth moved on its axis.*-It raised the fires which burnt Ridley and Latimer; which burnt a mother and her new-born infant in the same flames, while

"There it was," says Milton, "that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisoner to the inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."

the hoary bigots with their cowls, their crucifixes, and their croziers, were feasting at the banquet and warming themselves at the embers. It dug up the bones of Wickliffe, idly imagining that it could stop the progress of truth.*.

Such is the intolerant and persecuting spirit of prejudice; a spirit which prevails in proportion to individual and national ignorance.

That it prevails in proportion to individual ignorance, appears most conspicuously in the prejudices of professional men, who, having devoted themselves to any peculiar species of opinions and whose worldly interests depend upon these opinions continuing unaltered, are, in proportion to their ignorance, tenacious in retaining them, whether divines, politicians, medical professors, lawyers, sailors, &c.

The prejudices of divines and politicians are fully considered and luminously refuted by Lord Bacon, in the commencement of his treatise on the Advancement of Learning.-Assuming, therefore, that divines will be intolerant against attempts to alter the prevalent religious opinions, it will appear that this intolerance diminishes as their knowledge increases. Who more free from prejudice than Hooker-Barrow-Bishop Berkeley, and Bishop Taylor? who, amidst the slavery of the press, was one of the first advocates for

* See postea, p. 82.

its liberty, in his beautiful essay, which thus concludes:-When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was an hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but, observing that the old man eat and prayed not, nor begged a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other god. At which answer, Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was? He replied, I thrust him away because he did not worship thee. God answered him, I have suffered him these hundred years though he dishonoured me, and couldst not thou endure him one night?

So the ignorant politician, seldom knowing or caring for any grand moving principle, either in. morals or physics or metaphysics, endeavours to connect his own narrow views of self-interest with the public welfare and defends any doctrine or party that will give power or continue it. Engaged as politicians are in active, not contempla

tive life, the advancement of science can hope but little from their exertions: certainly as much has not been done as by divines; and, be their exertions what they may, as much perhaps never can be done; for "the merit of the politician is confined within the circle of an age or a nation, and is like fruitful showers, which, though they be profitable and good, yet serve but for that season, and for a latitude of ground where they fall; but the exertions of divines are like the benefits of heaven, permanent and universal. The former again is mixed with strife and perturbation, but the latter hath the true character of divine presence coming "in aura leni," without noise or agitation."

With respect to medical prejudice, Dr. Hunter, after having referred to the improvements on the continent in anatomy, says, the senior professors were inflamed to such a pitch, that, in order to root out heretical innovations in philosophy and physic, they endeavoured to pass a law, whereby every graduate should be obliged thus to swear: "You shall swear that you will preserve and defend the doctrine taught in the University of Bononia, viz., that of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which has now been approved of for so many ages, and that you will not permit their principles. and conclusions to be overturned by any person, as far as in you lies.". "Pro toto tui posse," is the expression. But this was soon dropt and the

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philosophizing with freedom remains to this day.

-So too, Aubrey, in his life of Harvey, says, “I have heard him say that after his book of the circulation of the blood,' came out, he fell mightily in his practice, and it was believed by the vulgar that he was crackbrained; and all the physicians were against his opinion."

The same antipathy has at all times and in all countries existed amongst lawyers, and, more or less, will for ever exist. To Christ and to the doctrines of Christianity the lawyers were the most violent opponents.-When Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, first recommended the mitigation of severe laws, he anticipated the resistance of lawyers.*-In

* He says, "I was then much obliged to that Reverend Prelate, John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal, and Chancellor of England, a man that was not less venerable for his wisdom and virtues, than for the high character he bore; he was of a middle stature, not broken with age; his looks begot reverence rather than fear; his conversation was easy, but serious and grave. One day, when I was dining with him, there happened to be at table one of the English lawyers, who took occasion to run out in a high commendation of the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who, as he said, were then hanged so fast, that there were sometimes twenty on one gibbet; and upon that he said, he could not wonder enough how it came