Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/372

The folly of persecuting men for their religion will appear if we examine it. Why do we persecute them? to make them believe as we do. Can any thing be more barbarous or foolish.—For although we may make them say they believe as we do, they will not in their hearts do any such thing, indeed they cannot, this devilish method can only make them false hypocrites. For what is belief? We cannot believe just what we like, but only what we think to be true; for you cannot alter a man's opinion by beating or burning, but by persuading him that what you think is right, and this can only be done by fair words and reason. It is ridiculous to call a man a heretic, because he thinks differently from you, he might as well call you one. In the same sense, the word orthodox is used, it signifies "to think rightly" and what can be more vain and presumptuous in any man or any set of men, to put themselves so out of the ordinary course of things as to say—"What we think is right, no other people throughout the world have opinions any thing like equal to ours." Any thing short of unlimited toleration, and complete charity with all men, on which you will recollect that Jesus Christ principally insisted, is wrong, and for this reason—what makes a man to be a good man? not his religion, or else there could be no good men in any religion but one, when yet we^[1] find that all ages, countries, and opinions have produced them. Virtue and wisdom always so far as they went produced liberty or happiness long before any of the religions now in the world were^[2] ever heard of. The only use of a religion that ever I could see, is to make men wiser or better, so far as it does this, it is a good one. Now if people are good, and

1. In the original, when we yet we &c.
2. In the original, have, doubtless a misprint for were.