Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/166

III. Some persons, of narrow minds, may be ready to admit of a plea for the toleration of all sects of Protestants. They may bear them some degree of good will, as brethren, or at least, as distant relations, though the blood in their veins be not equally pure with their own; but, in order to demonstrate that there may be a licentiousness in toleration, and that we must stop somewhere, they say, "What must we do with heathens and atheists." I answer, the very same that you, christians, would wish that heathens and atheists, in your situation, should do to you, being in theirs. If your party has been so long in power, that you cannot, even in supposition, separate the idea of it from that of the authority which has been so long connected with it; read the history of the primitive church, and see what it was that the first christians wished and pleaded for, under the Pagan emperors. Read the antient christian apologies; and do the infidels of the present age the justice to put them, or at least part of them, into their mouths.