14 MAY 1881, Page 15

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION.

(To THE EDITOR OF THU "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—You say, with reference to what I must call the most un- happy attempt to enforce Theism or Deism as a necessary con- dition for the exorcise of political rights, that it is the act of partisans to visit on unbelief penalties of a kind which, so far as we can see, God himself does not visit on it. Bet may we not go considerably further P Is not this rather what God has distinctly forbidden, at least by necessary implication, when our Lord said in the Garden, "They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword P" An hour or two previously, the same Master had commanded, "Ho that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." That is, plainly, the power of the sword was to be exercised in defence of civil right, but never of religious truth. Self-defence, then, is lawful; but we may not enforce orthodoxy of opinion as a condition of political rights. So to do is to persecute, and persecution is declared to be not only unlawful, but the source of ultimate injury and possible ruin to the persecutor. To persecute in the name of any truth is to impair men's sense of that truth, and create a prejudice against it. Let us not do this injury to natural, any more than to revealed religion.—I am, Sir, &c., The Vicarage, Rhayadcr, May llth. ARCHER GURNEY.