We quarrel to extremity with those who we know agree with us
in many things; but we are to be so malicious even in the principle of
our friendships, that we are to cherish in our bosom those who accord
with us in nothing, because, whilst they despise ourselves, they abhor,
even more than we do, those with whom we have some disagreement. A man
is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole
Christian religion. Whether a person's having no Christian religion be a
title to favor, in exclusion to the largest description of Christians,
who hold all the doctrines of Christianity, though holding along with
them some errors and some superfluities, is rather more than any man,
who has not become recreant and apostate from his baptism, will, I
believe, choose to affirm. The countenance given from a spirit of
controversy to that negative religion may by degrees encourage light and
unthinking people to a total indifference to everything positive in
matters of doctrine, and, in the end, of practice too. If continued, it
would play the game of that sort of active, proselytizing, and
persecuting atheism which is the disgrace and calamity of our time, and
which we see to be as capable of subverting a government as any mode can
be of misguided zeal for better things.
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