"The Writ De Hæretico Commiserando.[[413]]
Nov. 14, 1864.
"This document was sent to me four days ago. It 'solicits the favor'—I thought at first it was a grocer's supplication for tea and sugar patronage—of my signature to expression of 'sincere regret' that some persons unnamed—general warrants are illegal—differ from what I am supposed—by persons whom it does not concern—to hold about Scripture and Science in their real or alleged discrepancies.
"No such favor from me: for three reasons. First, I agree with Sir. J. Herschel that the solicitation is an intrusion to be publicly repelled. Secondly, I do not regret that others should differ from me, think what I may: those others are as good as I, and as well able to think, and as much entitled to their conclusions. Thirdly, even if I did regret, I should be ashamed to put my name to bad chemistry made to do duty for good reasoning. The declaration is an awkward attempt to saturate sophism with truism; but the sophism is left largely in excess.
"I owe the inquisitors a grudge for taking down my conceit of myself. For two months I have crowed in my own mind over my friend Sir J. Herschel, fancying that the promoters instinctively knew better than to bring their fallacies before a writer on logic. Ah! my dear Sir John! thought I, if you had shown yourself to be well up in Barbara Celarent,[[414]] and had ever and anon astonished the natives with the distinction between simpliciter and secundum quid, no autograph-hunters would have baited a trap with non sequitur[[415]] to catch your signature. What can I say now? I hide my diminished head, diminished by the horns which I have been compelled to draw in.
"Those who make personal solicitation for support to an opinion about religion are bound to know their men. The king had a right to Brother Neale's money, because Brother Neale offered it. Had he put his hand into purse after purse by way of finding out all who were of Brother Neale's mind, he would have been justly met by a rap on the knuckles whenever he missed his mark.
"The kind of test before me is the utmost our time will allow of that inquisition into opinion which has been the curse of Christianity ever since the State took Providence under its protection. The writ de hæretico commiserando is little more than the smell of the empty cask: and those who issue it may represent the old woman with her
"O suavis anima, quale in te dicam bonum
Antehac fuisse; tales cum sint reliquiæ."[[416]]