"There is no proper boundary to human investigation," says the doctor, "but the capacity of the human mind. Whatever the faculties enable it to understand, it ought to examine without any restraint on the freedom of its inquiry, and without any other limit to its extent than that which its great Author has fixed, by withholding from it the power to proceed farther. When the means of conducting the human understanding to its highest perfection shall have become generally understood, this freedom of inquiry will not only be universally allowed, but early and anxiously inculcated, as a duty of primary and essential obligation."
Gentlemen, I now beg you to listen to the extract I am about to read from Lord Brougham's Inaugural Address to the University of Glasgow.
"As men will no longer suffer themselves to be led blindfold in Ignorance, so will they no more yield to the vile principle of judging and treating their fellow-creatures, not according to the intrinsic merit of their actions, but according to the accidental and involuntary coincidence of their opinions. The great truth has finally gone forth to the ends of the earth, that man shall no more render ACCOUNT TO MAN FOR HIS BELIEF, OVER WHICH HE HAS HIMSELF NO CONTROL.
"Henceforward nothing shall prevail upon us to praise or to blame any one for that which he can no more change than he can the hue of his skin or the height of his stature. Henceforward, treating with entire respect those who conscientiously differ from ourselves, the only practical effect of the difference will be, to make us enlighten the ignorance, on one side or the other, from which it springs, by instructing them, if it be theirs, ourselves, if it be our own; to the end that the only kind of unanimity may be produced which is desirable among rational beings,--the agreement proceeding from full conviction after the freest discussion."--Lord Brougham.
Gentlemen, after hearing these splendid passages, will it be possible for you to sanction a renewal of persecution to crush freedom of opinion?
Gentlemen of the Jury,--I now come to the next point in the argument. Having, I hope, successfully proved the right of free inquiry and the free publication of opinions, I will proceed to show, by a reference to past events, that it is highly important that this right should be preserved, and handed down to our latest posterity unimpaired. Gentlemen, it has been a uniform practice, from the earliest records of time, to stigmatize those who introduce new truths, or who attack the existing institutions of a country, as infidels, and to fix upon them all sorts of opprobious epithets.
"In all ages new doctrines have been branded as impious; and Christianity itself has offered no exception to this rule. The Greeks and Romans charged Christianity with 'impiety and novelty.' In Cave's Primitive Christianity we are informed 'that the Christians were everywhere accounted a pack of Atheists, and their religion the Atheism.' They were denominated; 'mountebank impostors,' and 'men of a desperate and unlawful faction.' They were represented as 'destructive and pernicious to human society,' and were accused of 'sacrilege, sedition, and high treason.' The same system of misrepresentation and abuse was practised by the Roman Catholics against the Protestants at the Reformation. Some called their dogs Calvin; and others transformed Calvin into Cain,' In France, 'the old stale calumnies, formerly invented against the first Christians, were again revived by Demochares, a doctor of the Sorbonne, pretending that all the disasters of the state were to be attributed to Protestants alone.'"--*Combe on the Constitution of Man.
In our own enlightened country, where the importance of truth--and free inquiry as a means of its attainment--is beginning to be appreciated, a different practice should prevail. We ought not to persist in this unmanly course. Recollect, Gentlemen, the Prophets of the Jews were blasphemers against the established religions of their day. Did that deter them from denouncing the idolatry and false religions of the surrounding nations? Elijah is represented as ridiculing the God of the Moabites in a most offensive manner: "And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, 'Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking f or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked.'" 1 Kings xviii. 27. And in Judea, Jesus and his Apostles were charged as blasphemers against Judaism, or the religion established by Moses. We have a remarkable proof of this in the case of Stephen, recorded in the 6th and 7th chapters of the Acts of the Apostles.
"And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.
"Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God.