Beattie, another Christian doctor, towards the close of his celebrated
Essay on the Immutability of Truth, denounces every sincere outspoken
unbeliever as a 'murderer of human souls,' and it being obvious that the
murderer of a single soul must to the 'enlightened' majority of our
people appear an act infinitely more horrible than the butchery of many
bodies, it really does at first view seem 'passing strange' that body
murderers are almost invariably hanged, whilst they who murder 'souls,'
if punished at all, usually escape with some harmless abuse and a year
or two's imprisonment.
Even the 'tolerant' Richard Watson, Lord Bishop of Llandaff, wrote with
contemptuous bitterness of 'Atheistical madmen,' and in his Apology for
the Bible, assured Deistical Thomas Paine, Deism was so much better than
Atheism, he (Bishop Watson) meant 'not to say anything to its
discredit.'
The Rev. Mr. Ward, whose 'Ideal of a Christian Church' spread such
consternation in the anti-popish camp, describes his own hatred of
Protestantism as 'fierce and burning.' Nothing can go beyond that--it is
the _ne plus ultra_ of bigotry, and just such hatred is displayed
towards Atheists by at least nine-tenths of their opponents.
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