Fear of punishment for writing truth is the grand cause
why their books contain so little of it. If Bacon had openly treated
Christianity as mere superstition, will any one say that his life would
have been worth twenty-four hours purchase. He lived at a time when
heresy, to say nothing of Atheism, was _rewarded_ with death. Bacon was
not the man to be ambitious of such a reward. Few great geniuses are.
Philosophers seldom covet martyrdom, and hence it came to pass that few
of them would run the terrible risk of provoking bigotted authority by
the 'truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' concerning
religion. In our own day the smell of a faggot would be too much for the
nostrils of, that still unamiable but somewhat improved animal, called
the public. One delightful as well as natural consequence is, that
philosophical writers do ever and anon deal much more freely with
religion than its professors are _disposed_, though _compelled_, to
tolerate. But, even now, with all our boasted liberty of conscience, not
one in one thousand of those who _think_ truth about religion dare
express it.
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