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The unspotted purity of Priestley's life, the strictness of his performance of every duty, his transparent sincerity, the unostentatious and deep-seated piety which breathes through all his correspondence, are in themselves a sufficient refutation of the hypothesis, invented by bigots to cover uncharitableness, that such opinions as his must arise from moral defects.
Among them all there are hypocrites and bigots, doubtless, but there are also earnest and devout souls, seeking something that is higher than themselves, "a city set upon a hill." Why do they not understand one another? Why do they fight and curse one another? Do they not all come to humble themselves, to pray, to seek the light?
Lord Coleridge also deserves my thanks for the handsome manner in which he seconded my efforts to repudiate the odious charge of "indecency," which had been manufactured by the bigots after my imprisonment. These are his lordship's words: "Mr. Foote is anxious to have it impressed on your minds that he is not a licentious writer, and that this word does not fairly apply to his publications.
The Parliament, still agitated and anxious, had at last enregistered the edict relating to non-Catholics. Public opinion, like the government, supported it eagerly; the principles of tolerance which had prompted it were henceforth accepted by all; certain bishops and certain bigots were still trying to hinder this first step towards a legal status for a long while refused to Protestants.
On the one hand are those who are too ready to accept new ideas without proper examination. They are "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine." At the other extreme stand the narrow, self-righteous bigots who absolutely refuse to even examine the claim of any truth they do not already possess. They know it all without finding it out.
"Anyone," said his enemies, "could smell what that meant who had not a wooden nose." In brief, he was a liberal Christian, both in theory and practice, and he nobly confronted in consequence the wrath of bigots on both sides. At a later period the most zealous Calvinists called him Pope John, and the opinions to which he was to owe such appellations had already been formed in his mind.
Yet 'tis well! for precious is the rest, In that narrow house the sleep is calm; There, with rapture sorrow leaves the breast, Man's afflictions there no longer harm. Slander now may wildly rave o'er thee, And temptation vomit poison fell, O'er the wrangle on the Pharisee, Murderous bigots banish thee to hell!
The Tudors were a coarse, fierce race; but it will not do to lay the faults of their times upon them only. Look at Elizabeth's ministers. They had about as much notion of religious tolerance as they had of Professor Wheatstone's telegraph. It was not a growth of that age. Milverton. I do not know. You have Cardinal Pole and the Earl of Essex, both tolerant men in the midst of bigots. Ellesmere.
It is not for you that the Physiology of Marriage is addressed, for you are not married and may you never be married. You herd of bigots, snails, hypocrites, dotards, lechers, booted for pilgrimage to Rome, disguised and marked, as it were, to deceive the world. Go back, you scoundrels, out of my sight! Gallows birds are ye all now in the devil's name will you not begone?
This was the case with Coubitant; who, though totally uninfluenced by any love or fear of the Great Mahneto whom he professed to worship, was yet like many other bigots of various countries and creeds keenly jealous of any innovations in the religion of his nation; and ready to oppose, and even to exterminate, all who attempted to subvert it.
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