Crawford, Charles (b. 1752)

Letters from Academicus to Eugenius: On Various Subjects

London

printed for the author, sold by Thomas Evans

1773

Meek-eyed Toleration may, gentle as a dove, sit "enthroned upon the benevolent hearts of mannkind"

Again, I must say to your, that I have put these questions for the sake of entertaining belief, and not because I am inclined to infidelity. Lastly, let me aske you if the Christian religion has not been of temporal disservice to mankind?--Before the propagation of religion of Jesus, the world enjoyed the charming sweets of universal toleration. No Pagan hated Pagan (in their good-tempered religion) because he worshipped other gods; or his own in a different manner form himself. In the course of thousands of years, no man, except amongst the Athenians, suffered death, or even punishment, for the sake of his religious opinions. It was then that meek-ey'd Toleration, as gentle as the dove, sat enthroned upon the benevolent hearts of mankind. But when the gospel of Christ began to be published to the world, that sweet tranquility vanished in a moment--That gospel (in the words of it's great author) sat brother against brother, and nation against nation--That gospel appeared as destructive to the race of man, as war, pestilence, and famine. The time would fail me to speak of the mischied it has occasioned in later days--of the merciless tribunals of the bloody duke of Alva, for the punishment of hereticks in the Low Countries--of the cruel treatment of the hugonots in France--of the horrid persecution there under Lewis the fourteenth.--In short, all the parts of Europe were deluged with the blood of unhappy heretics.--The demon of discord seemd to reign triumphant over this whole quarter of the globe--Persecution, which christianity produced, though not so proud and elate here as in many other parts, yet even here flew like a rapacious Vulture--here gorged her hideous maw--here raised aloft her towering crest, and joyously clapt her crimson wings.
(pp. 64-7, in. 56-8)

Government::Throne::Sitting

Searching Gale's Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

2 entries in ESTC (1772, 1773).

See Letters from Academicus to Eugenius: on Various Subjects. (London: Printed for the author, and sold by John Wheble, No. 114, Fleetstreet, 1772). <Link to ESTC>

Text from Letters from Academicus to Eugenius: on Various Subjects. (London: printed for the author, and sold by Thomas Evans, in Pater-Noster-Row, 1773).

01/08/2004