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Balance of criminality; or, Mental error compared with immoral conduct
Balance of criminality or Mental error compared with immoral conduct Author:Isaac Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: With many, we find, the statement that mental error is venial, passes as an undeniable axiom. On any doubt of this being expressed, a couplet from Pope (but a po... more »or divine) is quoted, as settling the point cooclusively :— " For modes of ftith let furious bigots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right'' Here it is taken for granted, that a life is in the right, if a man is just, and especially if he is benevolent, to his fellow creatures ; as if its regard to man were the only criterion of our conduct, and its regard to God were absolutely nothing. Yet it is evident, that the principle of action, the motive, is often the exact, nay the sole measure, of excellence or malignity. The preaching of Christ may seem to be a good action; yet many preached him out of contention, hoping to add to Paul, who was in bonds, an additional affliction. This base motive made the conduct base. It is taken for granted, too, that if one has any concern for divine truth, one must be a furious bigot. Whereas, an earnest desire to found right conduct upon right principles is not bigotry ; nor is a man necessarily furious because he is in earnest. It is taken for granted, ,too, that bigotry can only be on one side. There are bigots to unbelief as well as to faith ; to modes of scepticism, as truly as to modes of believing. And perhaps not less fury may show itself in those who clamour against religion, as harsh and severe. Men may be uncharitably urgent for charity ; and oppressively insolent for freedom of thinking. They, would confine this liberty to themselves, which is the very principle of bigotry, and in its most hateful, because most barefaced, form. Those who wish to consider mental errors as venial, maintain that a man cannot believe as he pleases, or as he wishes ; that h...« less