Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/233

are twenty Gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be ſaid, his teſtimony in a court of juſtice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the ſtigma on him. Conſtraint may make him worſe by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obſtinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reaſon and free inquiry are the only effectual agents againſt error. Give a looſe to them, they will ſupport the true religion, by bringing every falſe one of their tribunal, to the teſt of their inveſtigation. They are the natural enemis of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free inquiry, Chriſtianity could never have been introduced.—Had not free inquiery been indulged at the æra of the reformation, the corruptions of Chriſtianity could not have been purged away. If it be reſtrained now, the preſent corruptions will be protected and new ones encouraged. Was the cgovernment to preſcribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in ſuch keeping as our ſouls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food. Government is juſt as infallible too when it fixes ſyſtems in phyſics. Gallileo was ſent to the inquiſition for affirming that the earth was a ſphere: the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth become a globe, and Deſcrates declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex. The government in which he lived was wiſe enough to ſee that this was no queſtion of civil juriſdiction, or we ſhould all have been involved by authority in vor-