is a true worshipper of the divinity, though he refuses to kneel at the ordinary altars, and has endeavoured to frame a liturgy for himself.
I do not give much credit to the motives of the prosecutors of Queen Mab, because it attacks the received notions of a divinity; or because it disputes the authenticity of the Jewish and Christian revelations. The Lord Chief Justice Abbott declares it is not illegal to doubt the truth of Christianity, provided such doubts be not expressed in a reviling manner:—but if it be not illegal to doubt, no mode of expressing doubt can be illegal. It were wiser to leave reviling to neglect. The decision of twelve Christians is no better proof of the truth of Christianity, than the verdict of twelve Mahometans of the truth of the divine mission of Mahomet.
Mr. Shelley, in his Vision of Ahasuerus, the wandering Jew, certainly treats with very little ceremony the Jewish and the Christian revelations:—but his objections admit of a most easy reply—one which he himself furnishes. His deity, "Necessity," is to the full as answerable for all the deeds of horror committed in the name of any other deity, as the peculiar being whose pretended worship authorized the barbarities. Mr. Shelley declares―
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