5

38 LIFE OF TOLAND.
most arrogant and confident, I assure your lordship,
that the purity of religion, and the prosperity
of the state
have ever been my chiefest aim.
Civil liberty, and religious toleration, as the most
desirable things in this world;
the most conducing
to peace, plenty, knowledge, and every kind
of happiness, have been the two main objects of
all my writings. But, as by liberty, I did not
mean licentiousness ; so, by toleration, I did not
mean indifference, and much less an approbation
of every religion I could suffer. To be more particular,
I solemnly profess to your lordship,
that
the religion taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles,
but not as since corrupted by the subtractions,
additions, and other alterations of any particular
man, or company of men, is that which I
infinitely prefer before all others. I do over and
over again, repeat Christ and his apostles, exclusive
of either oral traditions, or the determinations
of synods, adding, what I declared before to tlie
world, that religion, as it came from their
hands,
was no less plain and pure, than useful and instructive
;
man, it
and that, as being the business of every
was equally understood by every body.
For Christ did not institute one religion for the
learned and another for the vulgar," kr.
In 1721,
Dr. Hare published a book, entitled
Scriptt/re Truth vindicated, from the misrepre-'
sentatiotis of the Lord bishop of Bangor, &c. ;
and,
ill the preface, takes occasion to obisotve, that