"And then comes a second and worse danger. Crushed into self, and his own
conscience and _schema mundi_, he loses the opportunity of correcting his
impression of the voice of God within, by the testimony of the voice of God
without; and so he begins to mistake more and more the voice of that very
flesh of his, which he fancies he has conquered, for the voice of God,
and to become, without knowing it, an autotheist. And out of that springs
eclecticism, absence of tenderness _for_ men, for want of sympathy _with_
men; as he makes his own conscience his standard for God, so he makes his
own character the standard for men; and so he becomes narrow, hard, and
if he be a man of strong will and feelings, often very inhuman and cruel.
This is the history of thousands-of Jeromes, Lauds, Puritans who scourged
Quakers, Quakers who cursed Puritans; nonjurors, who though they would die
rather than offend their own conscience in owning William, would plot with
James to murder William, or to devastate England with Irish Rapparees and
Auvergne dragoons. This, in fact, is the spiritual diagnosis of those many
pious persecutors, who though neither hypocrites or blackguards themselves,
have used both as instruments of their fanaticism.
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