25 Dec r 1814

Jug Util

12

II Sub Rev.

6

Heterodoxy is neither more nor less than the entertaining an opinion different from that of him whose opinion is taken for the standard. But as between A and B be they who they may which is he whose opinion is the proper standard? the standard to which the other ought to be made conformable. Between the opinion of A and the opinion of B there is by the supposition a certain distance. True but in which ever way measured this distance is it not the same? If between your opinion and mine there is a certain distance is it not as great from mine to yours as from yours to mine. True: but if either of us is the tyrant the legitimate tyrant of the whole human race, then and not otherwise, so it is that how true the opinion is the proper the universal standard, and on the part of every other person to entertain an opinion in any degree distant from it is an offence.

Ah! how little do they know—how far are they from so much as suspecting—that in these terms by which in those latter days the gravest imputation has been understood to be conveyed, not any the slightest imputation at all was originally contained. But little by little as disputes about things unintelligible grew fiercer and fiercer, that one of two opposite sets of disputants which had on its side the virtue of flesh, set up its own Jesus [...?] for the standard to the other, every <.^.^.> standard of rectitude from which every deviation <.^.^.> punished as an offence.

10.

Heterodoxy is the entertaining of opinions from his whose opinion is the standard. B's opinion is as far from A's as A's from B's. Only upon the supposition that A is the lawful tyrant of the human race, is B's opinion more of an offence than A's.

11.

Little do men know that which is and in so many minds the gravest of imputations was at first no imputation at all: nor would ever have been so but that one of two disputants got the power to make the other suffer.