"It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing opinions. Unnatural; for Understanding being a thing wholly spiritual, cannot be restrained, and therefore neither punished by corporal afflictions. It is in alienâ republicâ, a matter of another world; you may as well cure the colic by brushing a man's clothes, or fill a man's belly with a syllogism: these things do not communicate in matter, and therefore neither in action nor passion; and since all punishments in a prudent government punish the offender to prevent a future crime, and so it proves more medicinal than vindictive, the punitive act being in order to the cure and prevention: and since no punishment of the body can cure a disease in the soul, it is disproportionable in nature, and in all civil government, to punish where the punishment can do no good. It may be an act of tyranny, but never of justice. For is an opinion ever the more true or false for being persecuted?"
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Θεολογία Εκλεκτική: Of the Liberty of Prophesying (1647), Section 13
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jeremy_Taylor
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Jeremy Taylor
Jeremy Taylor (1613 – August 13 1667) was a clergyman in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of writing.
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