you content other men's conscience, real or pretended, by any concessions: follow your own; seek peace and ensue it. You have no symptoms of discontent in the people to their establishment. The churches are too small for their congregations. The livings are too few for their candidates. The spirit of religious controversy has slackened by the nature of things; by act you may revive it. I will not enter into the question how much truth is preferable to peace. Perhaps truth may be far better. But as we have scarcely ever the same certainty in the one that we have in the other I would, unless the truth were evident indeed, hold fast to peace, which has in her company charity, the highest of the virtues. This business appears in two points of view: 1st. Whether it is a matter of grievance; 2d. Whether it is within our province to redress it with propriety and prudence. Whether it comes properly before us on a petition upon matter of grievance, I would not inquire too curiously. I know, technically speaking, that nothing agreeable to law can be considered as a grievance. But an over-attention to the rules of any act does sometimes defeat the ends of it, and I think it does so in this parliamentary act as much at least as in any other. I know many gentlemen think that the very essence of liberty consists in being governed according to law; as if grievances had nothing real and intrinsic; but I cannot be of that opinion. Grievances may subsist by law. Nay, I do not know whether any grievance can be considered as intolerable, until it is established and sanctified by law. If the act of toleration were not perfect, if there were a complaint of it, I would gladly consent to amend it. But when I heard a complaint of a pressure on religious liberty, to my astonishment I find that there was no complaint whatsoever of the insufficiency of the act of king William, nor any attempt to make it more sufficient. The matter therefore does not concern toleration, but establishment; and it is not the rights of private conscience that are in question, but the propriety of the terms which are proposed by law as a title to public emoluments; so that the complaint is not, that there is not toleration of diversity in opinion, but that diversity in opinion is not rewarded by bishoprics, rectories, and collegiate stalls. When gentlemen complain of the subscription as matter of grievance, the complaint arises from confounding private judgment, whose rights are anteriour to law, and the qualifications which the law creates for its own magis tracies, whether civil or religious. To take away from men their lives, their liberty, or their property, those things for the protection of which society was introduced, is great hardship and intolerable tyranny; but to annex any condition you please to benefits artificially created, is the most just, natural, and proper thing in the world. When e novo you form an arbitrary benefit, an advantage, pre-eminence, or emolument, not by nature, but institution, you order and modify it with all the power of a creator over his creature. Such benefits of institution are royalty, nobility, priesthood; all of which you may limit to birth; you might prescribe even shape and stature. The Jewish priesthood was hereditary. Founder's kinsmen have a preference in the election of fellows in many colleges of our universities; the qualifications at All Souls are, that they should be-optimé nati, bené vestiti, mediocriter docti. By contending for liberty in the candidate for orders, you take away the liberty of the elector, which is the people; that is, the state. If they can choose, they may assign a reason for their choice, if they can assign a reason; they may do it in writing, and prescribe it as a condition; they may transfer their authority to their representatives, and enable them to exercise the same. In all human institutions a great part, almost all regulations, are made from the mere necessity of the case, let the theoretical merits of the question be what ther will. For nothing happened at the reformation, but what will happen in all such revolu tions. When tyranny is extreme, and abuses of government intolerable, men resort to the rights of nature to shake it off. When they have done so, the very same principle of ne cessity of human affairs to establish some other authority which shall preserve the order of this new institution, must be obeyed, unti they grow intolerable; and you shall not be suffered to plead original liberty against such an institution. See Holland, Switzerland. If you will have religion publicly practised and publicly taught, you must have a power to say what that religion will be, which you will protect and encourage; and to distinguish it by such marks and characteristics as you in your wisdom shall think fit. As I said before, your determination may be unwise in this as in other matters, but it cannot be unjust, hard, or oppressive, or contrary to the liberty of any man, or in the least degree exceeding your province. It is, therefore, as a grievance, fairly none at all; nothing but what is essential, not only to the order, but to the liberty of the whole community. The petitioners are so sensible of the force of these arguments, that they do admit of one subscription, that is, to the scripture. I shall not consider how forcibly this argument militates with their whole principle against subscription as an usurpation on the rights of providence: I content myself with submitting to the consideration of the house, that if that rule were once established, it must have some authority to enforce the obedience; because you well know a law without a sanction will be ridiculous. Somebody must sit in judgment on his conformity; he must judge on the charge; if he judges, he must ordain execution. These things are necessary consequences one of the other; and then this judgment is an equal and a superior violation of private judgment; the right of private judgment is violated in a much greater degree than it can be by any previous subscription. You come round again to subscription as the best and easiest method: men must judge of his doctrine, and judge definitively; so that either his test is nugatory, or men must first or last prescribe his public interpretation of it. If the church be, as Mr. Locke defines it, a voluntary society, &c. then it is essential to this voluntary society to exclude from her voluntary society any member she thinks fit, or to oppose the entrance of any upon such conditions as she thinks proper. For otherwise it would be a voluntary society acting contrary to her will, which is a contradiction in terms. And this is Mr. Locke's opinion, the advocate for the largest scheme of ecclesiastical and civil toleration to protestants, (for to papists he allows no toleration at all.) They dispute only the extent of the subscription; they therefore tacitly admit the equity of the principle itself. Here they do not resort to the original rights of nature, because it is manifest that those rights give as large a power of controverting every part of scripture, or even the authority of the whole, as they do to the controverting any articles whatsoever. When a man requires you to sign an assent to scripture, he requires you to assent to a doctrine as contrary to your natural understanding and to your rights of free inquiry, as those who require your conformity to any one article whatsoever. The subscription to scripture is the most astonishing idea I ever heard, and will amount to just nothing at all. Gentlemen so acute have not, that I have heard, ever thought of answering a plain obvious question-What is that scripture, to which they are content to subscribe? They do not think that a book becomes of divine authority, because it is bound in blue morocco, and is printed by John Basket and his assigns. The bible is a vast collection of different treatises: a man, who holds the divine authority of one, may consider the other as merely human. What is his canon? The Jewish-St. Jerome's-that of the thirtynine articles-Luther's-? There are some who reject the canticles, others six of the epistles-the apocalypse has been suspected even as heretical, and was doubted of for many ages, and by many great men. As these nar row the canon, others have enlarged it by admitting St. Barnabas's epistles, the apostolic constitutions, to say nothing of many other gospels. Therefore to ascertain scripture you must have one article more; and you must define what that scripture is which you mean to teach. There are, I believe, very few who, when scripture is so ascertained, do not see the absolute necessity of knowing what general doctrine a man draws from it, before he is sent down authorized by the state to teach it as pure doctrine, and receive a tenth of the produce of our lands. The scripture is no one summary of doctrines regularly digested, in which a man could not mistake his way; it is a most venerable, but most multifarious collection of the records of the divine œconomy; a collection of an infinite variety, of cosmogony, theology, history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation, ethics, carried through different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes. It is necessary to sort out what is intended for example, what only as narrative, what to be understood literally, what figuratively, where one precept is to be controuled and modified by another-what is used directly, and what only as an argument ad hominem-what is temporary, and what of perpetual obligation-what appropriated to one state and to one set of men, and what the general duty of all Christians. If we do not get some security for this, we not only permit, but we actually pay for all the dangerous fanaticism which can be produced to corrupt our people, and to derange the public worship of the country. We owe the best we can (not infallibility, but prudence) to the subject, first sound doctrine, then ability to use it. ON THE SECOND READING OF A BILL FOR THE RELIEF I ASSURE you, sir, that the honourable gentleman, who spoke last but one, need not be in the least fear that I should make a war of particles upon his opinion, whether the church of England should, would, or ought to be alarmed. I am very clear that this house has no one reason in the world to think she is alarmed by the bill brought before you. It is something extraordinary that the only symptom of alarm in the church of England should appear in the petition of some dissenters; with whom, I believe, very few in this house are yet acquainted; and of whom you know no more than that you are assured by the honourable gentleman, that they are not Mahometans. Of the church we know they are not, by the name that they assume. They are then dissenters. The first symptom of an alarm comes from some dissenters assembled round the lines of Chatham: these lines become the security of the church of England! The honourable gentleman, in speaking of the lines of Chatham, tells us, that they serve not only for the security of the wooden walls of England, but for the defence of the church of England. I suspect, the wooden walls of England secure the lines of Chatham, rather than the lines of Chatham secure the wooden walls of England. Sir, the church of England, if only defended by this miserable petition upon your table, must, I am afraid, upon the principles of true fortification, be soon destroyed. But fortunately her walls, bulwarks and bastions, are constructed of other materials than of stubble and straw; are built up with the strong and stable matter of the gospel of liberty, and founded on a true, constitutional, legal establishment. But, sir, she has other securities; she has the security of her own doctrines; she *This speech is given partly from the manu- This bill was opposed by petitions from se- has the security.of the piety, the sanctity of But the honourable gentleman has men- The first of these is a contradiction in terms. Liberty under a connivance! Connivance is a relaxation from slavery, not a definition of liberty. What is connivance, but a state under which all slaves live? If I was to describe slavery, I would say with those who hate it, it is living under will, not under law: if, as it is stated by its advocates, I would say, that, like earthquakes, like thunder, or other wars the elements make upon mankind, it happens rarely, it occasionally comes now and then upon people, who upon ordinary occasions enjoy the same legal government of liberty. Take it under the description of those who would soften those features, the state of slavery and connivance is the same thing. If the liberty enjoyed be a liberty not of toleration, but of connivance, the only question is, whe ther establishing such by a law is an attack upon Christianity. Toleration an attack upon Christianity! What then, are we come to this pass, to suppose that nothing can support Christianity, but the principles of persecu tion? Is that then the idea of establishment? Is it then the idea of Christianity itself, that it ought to have establishments, that it ought to have laws against dissenters, but the breach of which laws is to be connived at? What a picture of toleration; what a picture of laws, of establishments; what a picture of religious and civil liberty! I am persuaded the honourable gentleman does not see it in this light. But these very terms become the strongest reasons for my support of the bill; for I am persuaded that toleration, so far from being an attack upon Christianity, becomes the best and surest support that possibly can be given to it. The Christian religion itself arose without establishment, arose even without toleration; and whilst its own principles were not tolerated, it conquered all the powers of darkness, it conquered all the powers of the world. The moment it began to depart from these principles, it converted the establishment into tyranny; it subverted its foundations from that very hour. Zealous as I am for the principle of an establishment, so just an abhorrence do I conceive against whatever may shake it. I know nothing but the supposed necessity of persecution that can make an establishment disgusting. I would have toleration a part of establishment, as a principle favourable to Christianity, and as a part of Christianity. All seem agreed that the law, as it stands, inflicting penalties on all religious teachers and on schoolmasters, who do not sign the thirty-nine articles of religion, ought not to be executed. We are all agreed that the law is not good; for that, I presume, is undoubtedly the idea of a law that ought not to be executed. The question therefore is, whether in a well-constituted commonwealth, which we desire ours to be thought, and I trust, intend that it should be, whether in such a commonwealth it is wise to retain those laws which it is not proper to execute. A penal law, not ordinarily put in execution, seems to me to be a very absurd and a very dangerous thing. For if its principle be right, if the object of its prohibitions and penalties be a real evil, then you do in effect permit that very evil, which not only the reason of the thing, but your very law, declares ought not to be permitted; and thus it reflects exceedingly on the wisdom, and conBequently derogates not a little from the authority of a legislature, who can at once forbid and suffer, and in the same breath promulgate penalty and indemnity to the same persons, and for the very same actions. But if the object of the law be no moral or political evil, then you ought not to hold even a terrour to those, whom you ought certainly not to punish -for if it is not right to hurt, it is neither right nor wise to menace. Such laws, therefore, as they must be defective either in justice or wisaom, or both, so they cannot exist without a considerable degree of danger. Take them which way you will, they are prest with ugly alternatives. 1st. All penal laws are either upon popular prosecution, or on the part of the crown. Now, if they may be roused from their sleep, whenever a minister thinks proper, as instruments of oppression, then they put vast bodies of men into a state of slavery and court dependence; since their liberty of conscience and their power of executing their functions depend entirely on his will. I would have no man derive his means of continuing any function, or his being restrained from it, but from the laws only; they should be his only superiour sovereign lords. 2d. They put statesmen and magistrates into a habit of playing fast and loose with the laws, straining or relaxing them as may best suit their political purposes; and, in that light, tend to corrupt the executive power through all its offices. 3d. If they are taken up on popular actions, their operation in that light also is exceedingly evil. They become the instruments of private malice, private avarice, and not of public regulation they nourish the worst of men to tho prejudice of the best, punishing tender consciences, and rewarding informers. Shall we, as the honourable gentleman tells us we may with perfect security, trust to the manners of the age? I am well pleased with the general manners of the times; but the desultory execution of penal laws, the thing I condemn, does not depend on the manners of the times. I would however have the laws tuned in unison with the manners-very dissonant are a gentle country and cruel laws; very dissonant that your reason is furious, but your passions moderate, and that you are always equitable except in your courts of justice. I will beg leave to state to the house ono argument, which has been much relied upon-that the dissenters are not unanimous upon this business; that many persons are alarmed; that it will create a disunion among the dissenters. When any dissenters, or any body of people, come here with a petition, it is not the number of people, but the reasonableness of the request, that should weigh with the house. A body of dissenters come to this house, and say, Tolerate us-we desire neither the parochial advantage of tythes, nor dignities, nor the stalls of your cathedrals: No! let the venerable orders of the hierarchy exist with all And shall I tell them, I their advantages. reject your just and reasonable petition, not because it shakes the church, but because thore are others, while you lie grovelling upon the earth, that will kick and bite you? Judge which of these descriptions of men comes with a fair request that which says, Sir, I desire liberty for my own, because I trespass on no man's conscience ;-or the other, which says, I desire that these men should not be suffered to act according to their consciences, though I am tolerated to act according to mine. But I sign a body of articles, which is my title to toleration; I sign no more, because more are against my conscience. But I desire that you will not tolerate these men, because they will not go so far as I, though I desire to be tolerated, who will not go as far as you. No, imprison them, if they come within five miles of a corporate town, because they do not believe what I do in point of doctrines. Shall I not say to these men, arrangez vous canaille. You, who are not the predominant power, will not give to others the reluxation under which you are yourself suffered to live. I have as high an opinion of the doctrines of the church as you. I receive them implicitly, or I put my own explanation on them, or take that which seems to me to come best recommended by authority. There are those of the dissenters who think more rigidly of the doctrine of the articles relative to predestination, than others do. They sign the article relative to it er animo and literally. Others allow a latitude of construction. These two parties are in the church, as well as among the dissenters: yet, in the church, we live quietly under the same roof. I do not see why, as long as providence gives us no further light into this great mystery, we should not leave things as the divine wisdom has left them. But suppose all these things to me to be clear, (which providence however seems to have left obscure,) yet whilst dissenters claim a toleration in things, which seeming clear to me, are obscure to them, without entering into the merit of the articles, with what face can these men say, Tolerate us, but do not tolerate them? Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none. The discussion this day is not between establishment on one hand, and toleration on the other; but between those who, being tolerated themselves, refuse toleration to others. That power should be puffed up with pride, that authority should degenerate into rigour, if not laudable, is but too natural. But this proceeding of theirs is much beyond the usual allowance to human weakness; it not only is shocking to our reason, but it provokes our indignation. Quid domini facient, audent cum talia fures? It is not the proud prelate thundering in his commission court, but a pack of manumitted slaves, with the lash of the beadle flagrant on their backs, and their legs still galled with their fetters, that would drive their brethren into that prison-house from whence they have just been permitted to escape. If, instead of puzzling themselves in the depths of the divine counsels, they would turn to the mild morality of the gospel, they would read their own condemnation-O, thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desiredst me: shouidest not thou also have compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee. In my opinion, sir, a magistrate, whenever he goes to put any restraint upon religious freedom, can only do it upon this ground, that the person dissenting does not dissent from the scruples of ill-informed conscience, but from a party ground of dissension, in order to raise a faction in the state. We give, with regard to rites and ceremonies, an indulgence to tender consciences. But if dissent is at all punished in any country, if at all it can be punished upon any pretence, it is upon a presumption, not that a man is supposed to differ conscientiously from the establishment, but that he resists truth for the sake of faction; that he abets diversity of opinions in religion to distract the state, and to destroy the peace of his country. This is the only plausible, for there is no true ground of persecution. As the laws stand, therefore let us see how we have thought fit to act. If there is any one thing within the competency of a magistrate with regard to religion, it is this, that he has a right to direct the exte riour ceremonies of religion; that whilst interiour religion is within the jurisdiction of God alone, the external part, bodily action, is within the province of the chief governour. Hooker, and all the great lights of the church, have constantly argued this to be a part within the province of the civil magistrate; but look at the act of toleration of William and Mary, there you will see the civil magistrate has not only dispensed with those things which are more particularly within his province, with those things which faction might be supposed to take up for the sake of making visible and external divisions, and raising a standard of revolt, but has also, from sound politic consi derations, relaxed on those points which are confessedly without his province. The honourable gentleman, speaking of the heathens, certainly could not mean to recommend any thing that is derived from that impure source. But he has praised the tolerating spirit of the heathens. Well! but the honourable gentleman will recollect that heathens, that polytheists, must permit a number of divinities. It is the very essence of its constitu tion. But was it ever heard that polytheism tolerated a dissent from a polytheistic establishment? the belief of one God only? Never never! Sir, they constantly carried on persecu |