Something they must destroy, or they seem to themselves to exist
for no purpose. One set is for destroying the civil power through
the ecclesiastical; another, for demolishing the ecclesiastic
through the civil. They are aware that the worst consequences might
happen to the public in accomplishing this double ruin of church and
state, but they are so heated with their theories that they give
more than hints that this ruin, with all the mischiefs that must
lead to it and attend it, and which to themselves appear quite
certain, would not be unacceptable to them or very remote from their
wishes. A man amongst them of great authority and certainly of great
talents, speaking of a supposed alliance between church and state,
says, "perhaps we must wait for the fall of the civil powers before
this most unnatural alliance be broken. Calamitous no doubt will
that time be. But what convulsion in the political world ought to be a
subject of lamentation if it be attended with so desirable an effect?"
You see with what a steady eye these gentlemen are prepared to view
the greatest calamities which can befall their country.
IT is no wonder, therefore, that with these ideas of everything in
their constitution and government at home, either in church or
state, as illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they
look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm.
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