It will be illuminated with other lights. It will be perfumed
with other incense than the infectious stuff which is imported by
the smugglers of adulterated metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical
establishment should want a revision, it is not avarice or rapacity,
public or private, that we shall employ for the audit, or receipt,
or application of its consecrated revenue. Violently condemning
neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since heats are subsided, the
Roman system of religion, we prefer the Protestant, not because we
think it has less of the Christian religion in it, but because, in our
judgment, it has more. We are Protestants, not from indifference,
but from zeal.
* Sit igitur hoc ab initio persuasum civibus, dominos esse
omnium rerum ac moderatores, deos; eaque, quae gerantur, eorum geri
vi, ditione, ac numine; eosdemque optime de genere hominum mereri;
et qualis quisque sit, quid agat, quid in se admittat, qua mente,
qua pietate colat religiones intueri; piorum et impiorum habere
rationem. His enim rebus imbutae mentes haud sane abhorrebunt ab utili
et a vera sententia. Cic. de Legibus, 1. 2.
We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his
constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our
reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in
the moment of riot and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn
out of the alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously
boiling, we should uncover our nakedness by throwing off that
Christian religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort,
and one great source of civilization amongst us and amongst many other
nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will
not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading
superstition might take place of it.
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