Page:A Vindication of Natural Society - Burke (1756).djvu/91

 covered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what Things were in Property, and what common. In this Uncertainty, (uncertain even to the Professors, an Ægyptian Darkness to the rest of Mankind) the contending Parties felt themselves more effectually ruined by the Delay than they could have been by the Injustice of any Decision. Our Inheritances are become a Prize for Disputation; and Disputes and Litigations are become an Inheritance.

The Professors of Artificial Law have always walked hand in hand with the Professors of Artificial Theology. As their End, in confounding the Reason of Man, and abridging his Natural Freedom, is exactly the same, they have adjusted the Means to that End in a Way entirely similar. The Divine thunders out his Anathemas with more Noise and Terror against the Breach of one of his positive Institutions, or the Neglect of some of his trivial Forms, than against the Neglect or