Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/16

x , and those of the author of the Confessional, and his respectable friends, to procure a redress of only a few of the more intolerable grievances the clergy labour under, and a removal of some of the most obvious and capital defects in the established church, has more weight than a hundred arguments drawn from theory only, in demonstrating the folly of erecting such complicated and unwieldly systems of policy, and in showing the mischiefs that attend them.

Little did the founders of church establishiments consider, of what unspeakable importance it is to the interests of religion, that the ambition of christian ministers be circumscribed within narrow limits, when they left them such unbounded scope for courting preferment. But the interests of religion have been very little considered by the founders of church establishments. Indeed if they had considered them, how little were they qualified to make provision for them? I need not say what I feel, when I find so much in the writings