Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/163

 inquiry in matters of religion, by laying an undue bias upon the mind, if they be not such, as by their express constitutions prevent all inquiry, and preclude every possible effect of it.

Christianity, by being a more spiritual and moral constitution than any other form of religion that ever appeared in the world, requires men to think and act for themselves more accurately than any other. But human establishments, by calling off men's attention from the commandments of God to those of men, tend to defeat the great ends of religion. They are, therefore, incompatible with the genius of christianity.

II. In examining the right of the civil magistrate to establish any mode of religion, or that of the subject to oppose it, the goodness of the religion, or of the mode of it, is not to be taken into the question; but only the propriety (which is the same with the utility) of the civil magistrate as such, interfering in the business. For what the magistrate may think to be