Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/185

 power, independent of all human authority.

Should they not now, therefore, be apprized, that their ghostly superiors have, of late, renounced the principle on which they have hitherto yielded them obedience, and that their clergy chuse to rank with justices of the peace, and other civil and crown officers, that they may, accordingly, change the mode of respect they have hitherto paid them?

Not that I wonder that the advocates for the church of England have changed the ground of their defence, and that they are not a little embarassed with their temporal supreme head. It was a thing that was quite new in the christian church, a thing that was by no means their own choice, originally, but was forced upon them, and what they are now obliged to make the best of; so that if one hypothesis will not support the innovation, they must have recourse to another.