Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/212

 view of all the real evils that attend the ecclesiastical establishment in England, with respect to knowledge, virtue, commerce, and many other things with which the happiness of states is connected, but more especially with respect to liberty, would be sufficient to deter any legislator from introducing any thing like it into a new state; unless, without thinking at all, he took it for granted that there was no doing without one, or was so weak as to be frighted by the mere clamour of bigots.

5. Though it may be true, that inconvenience would arise from the immediate suppression of religious establishments, it doth not therefore follow, that they were either necessary or expedient; that the nation would have been in a worse state if they had never existed; and that no measures ought to be taken to relax or dissolve them. Were the religion of Mahomet abolished every where at once, no doubt much confusion would be occasioned; yet what christian would, for that reason, wish for the perpetuity of