Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/215

 receive profit from." He also says, "that religion could not operate for want of a common arbiter, who had impartiality to apply the rule of right, and power to enforce its operations." But these persons seem not to be acquainted with its proper internal strength, or they would not lay so much stress on such poor and heterogeneous supports. They should consider how the christian religion was supported, without the help of any establishment, before the time of Constantine. Is it not true, in fact, that it not only subsisted, but amazingly increased in all that period; when it was so far from being protected by civil authority, that all human powers were combined against it?

If they say it was supported by miracles in all that interval, it behoves them to make good the assertion. On the contrary, it appears from church history, that when christianity was once established, (if I may use that term) by