Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/255

 that "the union of civil and ecclesiastical powers in the establishment is in vain, if each individual is to retain entire liberty of judging and acting for himself." Certainly a churchman ought to insist upon receiving some very great advantage in the establishment, as an equivalent for the surrender of this great and important natural right, to judge and act for himself. Upon the principles of this writer, a professed churchman is not at liberty so much as to hear a single sermon by those who have no legal authority to preach, i. e. Dissenters and Methodists (or, as he chuses to call them, sectaries, and enthusiasts;) so that he is cut off from the very means of judging for himself: for certainly this writer cannot have less objection to his parishioners reading the discourses of sectaries and Methodists, than to their hearing them.

This writer, indeed, is inconsistent enough to allow the members of the established church to make an open separation from it, if they cannot lawfully