Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/264

 when they disbelieve and ridicule them. But I fancy that I can put my reader into possession of the secret reason, why nothing of this kind occurs in the writings of the friends of church authority. Men who have come this way into the church have always proved its firmest friends. Having made no bones of their own scruples, they pay no regard to the scruples of others. A conscientious bigot to the church is not half so much to be depended upon, as the man who believes not a single word of the matter, nor is he so fit to be admitted into the cabinet council of church-power.

Such, my gentle reader, are the maxims, and such the reasoning with which this writer stands forth to support the declining cause of church-authority. For he justly complains, p. 5. that "notwithstanding the members of the church of England have, from its foundation, been carefully instructed in these points, by its ablest defenders, yet, so capricious is the public taste, that these great writers have gradually fallen into