Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/268

 church ever so desirous of receiving instruction, either for their own benefit, or that of their teachers, what proficiency could they be expected to make, when their ablest masters did not teach the same general doctrines?

If this hath been the case, even from the foundation of this church (which, in proportion to its occasions, has been blest with so many able defenders) how much more embarrassed must her members have been since the publication of the Confessional, when (if I be rightly informed, for I have not yet read any of them myself) almost every oppugner of that excellent work has adopted a different system of church-authority; so that, as the controversy proceeds, we may expect to be entertained with the exhibition of as many crude systems of church power, as there are said to have been unformed animals in Egypt, after an inundation of the Nile. I do not know what we should do after such another inundation, but that these half-formed beings generally perish as soon as they have shewn any signs of life.