Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/473

Rh tyrants; for giving to a church a coactive power to punish intentions by spiritual courts, and thus supply a defect in civil society, which can only punish acts; as an engine bound to render its utmost services to the government for its wages; as a means to prevent the rivalry of sects, by admitting one only to a share of power and emoluments; as a compact founded in reason and nature, equally with the original compact between the government and the people; as one to be made between the government and the largest religious sect in society; as entitled to a test law for its security against the tolerated sects, now inflamed by the advantages of the established sect; as giving no cause of umbrage to other sects by its exclusive privileges and emoluments, because rewards are not sanctions of civil law, wherefore a member of society has a right only to protection, and magistrates an arbitrary power to dispose of all places of honour or profit; as preventing the persecutions, rebellions, revolutions and loss of liberty, caused by the intestine struggles of religious "sects." And he concludes, "in a word, an established religion, with a test law, is the universal voice of nature."

Nature, according to the bishop, dictates an establishment of one religious sect; according to Mr. Adams, of three civil sects; and according to both, for the purpose of preventing persecutions, rebellions, revolutions and loss of liberty. She dictates, according to one author, that no regard is to be paid to truth in the selection of the established religion; according to the other, that no regard is to be paid to talents, in selecting kings or nobles; preferring the size of the sect to the one, and lineage to the other. Warburton utters the religious policy of the system of orders, and that system adheres to the religious policy of Warburton. A complete parallel would disclose an indissoluble affinity, but as the reader knows, that though God has made a diversity of opinion a quality of human nature, the bishop says, that nature dictates the establishment of one religion, or a repeal by man of this diversity; and that