Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/474

464 though nature appears to take very great care, not to signalize particular families with royal or noble marks, Mr. Adams says she dictates an establishment of orders; he will need no assistance in discovering the indissoluble union between a political system, comprising orders, and a religious system, comprising an established sect; nor in estimating the value of the policy of the United States, from its not requiring any association with political atheism.

The world is indebted to Mr Jefferson for an argument, condensed into a law, and recorded for the use of posterity in the statute book of Virginia, which political atheism has never yet adventured to face. Like the serpent, uncovered in its lurking place, it indeed hisses at the hand which removed the concealment, But the long acquiescence in the principles of this law, may be fairly considered as having ripened them into maxims, asserted by our policy, and established by experience.

The religious policy of orders considers man as a perishing physical being; and treats him with errours and idols, as a savage is amused with beads and trinkets; that of the United States, considers him as a moral being; and inspired with a hope that his attainments are not concluded in this world, encourages him to look towards truth and God. The old theory believing there is no God, usurps the regulation of the intercourse between its phantoms, soul and deity, by laws operating upon body; because it discerns no danger in using religion to bribe, deceive and oppress; the new, believing that there is a God, shrinks from the impiety of thrusting laws between God and spirit, which neither can be made to obey; because it expects retribution in another world, for its doings in this. Such laws, by the old system, are called pious, by the new, impious frauds. The old system pretends to govern God and spirit; the new humbly subordinates itself to God; the old, because it believes in neither; the new, because it believes in both. In short, the deity of the old political theories is admitted by themselves to be "a pious idol;" whereas the deity of the policy of the United States is the eternal God.