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20 " Before you applaud, my sentiments, it is fit you should understand then perhaps they may not entirely coincide with your own, rejoice in this day, not because I wish to see religion degraded, but because I wish to see.it exalted and purified. By dissolving its alliance with the state, you have given it dignity and independence. You have done it a piece of service which its well-wishers would perhaps never have had courage to render it, but which is the only thing wanted to make it appear in its genuine beauty and lustre. Nobody will now say of me when I am performing the offices of my religion, he is hired to keep up a useful piece of mummery.

- They cannot now say this, and therefore I fee myself raised in my own esteem, and shall speakto them with a confidence and frankness which before this, I never dust venture to assure. We resign, without reluctance, our gold and silver in ages and embroidered vestments; because we have never found that looking upon gold and silver made the heart more pure, or the affections more heavenly; we can also spare our churches, for the heart that wishes to lift itself up to God will never be at a loss for room to do it in ; but we cannot spare our religion ; because, to tell you the truth we never had so much occasion for it. I understand that you accuse us priests of having told the people a great many falsehoods. I suspect this may have been the case ; but, till this day, we have never been allowed to inquire whether the things which we taught them were true or not. You require us formerly to receive them all without proof, and you now would have us reject them all without discrimination ; neither of these modes of