Page:The History of Liberty.djvu/18

 more confidence in the sagacity and expediency of men, than in the providence of God, and rely more upon the ways and means of men than upon those of heaven. And we have the practical operation of this in its bitter fruits of discord in the state and the most humiliating confusion in the church, where liberty of conscience is oft a mockery, an unmeaning sound. And to remedy these evils, especially those of the latter, a recourse is had to the multiplication of all manner of expedients, that are known by a passion for society making; the true name of which should be society breaking—because they break up society as arranged and constituted by the providence of God into so many petty associations, all of which throw men into new and false positions in respect to one another—, to their duty, and their God: and creates a new code of duties; by which another standard of moral advancement, than that of God’s, is set up, to measure, determine—and dispose of human character and personal worth.

The false light of the age has discovered that every thing is radically and fundamentally wrong; that the arrangements and order of Providence do not suit the advanced state of society; and that the principle of voluntary association is the great panacea for all the moral, religious and political evils, society is heir to: that even Liberty and Christianity must be put under safe restrictions, lest men become, under their unrestrained influence, lawless and wild. This principle of voluntary association, we are to believe will be to the political and moral world, what the principle of gravitation is to the physical. In all their agitations movements, and counter movements you see the practical operations of that social unbelief and want of confidence in the wisdom of God, and in the order and arrangement of his providence. The social heart is suffering from a morbid craving of novelty and change, which gratification and indulgence only render more diseased and craving; and because the social mind lacks that faith, intelligence and wisdom which guide the individual and the nation prosperously and safely. And in proportion as these are wanting, pride, vanity and intolerable egotism take their place to direct and control. And these have discovered that man cannot take care of himself—; that society as founded by the order of Providence—cannot take care of herself; that her interests are too vast and varied too important in kind, and far too numerous in quantity to be committed to the hands of ignorant and perverse men; though we have shewn that God has freely and fully thus committed them. It is not enough that man is a social being—, he must become a gregarious animal, and live, move and have his being in a herd