Page:Thoughts on a French invasion.pdf/19

             to the People of Great Britain.                19.

There is perhaps little difference in the strength of memory, in the acuteness of discernment, in the soli- dity of judgement, in any of the intellectual powers on which knowledge depends, between a statesman and a manufacturer, between the most learned divine and a mechanic: the chief difference consists in their talents being applied to different subjects. All promote both the public good and their own, when they act within their proper spheres; and all do harm to themselves and others, when they go out of them. You would view with contempt a statesman who should undertake to regulate a great manufactory without having been brought up to business: or a divine who should become a mechanic without having learnt his trade; but is not a mechanic or manufacturer still more mischievous and' ridiculous who affects to become a statesman, or to solve the difficulties which occur in divinity ? Now, this is precisely what the men I am cautioning you a- gainst with you to do—they harangue you on the dis- order of our constitution, and propose remedies; they propound to you subtilties in metaphysics and divinity, and desire you to explain them; and because you are not prepared to do this, or to answer all their objec- tions to our government, they call upon you to reject religion, natural and revealed, as impostures, and to break up the constitution of the country, as an enor- mous mass of incurable corruption.

No one, I trust, will suspect the writer of contend- ing that great abuses in church or state ought to be perpetuated, or of wishing that any one dogma of our holy religion should not be discussed with decent free- dom (for the more religion is tried, the more it will be refined;) but he does contend that the faith of un- learned Christians ought not to be shaken by lies and blasphemies; be does contend that it is better to toler- ate abuses, till they can be reformed by the counsels of the best and wisest men in the kingdom, than to submit the removal of them to the frothy frequenters of ale houses, to the discontented declaimers against our establishment, to the miserable dregs of the nation who seek for distinction in public confusion. An an- cient