converted into a penfion, to depend on the treasury, and to be delayed; with-held, or perhaps to be extinguifhed by fifcal difficulties; which difficulties may fometimes be pretended for political purpofes, and are, in fact, often brought on by the extravagance, negligence, and rapacity of politicians. The people of England think, that they have constitutional motives, as well as religious, against any project of turning their independent clergy into ecclefiaftical penfioners of state. They trem. ble for their liberty, from the influence of a clergy dependent on the crown; they tremble for the public tranquillity, from the disorders of a factious clergy, if it were made to depend upon any other than the crown. They therefore made their church, like their king and their nobility, independent.

"From the united confiderations of religion and constitutional policy, from their opinion of a duty to make a fure provision: for the confolation of the feeble, and the instruction of the ignorant, they have incorporated and identified the eftate of the church with the mass of private property, of which the state is not the proprietor, either for ufe or dominion, but the guardian only, and the regulator. They have ordained that the

"

pro

Divifion of the people into clergy and laity.

vision of this establishment might be as stable as the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus of funds and actions."

I have now, I hope, adduced fufficient reafons and arguments to convince my readers, that every community is fully competent to make a civil establishment of that religion; which the majority of the community shall find it their duty to adopt and follow; and confequently, that our prefent church eftablishment forms an effential part of the Englifh constitution and from hence arifes the first constitutional divifion of the community, or people, into clergy and laity, whofe feveral and refpective rights and duties in the state, I fhall hereafter explicitly fet forth.

I "Had I inferred the truth of our religion 'from its civil establishment, the deifts might have treated the argument with that levity which Mr. Chandler advises; but a deift of common fenfe might perceive, that I appealed to the laws of our establishment, not for the conviction of his understanding, but the correction of his infolence. Where the truth of the Chriftian religion was the quef

Rogers's Vindication of the Civil Establishment ofta Religion, fect. i. p. 191.

tion before me, I used other arguments; but when a private fubject took upon him publicly to oppose the right of the legislator to enact any fuch law, to represent this power as unjust and tyrannical, and under these charac ters to diffuade all fubmiffion to it, these I think actions inconsistent with the obligations of a fubject, and that the execution of our laws may justly be called for in restraint of them. The truth of a religion depends on its proper grounds. If it was falfe before it was established, the establishment will not make it true; and he, who from the evidence of the thing is convinced it is false, cannot upon any authority believe it true."

From what has been said in this and the foregoing chapter, I hope it will fufficiently appear, that the fanction, which the laws give to the establishment of the church of England throughout England, and to Presbytery throughout Scotland, is in its tendency and effects merely of a civil nature; confequently, that the obligation of fubmitting to it, is the very fame as the obligation of submitting to any other civil law whatever. Now, every external and public difavowal of, or oppofition to the civil exactions of the legi

flature,

lature, must be criminal in ar individual fubject to the power of that legislature: But I fhall hereafter have occafion to fpeak more fully upon the nature of crimes against the state.

CHAP.

CHAP. VI.

OF THE EFFECTS OF DENYING TRUE PRIN

1

CIPLES.

T has been usual for moft writers both an

cient and modern, in difcuffing the subject of our conftitution, to endeavour to trace its origin from the earlieft antiquity, and to identify its form and fubftance through all the various modifications, changes, reformations, and revolutions, which it has undergone fincethe first establishment of fociety, or of a community in this country. I beg the liberty of following a very different courfe. I eftablish a principle, which, if it ever existed, muft now exift, and if it now exift, must have always exifted; for what gives existence to a principle, is its univerfal and invariable truth, which, if it exist in one moment, must effentially have exifted from all eternity; I need not, therefore, feek for its importation into this island by the Trojan prince Brutus; nor inquire whether it were borrowed by our British anceftors from their Gallic neighbours; nor whether it were the peculiar growth of our native foil; whether it grew out of the hedge-rowed towns or encampments of our warlike ancef

Principle the

true fource and

origin of our

conftitution.