y zeal, which, however, is
rarely the case, it has a tendency to create a resistance from the
establishment in possession, productive of great disorders, and thus
becomes, innocently indeed, but yet very certainly, the cause of the
bitterest dissensions in the commonwealth. To a mind not thoroughly
saturated with the tolerating maxims of the Gospel, a preventive
persecution, on such principles, might come recommended by strong, and,
apparently, no immoral motives of policy, whilst yet the contagion was
recent, and had laid hold but on a few persons. The truth is, these
politics are rotten and hollow at bottom, as all that are founded upon
any however minute a degree of positive injustice must ever be. But they
are specious, and sufficiently so to delude a man of sense and of
integrity. But it is quite otherwise with the attempt to eradicate by
violence a wide-spreading and established religious opinion. If the
people are in an error, to inform them is not only fair, but charitable;
to drive them is a strain of the most manifest injustice. If not the
right, the presumption, at least, is ever on the side of possession. Are
they mistaken? if it does not fully justify them, it is a great
alleviation of guilt, which may be mingled with their misfortune, that
the error is none of their forging,--that they received it on as good a
footing as they can receive your laws and your legislative authority,
because it was handed down to them from their ancestors. The opinion may
be erroneous, but the principle is undoubtedly right; and you punish
them for acting upon a principle which of all others is perhaps the most
necessary for preserving society, an implicit admiration and adherence
to the establishments of their forefathers.

If, indeed, the legislative authority was on all hands admitted to be
the ground of religious persuasion, I should readily allow that dissent
would be rebellion. In this case it would make no difference whether the
opinion was sucked in with the milk or imbibed yesterday; because the
same legislative authority which had settled could destroy it with all
the power of a creator over his creature. But this doctrine is
universally disowned, and for a very plain reason. Religion, to have
any force on men's understandings, indeed to exist at all, must be
supposed paramount to laws, and independent for its substance upon any
human institution,--else it would be the absurdest thing in the world,
an acknowledged che