Reformation? To say it was not as well constituted as it
ought to be is saying nothing at all to the purpose; for that assertion
evidently regards improvement, not existence. It certainly did then
exist; and it as certainly then was at least as much to the advantage of
a very great part of society as what we have brought in the place of it:
which is, indeed, a great blessing to those who have profited of the
change; but to all the rest, as we have wrought, that is, by blending
general persecution with partial reformation, it is the very reverse. We
found the people heretics and idolaters; we have, by way of improving
their condition, rendered them slaves and beggars: they remain in all
the misfortune of their old errors, and all the superadded misery of
their recent punishment. They were happy enough, in their opinion at
least, before the change; what benefits society then had, they partook
of them all. They are now excluded from those benefits; and, so far as
civil society comprehends them, and as we have managed the matter, our
persecutions are so far from being necessary to its existence, that our
very reformation is made in a degree noxious. If this be improvement,
truly I know not what can be called a depravation of society.

But as those who argue in this manner are perpetually shifting the
question, having begun with objecting, in order to give a fair and
public color to their scheme, to a toleration of those opinions as
subversive of society in general, they will surely end by abandoning the
broad part of the argument, and attempting to show that a toleration of
them is inconsistent with the established government among us. Now,
though this position be in reality as untenable as the other, it is not
altogether such an absurdity on the face of it. All I shall here observe
is, that those who lay it down little consider what a wound they are
giving to that establishment for which they pretend so much zeal.
However, as this is a consideration, not of general justice, but of
particular and national policy, and as I have reserved a place
expressly, where it will undergo a thorough discussion, I shall not here
embarrass myself with it,--being resolved to preserve all the order in
my power, in the examination of this important, melancholy subject.

However, before we pass from this point concerning possession, it will
be a relaxation of the mind, not wholly foreign to our purpose, to take
a short review of the extraord