ee
from all accusation of injustice to these unfortunate sons of nature,
but that the testimonials of their acts of kindness and benevolence
toward them will plead the cause of their virtues, as they are now
authenticated by the record of history upon earth.

Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons of
theological warfare are antiquated; the field of politics supplies the
alchemists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion, and the
butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for instruments
of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too enlightened to contend upon
topics which concern only the interests of eternity; the men who hold in
proper contempt all controversies about trifles, except such as inflame
their own passions, have made it a commonplace censure against your
ancestors, that their zeal was enkindled by subjects of trivial
importance; and that however aggrieved by the intolerance of others,
they were alike intolerant themselves. Against these objections, your
candid judgment will not require an unqualified justification; but your
respect and gratitude for the founders of the State may boldly claim an
ample apology. The original grounds of their separation from the Church
of England were not objects of a magnitude to dissolve the bonds of
communion, much less those of charity, between Christian brethren of
the same essential principles. Some of them, however, were not
inconsiderable, and numerous inducements concurred to give them an
extraordinary interest in their eyes. When that portentous system of
abuses, the Papal dominion, was overturned, a great variety of religious
sects arose in its stead in the several countries, which for many
centuries before had been screwed beneath its subjection. The fabric of
the Reformation, first undertaken in England upon a contracted basis, by
a capricious and sanguinary tyrant, had been successively overthrown
and restored, renewed and altered, according to the varying humors and
principles of four successive monarchs. To ascertain the precise point
of division between the genuine institutions of Christianity and the
corruptions accumulated upon them in the progress of fifteen centuries,
was found a task of extreme difficulty throughout the Christian world.

Men of the profoundest learning, of the sublimest genius, and of the
purest integrity, after devoting their lives to the research, finally
differed in their ideas upon many great p