rds 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 points, both of
doctrine and discipline. The main question, it was admitted on all
hands, most intimately concerned the highest interests