ain system of religious doctrines and practices
fixed and ascertained by some law,--by the difference of which laws
different churches (as different commonwealths) are made in various
parts of the world; and the establishment is a tax laid by the same
sovereign authority for payment of those who so teach and so practise:
for no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to support
men for teaching and acting as they please, but by some prescribed rule.

The hardship amounts to this,--that the people of England are not taxed
two shillings in the pound to pay them for teaching, as divine truths,
their own particular fancies. For the state has so taxed the people; and
by way of relieving these gentlemen, it would be a cruel hardship on the
people to be compelled to pay, from the sweat of their brow, the most
heavy of all taxes to men, to condemn as heretical the doctrines which
they repute to be orthodox, and to reprobate as superstitious the
practices which they use as pious and holy. If a man leaves by will an
establishment for preaching, such as Boyle's Lectures, or for charity
sermons, or funeral sermons, shall any one complain of an hardship,
because he has an excellent sermon upon matrimony, or on the martyrdom
of King Charles, or on the Restoration, which I, the trustee of the
establishment, will not pay him for preaching?--S. Jenyns, Origin of
Evil.--Such is the hardship which they complain of under the present
Church establishment, that they have not the power of taxing the people
of England for the maintenance of their private opinions.

The laws of toleration provide for every real grievance that these
gentlemen can rationally complain of Are they hindered from professing
their belief of what they think to be truth? If they do not like the
Establishment, there are an hundred different modes of Dissent in which
they may teach. But even if they are so unfortunately circumstanced that
of all that variety none will please them, they have free liberty to
assemble a congregation of their own; and if any persons think their
fancies (they may be brilliant imaginations) worth paying for, they are
at liberty to maintain them as their clergy: nothing hinders it. But if
they cannot get an hundred people together who will pay for their
reading a liturgy after their form, with what face can they insist upon
the nation's conforming to their ideas, for no other visible purpose
than the enabling them to receive with a g