ood conscience the tenth part
of the produce of your lands?

Therefore, beforehand, the Constitution has thought proper to take a
security that the tax raised on the people shall be applied only to
those who profess such doctrines and follow such a mode of worship as
the legislature, representing the people, has thought most agreeable to
their general sense,--binding, as usual, the minority, not to an assent
to the doctrines, but to a payment of the tax.

But how do you ease and relieve? How do you know, that, in making a new
door into the Church for these gentlemen, you do not drive ten times
their number out of it? Supposing the contents and not-contents strictly
equal in numbers and consequence, the possession, to avoid disturbance,
ought to carry it. You displease all the clergy of England now actually
in office, for the chance of obliging a score or two, perhaps, of
gentlemen, who are, or want to be, beneficed clergymen: and do you
oblige? Alter your Liturgy,--will it please all even, of those who wish,
an alteration? will they agree in what ought to be altered? And after it
is altered to the mind of every one, you are no further advanced than if
you had not taken a single step; because a large body of men will then
say you ought to have no liturgy at all: and then these men, who now
complain so bitterly that they are shut out, will themselves bar the
door against thousands of others. Dissent, not satisfied with
toleration, is not conscience, but ambition.

You altered the Liturgy for the Directory. This was settled by a set of
most learned divines and learned laymen: Selden sat amongst them. Did
this please? It was considered upon both sides as a most unchristian
imposition. Well, at the Restoration they rejected the Directory, and
reformed the Common Prayer,--which, by the way, had been three times
reformed before. Were they then contented? Two thousand (or some great
number) of clergy resigned their livings in one day rather than read it:
and truly, rather than raise that second idol, I should have adhered to
the Directory, as I now adhere to the Common Prayer. Nor can you content
other men's conscience, real or pretended, by any concessions: follow
your own; seek peace and ensue it. You have no symptoms of discontent in
the people to their Establishment. The churches are too small for their
congregations. The livings are too few for their candidates. The spirit
of religious controversy has slackened by the na