Independently of that stability
which the legalized framework of a rightly-constituted Establishment
is almost sure to impart to its distinctive doctrines, the influence
of its temporalities has in one special direction a sobering and
wholesome effect. Men carefully weigh principles for the assertion of
which they may be called on to sacrifice or to suffer, and are usually
little in danger, in such circumstances, of becoming martyrs to a mere
crotchet. The first beginnings of notions that, if suffered to grow in
the mind, may at length tyrannize over it, and lead even the moral
sense captive, are often exceedingly minute.

They start up in the form of, mayhap, solitary ideas, chance-derived
from some unexpected association, or picked up in conversation or
reading; the attention gradually concentrates upon them; auxiliary
ideas, in consequence, spring up around them; they assume a logical
form--connect themselves, on the one hand, with certain revealed
injunctions of wide meaning--lay hold, on the other, on a previously
developed devotional spirit or well-trained conscientiousness; and, in
the end, if the minds in which they have arisen be influential ones,
they alter the aspects and names of religious bodies, and place in a
state of insulation and schism churches and congregations.

Their rise somewhat resembles that of the waves, as described by
Franklin in his paper on the effects of oil in inducing a calm, or in
preserving one. 'The first-raised waves,' he says, 'are mere wrinkles;
but being continually acted upon by the wind, they are, though the
gale does not increase in strength, continually increased in
magnitude, rising higher, and extending their bases so as to include
in each wave vast masses, and to act with great momentum. The wind,
however,' continues the philosopher, 'blowing over water covered with
oil, cannot _catch_ upon it so as to raise the first or elementary
wrinkles, but slides over it, and leaves it smooth as it finds it; and
being thus prevented from producing these first elements of waves, it
of course cannot produce the waves themselves.' In applying the
illustration just a little further, we would remark, that within a
wholesomely-constituted religious Establishment, the influence of the
temporalities acts in preventing the rise of new notions, like the
smoothing oil. If it does not wholly prevent the formation of the
first wrinkles of novel opinion, it at least prevents their
heightening in