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    secular authority : — -Heresies innumerable would have choaked the orthodox faith ; ab . surd opinions , which so easily establish themselves in the ordinary and uneducated mind , would have ejected Christian doctrine : some

    base plebeian superstition would have triumphed over Christian worship 5 or that most overwhelming curse that can fall upon the earth , universal scepticism would have quenched the light of truth , and involved the world in worse than Stygian darkness . But who that has looked at all into Church

    history does not know , that the heresy of one century or climate has been the orthodox faith of another , and that the Christian world has continually divided and subdivided on every article of popular belief ? And as to absurd tenets , could the dullness

    of vulgar and unlettered m en have fabricated any of grosser quality than have been spun by subtile schoolmen , woven into creeds by learned dignitaries , and stamped with the great

    seal of Church-authority in ecclesiastical councils , though held by princes and composed of prelates ? They consulted their Urim and Thummim , and gave out oracles that confound the reason of the believer , or baffle the

    ingenuity of the iaterpreter to the present day . To suppose that the faith of Christians would have been wrecked and lost , had not political men kindled the beacons that warn them from infidelity , carries in it an implication , not the most respectful to the evidences of the Christian

    revelation . Besides , scepticism is not natural to man . Few and cold are the hearts to which it can be dear . A being who is conscious of powers which assure him of an invisible power , who feels that he has but a dependent existence , and whose regrets ,

    while they surround the tomb of affection , throw their shadows across the way that leads to their own , such a creature is not naturally irreligious . The sentiment of piety is latent in al the social feelings of his heart , and the affinity is too strong to be

    generally destroyed even in the dissolution of civil society . This law of God written in the heart does not require to be registered by human jurisprudence in her courts of record . To preserve this sacred fire from extinction there needs no college of priests , no order of vigilante , no decree of the

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    state . Man is prone to superstition * but he is rarely , and with difficulty perverted into scepticism . If the state could render any service to religion by taking her ministers , as such into a communion of power , the most

    likely service appears to be , that of restraining both priest and people in that descent to . superstition , or those starts iuto fanaticism , which seem to be so easy to them ^ But the fact is , that princes and men in power have been for the most part either as unenlightened as the mass of sociefcv in

    matters of religion ; or anxious only to perpetuate the dominion of truth or error , superstition or religion , indifferently , from the dread of innovation . It is not difficult to find in

    their codes of law penal statutes , condemning to fines , confiscation , imprisonment and death , men , who could not believe without evidence , and would not subscribe what they did not believe , who refused to

    worship they knew not what , in ways more Pagan than Christian : And it were easy to shew that articles of faith too absurd to be believed , and rites of superstition , too childish to be performed honestly by any but the most uninformed members of the state , have continued to be the law of the

    land for a considerable time after they have been abandoned by the body of the people . When the multitude of Christians have suffered themselves to be surprised or seduced into spiritual chains , the civil power has not refused to rivet them on ; but the force which has burst the bonds

    asunder has proceeded from themselves . The reformation of opinion has , as was to be expected , dictated the reformation of law ; and governments have rarely become tolerant , till the

    spirit of the times has ceased to be intolerant , ^ t this moment t he lily , which has been so often steeped in the blood of the reformed , ' though it has been long preserved on a Protestant soil , aud lately re-planted by Protestant hands , is become the

    inauspicious signal for a religious persecution in the south of France . It may be said that the association of civil and * ecclesiastical powers sets a limit to spiritual authority > and that in fact the first step to the reformation from popery in this country was , the union of these powers in the sovereign when Henry VlUltb . caused

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    J > r . Mar ell on Church-Authority . 9

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    roi ,. xi .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1816, page 9, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2448/page/9/