I should only
stipulate that these new _Mess-Johns_ in robes and coronets should keep
some sort of bounds in the democratic and levelling principles which are
expected from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare
say, disappoint the hopes that are conceived of them. They will not
become, literally as well as figuratively, polemic divines,--nor be
disposed so to drill their congregations, that they may, as in former
blessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of dragoons and corps
of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however favorable to the
cause of compulsory freedom, civil and religious, may not be equally
conducive to the national tranquillity. These few restrictions I hope
are no great stretches of intolerance, no very violent exertions of
despotism.
But I may say of our preacher, "_Utinam nugis tota illa dedisset et
tempora saevitiae_." All things in this his fulminating bull are not of so
innoxious a tendency. His doctrines affect our Constitution in its vital
parts. He tells the Revolution Society, in this political sermon, that
his Majesty "is almost the _only_ lawful king in the world, because the
_only_ one who owes his crown to _the choice of his people_." As to the
kings of _the world_, all of whom (except one) this arch-pontiff of the
_rights of men_, with all the plenitude and with more than the boldness
of the Papal deposing power in its meridian fervor of the twelfth
century, puts into one sweeping clause of ban and anathema, and
proclaims usurpers by circles of longitude and latitude over the whole
globe, it behooves them to consider how they admit into their
territories these apostolic missionaries, who are to tell their subjects
they are not lawful kings.
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