I assure you I do not aim at singularity. I give you opinions which have
been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a
continued and general approbation, and which, indeed, are so worked into
my mind that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others
from the results of my own meditation.
It is on some such principles that the majority of the people of
England, far from thinking a religious national establishment unlawful,
hardly think it lawful to be without one. In France you are wholly
mistaken, if you do not believe us above all other things attached to
it, and beyond all other nations; and when this people has acted
unwisely and unjustifiably in its favor, (as in some instances they have
done, most certainly,) in their very errors you will at least discover
their zeal.
This principle runs through the whole system of their polity. They do
not consider their Church establishment as convenient, but as essential
to their state: not as a thing heterogeneous and separable,--something
added for accommodation,--what they may either keep up or lay aside,
according to their temporary ideas of convenience. They consider it as
the foundation of their whole Constitution, with which, and with every
part of which, it holds an indissoluble union. Church and State are
ideas inseparable in their minds, and scarcely is the one ever mentioned
without mentioning the other.
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