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secution, the Eighteen-Thousand-Pound-a-Year Religion[1] of Episcopacy. Instead of the Ministers of the Gospel, a Roman might recognize in these Dignitaries the High-priests of Mars—with this difference, that the Ancients fatted their Victims for the Altar, we prepare ours for sacrifice by leanness. War ruins our Manufactures; the ruin of our Manufactures throws Thousands out of employ; men cannot starve: they must eitherpick
- ↑ Wherever Mens' temporal interests depend on the general belief of disputed tenets, we must expect to find hypocrisy and a persecuting Spirit, a jealousy of investigation, and an endeavor to hold the minds of the people in submissive Ignorance. That pattern of Christian meekness, Bishop Horsley, has declared it to be the vice of the age and government that it has suffered a free and general investigation of the most solemn Truths that regard Society—and there is a remark in the last charge of the disinterested Bishop Prettyman, that the same busy spirit which inclines men to be Unitarians in Religion, drive them into Republicanism in Politics. And truly, the most exalted Forms of Society are cemented preserved by the purest Notions of Religion. But whatever I may deem of the justice of their Lordship's observations, the prudence and policy of them have gained my immediate assent. Alas! what room would there be for Bishops or for Priests in a Religion where Deity is the only object of Reverence, and our Immortality the only article of Faith—Immortality made probable to us by the Light of Nature, and proved to us by the Resurrection of Jesus. Him the high Priests crucified; but he has left us a Religion, which shall prove fatal to every High Priest—a Religion, which every true
Christians
