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a dozen different religious denominations. In so far as a religious society possessed such legal rights, it would be established; though, if it had them to a very limited extent, we should not call it so, because this would not be its predominant character.
An Established
church is a
political society.It is evident further, that, so far as a religious society is held together by the law of the land, it is not properly a religious, but a political, society. What is a political society? It is a number of persons held together, or made a society, by subjection to a sovereign authority, whose permanent commands are municipal law. What is a religious society? That is a notion less easy to define: it includes, at any rate, some or all of these things,—the acceptance of a common creed, common rules, a common organization, the habit of acting together for common objects; the creed, the objects, the sanctions which support the rules,—in a word, the ties which bind the society together,—being religious. Whatever more than this the idea of his Church, for example, presents to the mind of a religious man, is matter of belief, or sentiment, or opinion, and does not enter into the definition of a religious society in general. The Churches of England and Scotland by law established are, as such, political societies. French writers commonly, and some persons amongst ourselves, regard the Established Church in England as a society merely political; so that, if the whole body of ecclesiastical law, as it is called, (that is, the laws of the land in reference to the Church,) were repealed to-morrow, the Church itself would cease to exist. It would necessarily cease to exist as a political society. But there is also in England, under the name of the Established Church (whether
