ject which
really interests them, diversity of opinion is as inevitable as difference
in their countenances, stature, character, fortune, and state in the
world. Hence it was that our Saviour said he came to bring not peace on
earth, but a sword--to divide the father from the son, to array the mother
against the daughter. It will be so to the end of the world. Unity of
opinion on political subjects seems to prevail under Asiatic despotism; in
religious, under the European papacy--but nowhere else. The conclusion to
be drawn from the absence of all theological disputes in a community, is,
not that all think alike on religion, but that none think at all.

But although no rational man who knows the human heart will ever express a
wish to see entire religious unity prevail in a state, yet there can be no
question, that the prodigious multiplication of sects in Britain, which
strikes foreigners with such astonishment, is mainly to be ascribed, as
well as the immense mass of civilized heathenism which, through the whole
of the eighteenth century, was growing up in the island, to the iniquitous
confiscation of the property of the church which took place at the
Reformation. It is well known that the proportion of the tithes of England
which belongs to lay impropriators, is more considerable than that which
is still in the hands of the church; and if to them is added the abbey and
monastery lands, they would by this time have amounted to a very large
annual sum, probably not less than six or seven millions a-year. In
Scotland, it is well known, the church lands at the Reformation were about
a third of the whole landed property. They would now, therefore, have
produced L1,700,000 a-year, as the entire rental is somewhat above five
millions. What a noble fund here existed, formed and set apart by the
piety and charity of former ages, for the service of the altar and of the
poor--two causes which God hath joined, and no man should put asunder!
What incalculable good would it have done, if it had been preserved sacred
for its proper destination--sacred from the corruptions, mummery, and
despotism of the Romish church, but preserved inviolate for the support of
religion, the relief of suffering, the spread of education! What is it
which blights and paralyses all the efforts now made, whether by
individuals, voluntary associations, or the state, for the attainment of
those truly godlike objects? Is it not ever one thing--the practical