purity rest on her doctrines,
constitution, and services. These are capable of proof and
investigation, and are not affected by the unworthiness of her
ministers. The pretensions of those sects who reject all creeds, forms,
and canons, rest solely on the qualities of their members; and those who
deny that human institutions can be binding, seem to adopt the common
language of reformers, intimating, that they who pull down the old
temple must be a wiser and worthier race of beings than those who
supported it. Now as each man takes a personal interest in the triumph
of his party, he thinks it his duty, not only to give his neighbour
credit for whatever portion of graces and abilities he lays claim to,
but also makes the same claim for himself; and he must be a bad caterer
who cannot make a savoury compound of spiritual delicacies, when he thus
traffics in them by barter. Yet I often wonder how they, who positively
insist on the absolute depravity of mankind, can reconcile it to
consistency, to make so many of their own brethren absolutely saints.
They call themselves in the aggregate, the vilest of sinners; yet, when
they come to describe particulars, they employ language which even the
most eminent of all the Apostles had too humble a sense of his defects
to adopt. But on the contrary, we who do not found our claims on the
superiority of the earthen vessels in which the heavenly treasure is
lodged, are not solicitous to describe the church militant in terms
appropriate only to the church triumphant. We see and deplore the vices
and errors of each other; and after that acknowledgment, do not, worthy
Barton, call us uncandid if I add, we also discover yours. I will go
further, and own, that we record that as a blemish which you produce as
a beauty; I mean your zeal to promote separation, so plainly
contradictory, not merely to a dubious text, a difficult chapter, or
even an epistle hard to be understood, but to the whole tenor of the New
Testament, which, from St. Matthew to the Revelations, preaches concord,
brotherly love, candour, humility, lenity in judgment, meekness,
submission, unity in belief, in worship, in our conduct on earth, and in
final hope of an eternal reward in heaven."

Mr. Barton admitted the use and necessity of an establishment,
notwithstanding the errors which must at first mix with it, and the
inert supineness it must afterwards introduce; but he saw little danger
in schism, and doubted if it could