lations. It is by a conformity to this
method we owe the discovery of the few truths we know, and the little
liberty and rational happiness we enjoy. We have something fairer play
than a reasoner could have expected formerly; and we derive advantages
from it which are very visible.

The fabric of superstition has in this our age and nation received much
ruder shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the chinks and
breaches of our prison, we see such glimmerings of light, and feel such
refreshing airs of liberty, as daily raise our ardor for more. The
miseries derived to mankind from superstition under the name of
religion, and of ecclesiastical tyranny under the name of church
government, have been clearly and usefully exposed. We begin to think
and to act from reason and from nature alone. This is true of several,
but by far the majority is still in the same old state of blindness and
slavery; and much is it to be feared that we shall perpetually relapse,
whilst the real productive cause of all this superstitious folly,
enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place in the
estimation even of those who are otherwise enlightened.

Civil government borrows a strength from ecclesiastical; and artificial
laws receive a sanction from artificial revelations. The ideas of
religion and government are closely connected; and whilst we receive
government as a thing necessary, or even useful to our well-being, we
shall in spite of us draw in, as a necessary, though undesirable
consequence, an artificial religion of some kind or other. To this the
vulgar will always be voluntary slaves; and even those of a rank of
understanding superior, will now and then involuntarily feel its
influence. It is therefore of the deepest concernment to us to be set
right in this point; and to be well satisfied whether civil government
be such a protector from natural evils, and such a nurse and increaser
of blessings, as those of warm imaginations promise. In such a
discussion, far am I from proposing in the least to reflect on our most
wise form of government; no more than I would, in the freer parts of my
philosophical writings, mean to object to the piety, truth, and
perfection of our most excellent Church. Both, I am sensible, have their
foundations on a rock. No discovery of truth can prejudice them. On the
contrary, the more closely the origin of religion and government is
examined, the more clearly their excellences