liam and Queen Mary: an act coeval with the Revolution; and which
ought, on the principles of the gentlemen who oppose the relief to the
Catholics, to have been held sacred and unalterable. Whether we agree
with the present Protestant Dissenters in the points at the Revolution
held essential and fundamental among Christians, or in any other
fundamental, at present it is impossible for us to know: because, at
their own very earnest desire, we have repealed the Toleration Act of
William and Mary, and discharged them from the signature required by
that act; and because, for the far greater part, they publicly declare
against all manner of confessions of faith, even the _Consensus_.

For reasons forcible enough at all times, but at this time particularly
forcible with me, I dwell a little the longer upon this matter, and take
the more pains, to put us both in mind that it was not settled at the
Revolution that the state should be Protestant, in the latitude of the
term, but in a defined and limited sense only, and that in that sense
only the king is sworn to maintain it. To suppose that the king has
sworn with his utmost power to maintain what it is wholly out of his
power to discover, or which, if he could discover, he might discover to
consist of things directly contradictory to each other, some of them
perhaps impious, blasphemous, and seditious upon principle, would be not
only a gross, but a most mischievous absurdity. If mere dissent from the
Church of Rome be a merit, he that dissents the most perfectly is the
most meritorious. In many points we hold strongly with that church. He
that dissents throughout with that church will dissent with the Church
of England, and then it will be a part of his merit that he dissents
with ourselves: a whimsical species of merit for any set of men to
establish. We quarrel to extremity with those who we know agree with us
in many things; but we are to be so malicious even in the principle of
our friendships, that we are to cherish in our bosom those who accord
with us in nothing, because, whilst they despise ourselves, they abhor,
even more than we do, those with whom we have some disagreement. A man
is certainly the most perfect Protestant who protests against the whole
Christian religion. Whether a person's having no Christian religion be a
title to favor, in exclusion to the largest description of Christians,
who hold all the doctrines of Christianity, though holding along with
them