he support of
teachers of the Christian religion." The tax-payer was to be permitted
to name the religious society for the support of which he preferred to
contribute. If he declined this voluntary acquiescence in the law, the
money would be used in aid of a school; but from the tax itself none
were to be exempt on any pretext. Madison was quick to see in such a law
the possibility of religious intolerance, of compulsory uniformity
enforced by the civil power, and of the suppression of any freedom of
conscience or opinion. The act did not define who were and who were not
"teachers of the Christian religion," and that necessarily would be left
to the courts to decide. A state church would be the inevitable
consequence; for it was not to be supposed that any dominant sect would
rest till it secured the recognition by law of its own denomination as
the sole representative of the Christian religion. To expect anything
else was to ignore the teachings of all history.

The burden of opposition and debate fell, at first, almost solely upon
Madison. Some of the wisest and best men of the State were slow to see,
as he saw, that religious freedom was in danger from such legislation.
There was, it was said, a sad falling-off in public morality as
indifference to religion increased. There was no cure, it was declared,
for prevalent and growing corruption except in the culture of the
religious sentiment, and the teachers of religion, therefore, must be
upheld and supported. But granting all this, Madison saw that the
proposed remedy would be to give, not bread but a stone, and a stone
that would be used in return as a weapon. It was impossible to regulate
religious belief by act of the Assembly, and therefore it was worse than
foolish to try.

It was due to him that the question was postponed from one session to
the next. A copy of the bill was sent, meanwhile, into every county of
the State for the consideration of the people, and that was aided by a
"Memorial and Remonstrance," written by Madison, which was circulated
everywhere for signature, in readiness for presentation to the next
legislature. The bill, the memorial said, would be "a dangerous abuse of
power," and the signers protested against it with unanswerable
arguments, taking for a starting-point the assertion of the Bill of
Rights, "that religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the
manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and
conviction, not by