ion professed by all who bear office among them: But why should
they be a precedent for us either in religion or government? Our country
differs from theirs, as well in situation, soil, and productions of
nature, as in the genius and complexion of inhabitants. They are a
commonwealth founded on a sudden by a desperate attempt in a desperate
condition, not formed or digested into a regular system by mature
thought and reason, but huddled up under the pressure of sudden
exigencies; calculated for no long duration, and hitherto subsisting by
accident in the midst of contending powers, who cannot yet agree about
sharing it among them. These difficulties do indeed preserve them from
any great corruptions, which their crazy constitution would extremely
subject them to in a long peace. That confluence of people in a
persecuting age, to a place of refuge nearest at hand, put them upon the
necessity of trade, to which they wisely gave all ease and
encouragement: And if we could think fit to imitate them in this last
particular, there would need no more to invite foreigners among us; who
seem to think no further than how to secure their property and
conscience, without projecting any share in that government which gives
them protection, or calling it persecution if it be denied them. But I
speak it for the honour of our administration, that although our sects
are not so numerous as those in Holland, which I presume is not our
fault, and I hope is not our misfortune, we much excel them and all
Christendom besides in our indulgence to tender consciences.[2] One
single compliance with the national form of receiving the sacrament, is
all we require to qualify any sectary among us for the greatest
employments in the state, after which he is at liberty to rejoin his own
assemblies for the rest of his life. Besides, I will suppose any of the
numerous sects in Holland, to have so far prevailed as to have raised a
civil war, destroyed their government and religion, and put their
administrators to death; after which I will suppose the people to have
recovered all again, and to have settled on their old foundation. Then I
would put a query, whether that sect which was the unhappy instrument of
all this confusion, could reasonably expect to be entrusted for the
future with the greatest employments, or indeed to be hardly tolerated
among them?

[Footnote 2: When this was written there was no law against Occasional
Conformity. [Faulkner, 1735.