a sort of native plainness and directness of understanding, which
for a long time characterized those men who have successively obtained
authority among us. This disposition still remains,--at least in the
great body of the people.

We know, and, what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the
basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all
comfort.[95] In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no
rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human
mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine
in a hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety. We
shall never be such fools as to call in an enemy to the substance of any
system to remove its corruptions, to supply its defects, or to perfect
its construction. If our religious tenets should ever want a further
elucidation, we shall not call on Atheism to explain them. We shall not
light up our temple from that unhallowed fire. It will be illuminated
with other lights. It will be perfumed with other incense than the
infectious stuff which is imported by the smugglers of adulterated
metaphysics. If our ecclesiastical establishment should want a revision,
it is not avarice or rapacity, public or private, that we shall employ
for the audit or receipt or application of its consecrated revenue.
Violently condemning neither the Greek nor the Armenian, nor, since
heats are subsided, the Roman system of religion, we prefer the
Protestant: not because we think it has less of the Christian religion
in it, but because, in our judgment, it has more. We are Protestants,
not from indifference, but from zeal.

We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a
religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our
instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if, in the moment of
riot, and in a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the
alembic of hell, which in France is now so furiously boiling, we should
uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has
hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great source of
civilization amongst us, and among many other nations, we are
apprehensive (being well aware that the mind will not endure a void)
that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition might take
place of it.

For that reason, before we take from our establishment the natural,
human means of estimation, a