nd give it up to contempt, as you have done,
and in doing it have incurred the penalties you well deserve to suffer,
we desire that some other may be presented to us in the place of it. We
shall then form our judgment.

On these ideas, instead of quarrelling with establishments, as some do,
who have made a philosophy and a religion of their hostility to such
institutions, we cleave closely to them. We are resolved to keep an
established church, an established monarchy, an established aristocracy,
and an established democracy, each in the degree it exists, and in no
greater. I shall show you presently how much of each of these we
possess.

It has been the misfortune (not, as these gentlemen think it, the glory)
of this age, that everything is to be discussed, as if the Constitution
of our country were to be always a subject rather of altercation than
enjoyment. For this reason, as well as for the satisfaction of those
among you (if any such you have among you) who may wish to profit of
examples, I venture to trouble you with a few thoughts upon each of
these establishments. I do not think they were unwise in ancient Rome,
who, when they wished to new-model their laws, sent commissioners to
examine the best-constituted republics within their reach.

* * * * *

First I beg leave to speak of our Church Establishment, which is the
first of our prejudices,--not a prejudice destitute of reason, but
involving in it profound and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first. It
is first, and last, and midst in our minds. For, taking ground on that
religious system of which we are now in possession, we continue to act
on the early received and uniformly continued sense of mankind. That
sense not only, like a wise architect, hath built up the august fabric
of states, but, like a provident proprietor, to preserve the structure
from profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple, purged from all the
impurities of fraud and violence and injustice and tyranny, hath
solemnly and forever consecrated the commonwealth, and all that
officiate in it. This consecration is made, that all who administer in
the government of men, in which they stand in the person of God Himself,
should have high and worthy notions of their function and destination;
that their hope should be full of immortality; that they should not look
to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient
praise of the vulgar, but to a solid