s, but entertain them with a zeal for propagating
them by force, and employing the power of law and place to destroy
establishments, if ever they should come to power sufficient to effect
their purpose: that is, in other words, they declare they would
persecute the heads of our Church; and the question is, whether you
should keep them within the bounds of toleration, or subject yourself to
their persecution.

A bad and very censurable practice it is to warp doubtful and ambiguous
expressions to a perverted sense, which makes the charge not the crime
of others, but the construction of your own malice; nor is it allowed to
draw conclusions from allowed premises, which those who lay down the
premises utterly deny, and disown as their conclusions. For this,
though it may possibly be good logic, cannot by any possibility
whatsoever be a fair or charitable representation of any man or any set
of men. It may show the erroneous nature of principles, but it argues
nothing as to dispositions and intentions. Far be such a mode from me! A
mean and unworthy jealousy it would be to do anything upon, the mere
speculative apprehension of what men will do. But let us pass by _our_
opinions concerning the danger of the Church. What do the gentlemen
themselves think of that danger? They from, whom the danger is
apprehended, what do they declare to be their own designs? What do they
conceive to be their own forces? And what do they proclaim to be their
means? Their designs they declare to be to destroy the Established
Church; and not to set up a new one of their own. See Priestley. If they
should find the State stick to the Church, the question is, whether they
love the constitution in _State_ so well as that they would not destroy
the constitution of the State in order to destroy that of the Church.
Most certainly they do not.

The foundations on which obedience to governments is founded are not to
be constantly discussed. That we are here supposes the discussion
already made and the dispute settled. We must assume the rights of what
represents the public to control the individual, to make his will and
his acts to submit to their will, until some intolerable grievance shall
make us know that it does not answer its end, and will submit neither to
reformation nor restraint. Otherwise we should dispute all the points of
morality, before we can punish a murderer, robber, and adulterer; we
should analyze all society. Dangers by being despised