wisdom (to say nothing of the competence) of that legislature which
should ordain to itself such a fundamental law, at its outset, as to
disable itself from executing its own functions,--which should prevent
it from making any further laws, however wanted, and that, too, on the
most interesting subject that belongs to human society, and where she
most frequently wants its interposition,--which should fix those
fundamental laws that are forever to prevent it from adapting itself to
its opinions, however clear, or to its own necessities, however urgent?
Such an act, Mr. Speaker, would forever put the Church out of its own
power; it certainly would put it far above the State, and erect it into
that species of independency which it has been the great principle of
our policy to prevent.

The act never meant, I am sure, any such unnatural restraint on the
joint legislature it was then forming. History shows us what it meant,
and all that it could mean with any degree of common sense.

In the reign of Charles the First a violent and ill-considered attempt
was made unjustly to establish the platform of the government and the
rites of the Church of England in Scotland, contrary to the genius and
desires of far the majority of that nation. This usurpation excited a
most mutinous spirit in that country. It produced that shocking
fanatical Covenant (I mean the Covenant of '36) for forcing their ideas
of religion on England, and indeed on all mankind. This became the
occasion, at length, of other covenants, and of a Scotch army marching
into England to fulfil them; and the Parliament of England (for its own
purposes) adopted their scheme, took their last covenant, and destroyed
the Church of England. The Parliament, in their ordinance of 1648,
expressly assign their desire of conforming to the Church of Scotland as
a motive for their alteration.