To prevent such violent enterprises on the one side or on the other,
since each Church was going to be disarmed of a legislature wholly and
peculiarly affected to it, and lest this new uniformity in the State
should be urged as a reason and ground of ecclesiastical uniformity, the
Act of Union provided that presbytery should continue the Scotch, as
episcopacy the English establishment, and that this separate and
mutually independent Church-government was to be considered as a part of
the Union, without aiming at putting the regulation within each Church
out of its own power, without putting both Churches out of the power of
the State. It could not mean to forbid us to set anything ecclesiastical
in order, but at the expense of tearing up all foundations, and
forfeiting the inestimable benefits (for inestimable they are) which we
derive from the happy union of the two kingdoms. To suppose otherwise is
to suppose that the act intended we could not meddle at all with the
Church, but we must as a preliminary destroy the State.

Well, then, Sir, this is, I hope, satisfactory. The Act of Union does
not stand in our way. But, Sir, gentlemen think we are not competent to
the reformation desired, chiefly from our want of theological learning.
If we were the legal assembly....

If ever there was anything to which, from reason, nature, habit, and
principle, I am totally averse, it is persecution for conscientious
difference in opinion. If these gentlemen complained justly of any
compulsion upon them on that article, I would hardly wait for their
petitions; as soon as I knew the evil, I would haste to the cure; I
would even run before their complaints.

I will not enter into the abstract merits of our Articles and Liturgy.