the mayor of a county town, or to appoint a colonel of a marching
regiment? Will a man discharge the solemn impertinences of the one
office with less zeal, or shrink from the bloody boldness of the
other with greater timidity, because the blockhead thinks he can eat
angels in muffins and chew a spiritual nature in the crumpets which
he buys from the baker's shop? I am sorry there should be such
impious folly in the world, but I should be ten times a greater fool
than he is, if I refused, till he had made a solemn protestation
that the crumpet was spiritless and the muffin nothing but a human
muffin, to lead him out against the enemies of the state. Your
whole argument is wrong: the state has nothing whatever to do with
theological errors which do not violate the common rules of
morality, and militate against the fair power of the ruler: it
leaves all these errors to you, and to such as you. You have every
tenth porker in your parish for refuting them; and take care that
you are vigilant and logical in the task.

I love the Church as well as you do; but you totally mistake the
nature of an establishment, when you contend that it ought to be
connected with the military and civil career of every individual in
the state. It is quite right that there should be one clergyman to
every parish interpreting the Scriptures after a particular manner,
ruled by a regular hierarchy, and paid with a rich proportion of
haycocks and wheatsheafs. When I have laid this foundation for a
rational religion in the state--when I have placed ten thousand
well-educated men in different parts of the kingdom to preach it up,
and compelled everybody to pay them, whether they hear them or not--
I have taken such measures as I know must always procure an immense
majority in favour of the Established Church; but I can go no
further. I cannot set up a civil inquisition, and say to one, you