the substance of religions of which the ritual is only the form. *a
A religion which should become more minute, more peremptory, and more
surcharged with small observances at a time in which men are becoming
more equal, would soon find itself reduced to a band of fanatical
zealots in the midst of an infidel people.

[Footnote a: In all religions there are some ceremonies which are
inherent in the substance of the faith itself, and in these nothing
should, on any account, be changed. This is especially the case with
Roman Catholicism, in which the doctrine and the form are frequently so
closely united as to form one point of belief.]

I anticipate the objection, that as all religions have general and
eternal truths for their object, they cannot thus shape themselves
to the shifting spirit of every age without forfeiting their claim
to certainty in the eyes of mankind. To this I reply again, that the
principal opinions which constitute belief, and which theologians
call articles of faith, must be very carefully distinguished from the
accessories connected with them. Religions are obliged to hold fast to
the former, whatever be the peculiar spirit of the age; but they should
take good care not to bind themselves in the same manner to the
latter at a time when everything is in transition, and when the mind,
accustomed to the moving pageant of human affairs, reluctantly endures
the attempt to fix it to any given point. The fixity of external and
secondary things can only afford a chance of duration when civil society
is itself fixed; under any other circumstances I hold it to be perilous.

We shall have occasion to see that, of all the passions which originate
in, or are fostered by, equality, there is one which it renders
peculiarly intense, and which it infuses at the same time into the heart