He thinks it a scandal to government that such an unlimited liberty should be allowed of publishing books against those doctrines in religion, wherein all Christians have agreed, much more to connive at such tracts as reject all revelation, and by their consequences often deny the very being of a God.  Surely ’tis not a sufficient atonement for the writers, that they profess much loyalty to the present government, and sprinkle up and down some arguments in favour of the dissenters; that they dispute as strenuously as they can for liberty of conscience, and inveigh largely against all ecclesiastics, under the name of High Church; and, in short, under the shelter of some popular principles in politics and religion, undermine the foundations of all piety and virtue.

As he doth not reckon every schism of that damnable nature which some would represent, so he is very far from closing with the new opinion of those who would make it no crime at all, and argue at a wild rate, that God Almighty is delighted with the variety of faith and worship, as He is with the varieties of nature.  To such absurdities are men carried by the affectation of freethinking, and removing the prejudices of education, under which head they have for some time begun to list morality and religion.  It is certain that before the rebellion in 1642, though the number of Puritans (as they were then called) was as great as it is with us, and though they affected to follow pastors of that denomination, yet those pastors had episcopal ordination, possessed preferments in the Church, and were sometimes promoted to bishoprics themselves.[7] But, a breach in the general form of worship was in those days reckoned so dangerous and sinful in itself, and so offensive to Roman Catholics at home and abroad, and that it was too unpopular to be attempted; neither, I believe, was the expedient then found out of maintaining separate pastors out of private purses.

[Footnote 7:  In the reign of Elizabeth, and even in that of James, the Puritans were not, properly speaking, Dissenters; but, on the contrary, formed a sort of Low Church party in the national establishment.  Archbishop Abbot himself has been considered as a Puritan. [T.  S.]]

When a schism is once spread in a nation, there grows at length a dispute which are the schismatics.  Without entering on the arguments, used by both sides among us, to fix the guilt on each other; ’tis certain, that, in the sense of the law, the schism lies on that side which opposes itself to the religion of the state.  I leave it among the divines to dilate upon the danger of schism, as a spiritual evil, but I would consider it only as a temporal one.  And I think it clear that any great separation from the established worship, though to a new one that is more pure and perfect, may be an occasion of endangering the public peace, because it will compose a body always in reserve, prepared to follow any discontented heads upon the plausible pretext of advancing true religion,