The judges of our country frequently remind us that its laws have a religious sanction; nay, they assure us Christianity is part and parcel of those laws.  Do we not know that orthodox Christianity means Christianity as by law established?  And can any one fail to perceive that such a religion must needs be political?  The cunning few, who esteem nothing apart from their own aggrandisement, are quite aware that the civil and criminal law of England is intimately associated with Christianity—­they publicly proclaim their separation impossible, except at the cost of destruction to both.  They are sagacious enough to perceive that a people totally untrammelled by the fears, the prejudices, and the wickedness of superstition would never consent to remain in bondage.

Hence the pains taken by priests to perpetuate the dominion of that ignorance which proverbially is ‘the mother of devotion.’  What care they for universal emancipation?  Free themselves, their grand object is to rivet the chains of others.  So that those they defraud of their hard earned substance be kept down, they are not over scrupulous with respect to means.  Among the most potent of their helps in the ‘good work’ are churches, various in name and character but in principle the very same.  All are pronounced true by priests who profit by them, and false by priests who do not.  Every thing connected with them bears the stamp of despotism.  Whether we look at churches foreign or domestic, Popish or Protestant, ‘that mark of the beast’ appears in characters as legible as, it is fabled, the handwriting on the wall did to a tyrant of old.  In connection with each is a hierarchy of intellect stultifiers, who explain doctrines without understanding them, or intending they should be understood by others; and true to their ‘sacred trust,’ throw every available impediment in the way of improvement.  Knowledge is their accuser.  To diffuse the ‘truth’ that ‘will set men free’ is no part of their ‘wicked political system.’  On the contrary, they labour to excite a general disgust of truth, and in defence of bad governments preach fine sermons from some one of the many congenial texts to be gathered in their ‘Holy Scripture.’  Non-established priesthoods are but little more disposed to emancipate ‘mind’ and oil the wheels of political progression than those kept in state pay.  The air of conventicles is not of the freest or most bracing description.  The Methodist preacher, who has the foolish effrontery to tell his congregation ’the flush lusteth always contrary to the spirit, and, therefore, every person born into the world deserveth God’s wrath and damnation,’ may be a liberal politician, one well fitted to pilot his flock into the haven of true republicanism; but I am extremely suspicious of such, and would not on any account place my liberty in their keeping.