and incapacities.  No!  No!  This never could have been done, even by reasonable atheists.  They who think religion of no importance to the state have abandoned it to the conscience or caprice of the individual; they make no provision for it whatsoever, but leave every club to make, or not, a voluntary contribution towards its support, according to their fancies.  This would be consistent.  The other always appeared to me to be a monster of contradiction and absurdity.  It was for that reason, that, some years ago, I strenuously opposed the clergy who petitioned, to the number of about three hundred, to be freed from the subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles, without proposing to substitute any other in their place.  There never has been a religion of the state (the few years of the Parliament only excepted) but that of the Episcopal Church of England:  the Episcopal Church of England, before the Reformation, connected with the see of Rome; since then, disconnected, and protesting against some of her doctrines, and against the whole of her authority, as binding in our national church:  nor did the fundamental laws of this kingdom (in Ireland it has been the same) ever know, at any period, any other church as an object of establishment,—­or, in that light, any other Protestant religion.  Nay, our Protestant toleration itself, at the Revolution, and until within a few years, required a signature of thirty-six, and a part of the thirty-seventh, out of the Thirty-Nine Articles.  So little idea had they at the Revolution of establishing Protestantism indefinitely, that they did not indefinitely tolerate it under that name.  I do not mean to praise that strictness, where nothing more than merely religious toleration is concerned.  Toleration, being a part of moral and political prudence, ought to be tender and large.  A tolerant government ought not to be too scrupulous in its investigations, but may bear without blame, not only very ill-grounded doctrines, but even many things that are positively vices, where they are adulta et praevalida.  The good of the commonwealth is the rule which rides over the rest; and to this every other must completely submit.

The Church of Scotland knows as little of Protestantism undefined as the Church of England and Ireland do.  She has by the articles of union secured to herself the perpetual establishment of the Confession of Faith, and the Presbyterian Church government.  In England, even during the troubled interregnum, it was not thought fit to establish a negative religion; but the Parliament settled the Presbyterian as the Church discipline, the Directory as the rule of public worship, and the Westminster Catechism as the institute of faith.  This is to show that at no time was the Protestant religion, undefined, established here or anywhere else, as I believe.  I am sure, that, when the three religions were established in Germany, they were expressly characterized and declared to be the Evangelic, the Reformed, and the Catholic; each of which has its confession of faith and its settled discipline:  so that you always may know the best and the worst of them, to enable you to make the most of what is good, and to correct or to qualify or to guard against whatever may seem evil or dangerous.