The discussion this day is not between establishment on one hand and toleration on the other, but between those who, being tolerated themselves, refuse toleration to others.  That power should be puffed up with pride, that authority should degenerate into rigor, if not laudable, is but too natural.  But this proceeding of theirs is much beyond the usual allowance to human weakness:  it not only is shocking to our reason, but it provokes our indignation. Quid domini facient, audent cum talia fures? It is not the proud prelate thundering in his Commission Court, but a pack of manumitted slaves, with the lash of the beadle flagrant on their backs, and their legs still galled with their fetters, that would drive their brethren into that prison-house from whence they have just been permitted to escape.  If, instead of puzzling themselves in the depths of the Divine counsels, they would turn, to the mild morality of the Gospel, they would read their own condemnation:—­“O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt because thou desiredst me:  shouldest not thou also have compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?”

In my opinion, Sir, a magistrate, whenever he goes to put any restraint upon religious freedom, can only do it upon this ground,—­that the person dissenting does not dissent from the scruples of ill-informed conscience, but from a party ground of dissension, in order to raise a faction in the state.  We give, with regard to rites and ceremonies, an indulgence to tender consciences.  But if dissent is at all punished in any country, if at all it can be punished upon any pretence, it is upon a presumption, not that a man is supposed to differ conscientiously from the establishment, but that he resists truth for the sake of faction,—­that he abets diversity of opinions in religion to distract the state, and to destroy the peace of his country.  This is the only plausible,—­for there is no true ground of persecution.  As the laws stand, therefore, let us see how we have thought fit to act.

If there is any one thing within the competency of a magistrate with regard to religion, it is this:  that he has a right to direct the exterior ceremonies of religion; that, whilst interior religion is within the jurisdiction of God alone, the external part, bodily action, is within the province of the chief governor.  Hooker, and all the great lights of the Church, have constantly argued this to be a part within the province of the civil magistrate.  But look at the Act of Toleration of William and Mary:  there you will see the civil magistrate has not only dispensed with those things which are more particularly within his province, with those things which faction might be supposed to take up for the sake of making visible and external divisions and raising a standard of revolt, but has also from sound politic considerations relaxed on those points which are confessedly without his province.