It is not morally true that we are bound to establish in every country that form of religion which in our minds is most agreeable to truth, and conduces most to the eternal happiness of mankind.  In the same manner, it is not true that we are, against the conviction of our own judgment, to establish a system of opinions and practices directly contrary to those ends, only because some majority of the people, told by the head, may prefer it.  No conscientious man would willingly establish what he knew to be false and mischievous in religion, or in anything else.  No wise man, on the contrary, would tyrannically set up his own sense so as to reprobate that of the great prevailing body of the community, and pay no regard to the established opinions and prejudices of mankind, or refuse to them the means of securing a religious instruction suitable to these prejudices.  A great deal depends on the state in which you find men....

An alliance between Church and State in a Christian commonwealth is, in my opinion, an idle and a fanciful speculation.  An alliance is between two things that are in their nature distinct and independent, such as between two sovereign states.  But in a Christian commonwealth the Church and the State are one and the, same thing, being different integral parts of the same whole.  For the Church has been always divided into two parts, the clergy and the laity,—­of which the laity is as much an essential integral part, and has as much its duties and privileges, as the clerical member, and in the rule, order, and government of the Church has its share.  Religion is so far, in my opinion, from being out of the province or the duty of a Christian magistrate, that it is, and it ought to be, not only his care, but the principal thing in his care; because it is one of the great bonds of human society, and its object the supreme good, the ultimate end and object of man himself.  The magistrate, who is a man, and charged with the concerns of men, and to whom very specially nothing human is remote and indifferent, has a right and a duty to watch over it with an unceasing vigilance, to protect, to promote, to forward it by every rational, just, and prudent means.  It is principally his duty to prevent the abuses which grow out of every strong and efficient principle that actuates the human mind.  As religion is one of the bonds of society, he ought not to suffer it to be made the pretext of destroying its peace, order, liberty, and its security.  Above all, he ought strictly to look to it, when men begin to form new combinations, to be distinguished by new names, and especially when they mingle a political system with their religious opinions, true or false, plausible or implausible.