Whiggism is not circumscrib’d and confin’d to any one or two of the Religions now profess’d in the World, but diffuses it self among all.  We have known Jews, Turks, nay, some Papists, (which I own to be a great Rarity) very great Lovers of the Constitution and Liberty; and were there rational Grounds to expect, that any Numbers of them cou’d be so, I shou’d be against using Severities and Distinctions upon Account of Religion.  For a Papist is not dangerous, nor ought to be ill us’d by any body, because he prays to Saints, believes Purgatory, or the real Presence in the Eucharist, and pays Divine Worship to an Image or Picture (which are the common Topicks of our Writers of Controversy against the Papists;) but because Popery sets up a foreign Jurisdiction paramount to our Laws.  So that a real Papist can neither be a true Governor of a Protestant Country, nor a true Subject, and besides, is the most Priest-Ridden Creature in the World:  and (when uppermost) can bear with no body that differs from him in Opinion; little considering, that whosoever is against Liberty of Mind, is, in effect, against Liberty of Body too.  And therefore all Penal Acts of Parliament for Opinions purely religious, which have no Influence on the State, are so many Encroachments upon Liberty, whilst those which restrain Vice and Injustice are against Licentiousness.

I profess my self to have always been a Member of the Church of England and am for supporting it in all its Honours, Privileges and Revenues:  but as a Christian and a Whig, I must have Charity for those that differ from me in religious Opinions, whether Pagans, Turks, Jews, Papists, Quakers, Socinians, Presbyterians, or others.  I look upon Bigotry to have always been the very Bane of human Society, and the Offspring of Interest and Ignorance, which has occasion’d most of the great Mischiefs that have afflicted Mankind.  We ought no more to expect to be all of one Opinion, as to the Worship of the Deity, than to be all of one Colour or Stature.  To stretch or narrow any Man’s Conscience to the Standard of our own, is no less a Piece of Cruelty than that of Procrustes the Tyrant of Attica, who used to fit his Guests to the Length of his own Iron Bedsted, either by cutting them shorter, or racking them longer.  What just Reason can I have to be angry with, to endeavour to curb the natural Liberty, or to retrench the Civil Advantages of an honest Man (who follows the golden Rule, of doing to others, as he wou’d have others do to him, and is willing and able to serve the Publick) only because he thinks his Way to Heaven surer or shorter than mine?  No body can tell which of us is mistaken, till the Day of Judgment, or whether any of us be so (for there may be different Ways to