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.
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