For reasons forcible enough at all times, but at this time particularly
forcible with me, I dwell a little the longer upon this matter, and take
the more pains, to put us both in mind that it was not settled at the
Revolution that the state should be Protestant, in the latitude of the
term, but in a defined and limited sense only, and that in that sense
only the king is sworn to maintain it. To suppose that the king has
sworn with his utmost power to maintain what it is wholly out of his
power to discover, or which, if he could discover, he might discover to
consist of things directly contradictory to each other, some of them
perhaps impious, blasphemous, and seditious upon principle, would be not
only a gross, but a most mischievous absurdity. If mere dissent from the
Church of Rome be a merit, he that dissents the most perfectly is the
most meritorious. In many points we hold strongly with that church. He
that dissents throughout with that church will dissent with the Church
of England, and then it will be a part of his merit that he dissents
with ourselves: a whimsical species of merit for any set of men to
establish.
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