If a religion is to be chosen by the state, it must be by the supreme power. But if this power shall attempt to impose its own religious choice universally on all its members, it will thereby effectually frustrate all the ends and intentions of religion; because the force of religion on the conscience proceeds from the belief of its coming from God, and being derived from divine authority; which can never be the case, where it is manifestly imposed by the civil power. For though it were really and truly a divine revelation, yet if it came to those, who are not yet convinced of its truth, in the form of a statute or human law, it must expect a very cold reception. Our inward thoughts have a right to be free; and if the magistrate shall presume to exercise the same dominion over them that he does over our outward actions, they will give a strong resistance, as well when he imposes the belief of what is true, as that which is false.

Besides, if that, which should be derived from divine authority, be transferred and founded on mere human power, the people who are to receive it immediately from the hands of the magistrate, and who, generally speaking, can look no higher than the hand that is next, and delivers it immediately to themselves, will never embrace it instead of their old religion, which they believe to be from God. Civil power, therefore, can be no instrument of conversion.

A religion imposed by the magistrate might, indeed, be outwardly professed by some; but could only teach them falsehood and hypocrisy; so far would it be from inspiring them with that honesty and virtue which the well-being of society so necessarily requires.

All revealed religion is founded on faith: now faith can never be the matter or object of human law. There is no commanding one to believe. Such a usurpation on the mind, which can only believe on credibilities, would rather prevent and hinder belief; because it would immediately be supposed, that a religion, relying on such foreign helps, had no truth nor likelihood of its own to support it.

A system of religious principles, imposed by the magistrate, could, at least, have but the force and virtue of a human law; and, consequently, could never reach the conscience; could never guard the society from secret frauds;

could never establish a court in the heart, sufficient to see justice done in times and places that are out of the reach of the civil court.

The use of religion to society, is, to support and enforce the laws by a higher law, a law of conscience. But this it can never do, if it is to borrow its own force and authority from those very human laws which it ought to back and fortify with the strength of an obligation superior to that with which they are imposed.

No power but that of the Divine can impose a religion. God, we see, distinguished between his own power and that of human laws, when he imposed the Christian. He supported it with miracles, which were the signs and credentials of his authority, which no civil power could counterfeit; nay, he planted and established his religion in direct opposition to all civil power. Thus only the mind can be convinced thus only the conscience and the heart can be converted. As to the magistrate, or the legislature, they can only give the encouragement of the state to the professors of that religion they like best; and leave others to their own consciences or humours, without attempting either to entice or terrify them into a conformity with their establishment.

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The civil magistrate, therefore, cannot impose a religion; and yet, if he establishes no religion, but leaves the power of the constitution to be shared by the professors of any religion, he will soon find the constitution destroyed by that which alone can preserve it: for,

The professors of each religion will either be zealous for it, or they will not; if they will not, then there is, in effect, no religion in the society. A religion merely professed, but neither preferred to other religions, nor zealously loved and adhered to, can have no influence on the lives of its professors; can neither make them honest, nor answer any ends of the society. Such a lukewarmness is next to infidelity; in which it must soon end, if some novelty in religion do not prevent it, and excite a new spirit. Nay, I will be bold to say, that, unless a man loves his religion more than riches, power, in short, than every thing in the world; unless he is more afraid of acting against its rules, than of offending the greatest man on earth, or all mankind; unless

it hath engaged and subdued all his affections, and attached to itself the whole force of all his passions; it can by no means make him a good member of society, although it is the only thing that can.

But if each religious system is zealously maintained, it must also be warmly contended for, by its adherents: for such is the nature of man, that, generally speaking, he cannot help thinking his disputing, or even fighting, for his religion, must be highly serviceable to it, and therefore his duty; and no doubt so it is, as often as the tongues, the pens, or the swords, of its adversaries happen to be employed against it. Contentions about religion, if they were confined to words only, would not much concern society. But this is not always the case. They frequently end in the most outrageous battles and bloodshed; for wars, commenced on religious differences, are always the most bitter and furious. The souls on each side are engaged, as well as the bodies; and the spirit of opposition is strained infinitely higher than when mere earthly possessions are contended for, by the imagination that the glory of God, and heaven itself, are at stake.

Now the society has no other way of guarding against the mischievous effects of these religious bickerings, and preventing its own ruin, but by restraining the civil power to the professors of one religion. By this means the rest, having no power, can give no disturbance; and lest they should be disturbed by the established party, such laws must be provided, as may not only secure to them their own possessions on the same footing with the rest of their fellowsubjects, but also effectually secure to them the free and peaceable exercise of those several religions their consciences have embraced. If this be not done, the power of the society, which ought by all means to be firmly and inseparably united, will be unavoidably divided, and divided too by such a cause of division, as will set it in the most direct and fierce opposition to itself. When religious differences tear the members of any society asunder, if the civil power be parcelled out among them, no civil expedient will be strong enough to keep them together.

If, to clear up the afore-mentioned difficulties, we would

trace the true bounds of civil power in relation to religious matters, we must do it by considering from whence that power is derived. It is derived from, and founded on, these two maxims. The society has a right to preserve itself, and the society has a right to choose a religion for itself.

If, according to the first, the society has a right to preserve itself, in the same manner with a single person, then it must of necessity have a right to lodge or trust its power only with such as will employ it in the service, and to the preservation of itself. No man would willingly give another power to destroy him, especially if he had any reason to suspect him capable of being tempted so to do. And why a nation or society should be excluded from the first law of nature, more than a single person, I cannot see.

Again; since a society has a right to preserve itself, and since religion is necessary to the preservation of society, it follows, that a society must have a right to choose some religion; because, if it has a right of self-preservation, it must have a right to the necessary means.

Now then, from these two maxims laid together, it appears, that the supreme legislative power in any society has a right to establish some one religion, and to trust its power in the hands of those only who profess and adhere to that religion...

But as there is no establishing religion without establishing the necessary means; so, therefore, the society must also have an undoubted right to settle and fix such means as it finds requisite to preserve that religion, on which its own preservation depends: such are the maintenance of persons to preach it; the decent ordering of ceremonies, and mere modes of worship; the building of public places of worship; the lending its power to suppress immoralities, and stubborn offenders, and the like.

But as a single person has only a right to preserve himself, and to the means of his own preservation, and not at all to annoy another; so neither has a society any other right. Once it hath chosen a religion for itself, and laid down ways and means for the support and security of it, it hath done all that it lawfully can. And if it shall persecute those who dissent from its established religion, for no other reason but

because they dissent, it is then guilty of usurping upon the conscience, over which neither God nor reason has permitted it to exercise any jurisdiction.

Now the society may be said to persecute for religion, when it exercises any severities upon dissenters, that are not necessary to its own preservation; that is, when it either deprives them of their lives, their liberties, or their possessions, merely because they differ from it in point of religion, when they are quiet, and offer no disturbance to the state.

But, on the other hand, if those who differ from the establishment in religious matters, shall attempt any thing against the state, though it be from a religious motive, the society, as it hath a right to preserve itself, must also have a right to treat them as rebels; and, according to the degree of their obstinacy, rather than be destroyed itself, to deprive them of their possessions, their liberties, or even their lives. This is not persecution, but self-preservation.

If dissenters from the established religion rebel, through a mistaken notion, that the principles and interests of their religion require it, then the society has a right to suppress them; but not to prohibit or persecute their religion, on which their rebellion cannot be justly chargeable.

But, if the true genius and spirit of their religion stirs them up to civil discord and rebellion, then the society has an undoubted right to prohibit and extirpate their religion itself, as contrary to the very laws of nature, and inconsistent with the preservation of the government.

The body politic has the same right with the natural, to remove every thing from itself that is hurtful and destructive to it; and this it hath from its natural right to preserve itself.

Upon the whole, the supreme power can expect no perfect obedience, nor can the state subsist in any tolerable manner, without religion. It is therefore the interest of every constitution to choose to itself some religion, to which it has as undoubted a right as any single person can have. States may be converted, may believe, may be called religious, as well as men. As the civil magistrate on the one hand, must not presume to impose a religion; so neither must he leave the constitution exposed to the ruinous effects of civil discord, by permitting vulgar diversity of opinion to