Those of you who have robbed the clergy think that they shall easily reconcile their conduct to all Protestant nations, because the clergy whom they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery and scorn, are of the Roman Catholic, that is, of their own pretended persuasion.  I have no doubt that some miserable bigots will be found here as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties different from their own more than they love the substance of religion, and who are more angry with those who differ from them in their particular plans and systems than displeased with those who attack the foundation of our common hope.  These men will write and speak on the subject in the manner that is to be expected from their temper and character.  Burnet says, that, when he was in France, in the year 1683, “the method which carried over the men of the finest parts to Popery was this:  they brought themselves to doubt of the whole Christian religion:  when that was once done, it seemed a more indifferent thing of what side or form they continued outwardly.”  If this was then the ecclesiastic policy of France, it is what they have since but too much reason to repent of.  They preferred atheism to a form of religion not agreeable to their ideas.  They succeeded in destroying that form; and atheism has succeeded in destroying them.  I can readily give credit to Burnet’s story; because I have observed too much of a similar spirit (for a little of it is “much too much”) amongst ourselves.  The humor, however, is not general.

The teachers who reformed our religion in England bore no sort of resemblance to your present reforming doctors in Paris.  Perhaps they were (like those whom they opposed) rather more than could be wished under the influence of a party spirit; but they were most sincere believers; men of the most fervent and exalted piety; ready to die (as some of them did die) like true heroes in defence of their particular ideas of Christianity,—­as they would with equal fortitude, and more cheerfully, for that stock of general truth for the branches of which they contended with their blood.  These men would have disavowed with horror those wretches who claimed a fellowship with them upon no other titles than those of their having pillaged the persons with whom they maintained controversies, and their having despised the common religion, for the purity of which they exerted themselves with a zeal which unequivocally bespoke their highest reverence for the substance of that system which they wished to reform.  Many of their descendants have retained the same zeal, but (as less engaged in conflict) with more moderation.  They do not forget that justice and mercy are substantial parts of religion.  Impious men do not recommend themselves to their communion by iniquity and cruelty towards any description of their fellow-creatures.