We hear these new teachers continually boasting of their spirit of toleration.  That those persons should tolerate all opinions, who think none to be of estimation, is a matter of small merit.  Equal neglect is not impartial kindness.  The species of benevolence which arises from contempt is no true charity.  There are in England abundance of men who tolerate in the true spirit of toleration.  They think the dogmas of religion, though in different degrees, are all of moment, and that amongst them there is, as amongst all things of value, a just ground of preference.  They favor, therefore, and they tolerate.  They tolerate, not because they despise opinions, but because they respect justice.  They would reverently and affectionately protect all religions, because they love and venerate the great principle upon which they all agree, and the great object to which they are all directed.  They begin more and more plainly to discern that we have all a common cause, as against a common enemy.  They will not be so misled by the spirit of faction as not to distinguish what is done in favor of their subdivision from those acts of hostility which, through some particular description, are aimed at the whole corps in which they themselves, under another denomination, are included.  It is impossible for me to say what may be the character of every description of men amongst us.  But I speak for the greater part; and for them, I must tell you, that sacrilege is no part of their doctrine of good works; that, so far from calling you into their fellowship on such title, if your professors are admitted to their communion, they must carefully conceal their doctrine of the lawfulness of the proscription of innocent men, and that they must make restitution of all stolen goods whatsoever.  Till then they are none of ours.

You may suppose that we do not approve your confiscation of the revenues of bishops, and deans, and chapters, and parochial clergy possessing independent estates arising from land, because we have the same sort of establishment in England.  That objection, you will say, cannot hold as to the confiscation of the goods of monks and nuns, and the abolition of their order.  It is true that this particular part of your general confiscation does not affect England, as a precedent in point; but the reason applies, and it goes a great way.  The Long Parliament confiscated the lands of deans and chapters in England on the same ideas upon which your Assembly set to sale the lands of the monastic orders.  But it is in the principle of injustice that the danger lies, and not in the description of persons on whom it is first exercised.  I see, in a country very near us, a course of policy pursued, which sets justice, the common concern of mankind, at defiance.  With the National Assembly of France possession is nothing, law and usage are nothing.  I see the National Assembly openly reprobate the doctrine of prescription, which one of the greatest of their own lawyers[114] tells us, with great truth,