But, Sir, she has other securities: she has the security of her own doctrines; she has the security of the piety, the sanctity, of her own professors,--their learning is a bulwark to defend her; she has the security of the two…
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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But, fortunately, her walls, bulwarks, and bastions are constructed of other materials than of stubble and straw,--are built up with the strong and stable matter of the gospel of liberty, and founded on a true, constitutional, legal…
I suspect the wooden walls of England secure the lines of Chatham, rather than the lines of Chatham secure the wooden walls of England.
The first symptom of an alarm, comes from some Dissenters assembled round the lines of Chatham: these lines become the security of the Church of England!
We owe the best we can (not infallibility, but prudence) to the subject,--first sound doctrine, then ability to use it.
If we do not get some security for this, we not only permit, but we actually pay for, all the dangerous fanaticism which, can be produced to corrupt our people, and to derange the public worship of the country.
The Scripture is no one summary of doctrines regularly digested, in which, a man could not mistake his way.
There are some who reject the Canticles; others, six of the Epistles; the Apocalypse has been suspected even as heretical, and was doubted of for many ages, and by many great men.
The Bible is a vast collection of different treatises: a man who holds the divine authority of one may consider the other as merely human.
They do not think that a book becomes of divine authority because it is bound in blue morocco, and is printed by John Baskett and his assigns.
The subscription to Scripture is the most astonishing idea I ever heard, and will amount to just nothing at all.
When a man requires you to sign an assent to Scripture, he requires you to assent to a doctrine as contrary to your natural understanding, and to your rights of free inquiry, as those who require your conformity to any one article…
It is, therefore, as a grievance, fairly none at all,--nothing but what is essential, not only to the order, but to the liberty, of the whole community.
As I said before, your determination may be unwise in this as in other matters; but it cannot be unjust, hard, or oppressive, or contrary to the liberty of any man, or in the least degree exceeding your province.
If you will have religion publicly practised and publicly taught, you must have a power to say what that religion will be which you will protect and encourage, and to distinguish it by such marks and characteristics as you in your wisdom…
When they have done so, the very same principle of necessity of human affairs to establish some other authority, which shall preserve the order of this new institution, must be obeyed, until they grow intolerable; and you shall not be…
When tyranny is extreme, and abuses of government intolerable, men resort to the rights of Nature to shake it off.
By contending for liberty in the candidate for orders, you take away the liberty of the elector, which is the people, that is, the state.
To take away from men their lives, their liberty, or their property, those things for the protection of which society was introduced, is great hardship and intolerable tyranny; but to annex any condition you please to benefits artificially …
When gentlemen complain of the subscription as matter of grievance, the complaint arises from confounding private judgment, whose rights are anterior to law, and the qualifications which the law creates for its own magistracies, whether…
But when I heard a complaint of a pressure on religious liberty, to my astonishment I find that there was no complaint whatsoever of the insufficiency of the act of King William, nor any attempt to make it more sufficient.
If the Act of Toleration were not perfect, if there were a complaint of it, I would gladly consent to amend it.
I know many gentlemen think that the very essence of liberty consists in being governed according to law, as if grievances had nothing real and intrinsic; but I cannot be of that opinion.
But as we have scarcely ever the same certainty in the one that we have in the other, I would, unless the truth were evident indeed, hold fast to peace, which has in her company charity, the highest of the virtues.
I will not enter into the question, how much truth is preferable to peace.
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