will make their appearance; - the hectic fever, the wild pulse, the breaking up of the system, must follow.

3. In addition to this, I may next remark, that the grand principle of Protestantism, which is PRIVATE JUDGMENT OF THE SCRIPTURES, must characterize a nation, as well as high views of their divine authority. This is one of the elements of freedom of thought. Bind a man in his religion, and you have bound him essentially, and may do with him what you please. The Romanists know this. Chain a man's religious opinions to any court, church, council, or canonized father, to any thing but the Bible, and your fetters are upon his liberty, your iron has entered into his soul.

From spiritual despotism to civil and political the path is short, easy, inevitable. Hence, we cannot but view with the most jealous distrust the progress of that anti-Protestant tendency which has been stealing upon us from a monarchy and a Church-Establishment. We should look upon this matter in the spirit of no sect, but in the light of an interest dear to us all as the common light of day, whether we be Christians or infidels. This interest is that of every man of this Republic, who is not ready to give up the grand principle of republicanism, the right of private judgment and action in regard to the men, principles, and measures of the administration of his country's government. Dearly as I might love my church, were I indissolubly bound to any form of church government, I would rather it were in the bottom of the salt sea sunk, than made a machinery

of manacles and fetters for the souls of men. I am sure that this growing scorn of the Reformation, and this depreciation of the grand principle of private judgment in matters of religion, springs not from a new form of piety, but from the ever vital spirit of despotism in the old world. And if anywhere I could trace the proofs of that foreign conspiracy, which has been asserted, against the liberties of this country, and against all mankind through our subjection, I could find it here.

Private judgment in matters of faith, private judgment in matters of liberty, these are two kindred rights and possessions. The destruction of them both constitutes a perfect despotism. Take away either, and you endanger the other; but the bridge is more easily thrown up from the destruction of the first to that of the second, and then your spiritual despotism may march her troops across into your civil territory almost without notice, because it takes us on our noble side. We are not apt to suspect our religion of endangering our liberties; and hence this union of spiritual and civil despotism may be going on, may have been consummated, and a people yet be scarcely aware that it is done, or how it is done. This noble Protestant principle therefore is to be sacredly preserved and guarded as an element of national greatness. No where in the world is there a more complete subjection of the national mind, a thicker covering of the fire of liberty with frosty ashes, than where this principle is disregarded or repudiated.

I have seen this. Travelling across the Tyrol Alps, where

the forms of Hofer and his noble band might seem to be at every step around the traveller, where the spirit of freedom seems a quality in the bracing air, and the very mountains are uttering to the storms the chant of man's liberty and immortality, even there, as I enter the city of Innspruck, cradled as it is in among mountains, that with every glance upward flash defiance to the tyrant, I see the open mouths of brazen cannon planted across the public square, and I, a citizen of the United States, am defended at the point of the bayonet from stepping beyond the line of their enclosure, even in a time of profound peace! Why was this? I know of but one solution, one meaning in the vigilance of tyranny. That public square, lynx-eyed despotism had fixed upon as the place, in the heart of that city, whither its patriots would rush to the rescue, if at any time the spirit of liberty should grow too strong for its restraints. It was in an Austrian region that I had to conceal my Italian Bibles, which I wished to carry as a present from a friend to a friend in Italy, lest I might get into difficulty from being found with such an instrument of religious and civil freedom upon my person. All tyrants know, with the instinct of despotism, that if Faith instead of superstition gets possession of the people, there is an end to their power of bondage. The principle of private judgment would overturn the gorgeous structure of civil and religious tyranny from its foundation. Men have bound the world in a civil and religious frost like iron; -well may they be afraid of Faith; it is a spring thaw, that loosens the avalanche.

The State alone has impressed despotism enough upon men, but the State alone has usually left the religious being of mankind free. The State in union with the Church. developes another form of despotism, and carries tyranny into the spiritual world, and thence back again with additional strength into the political world. The union of Church and State not only supplies religious fanaticism with political power, but it arms political tyranny with the sanctions of the unseen world.

A sect united with the State is sure to persecute: the power of persecution must be taken away, and kept away forever. It is not that the Romanist, the Congregationalist, the Socinian, or the Prelatist, has not the perfect right to choose his own religion, and to worship in it with a freedom like the air that he breathes; but it is that he has not the right to enforce his religion upon me, or to make the unhal'lowed and arrogant assumption, that his Church alone is the Church of Christ on earth, and that all others are to be consigned over to God's "uncovenanted mercies," especially when this enforcement is grounded on the possession of certain arbitrary forms, instead of the truth as it is in Jesus. Do you wish to see the tendency of such assumptions? I will read to you a passage from a British Review of high authority, a passage worthy of the palmiest state of Popery in the noon of the world's night: "All the members of a State ought to belong to one established Church; and wherever the contrary is the case, it proves a source of weakness to that State, which then ceases to live by its internal vitality,

and must seek its support from without. Where, however, the number of Dissenters is small, and the State powerful, the danger is less imminent. Strictly speaking, religious sects can only be tolerated in a State, and the rank they hold in it can be only one degree higher than that held by Jews"! These are detestable sentiments; I only say, God forbid they should ever get root in this country, which they would do, should the spirit of Romanism prevail. The very word toleration is a disgrace to the English language; it is a reproach to the tongue of any free people to utter it in reference to religion, for it comprehends the whole essence of despotism. Religious toleration! Nor is the word dissent in our country, a whit better, justly exposing any sect that shall undertake to fling it out to others, to the ridicule and reproach of Christendom.

4. Intimately connected with this principle of private judgment of the Scriptures, and freedom in religious opinion, is another truth, which, in its combination with the being of nations, passes into a quality and a characteristic; and must henceforth be an indispensable element of national greatness, the great truth of JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. Here, again, I speak the language of no sect, but of that universal wisdom which is above all sects, and by which all sects, that do not mean to die, must live. And I fearlessly affirm that this principle is as essential to the true greatness of a nation, as it is to the salvation of an individual soul. I affirm that it is, if only on the ground that this principle is at once the