regular legal procedures. No age, indeed, can show an example of hypocrisy parallel to this. But the history of all ages, and all countries, will show what has been really going forward over the face of the earth, to be very different from what has been always pretended; and that virtue has been everywhere professed much more than it has been anywhere practised; nor could society, from the very nature of its constitution, subsist without some general public profession of it. Thus the face and appearance which the world has in all times put on, for the ease and ornament of life, and in pursuit of further ends, is the justest satire upon what has in all times been carrying on under it, and ill men are destined, by the condition of their being as social creatures, always to bear about with them, and in different degrees, to profess, that law of virtue by which they shall finally be judged and condemned.
II. As fair pretences of one sort or other, have thus always been made use of by mankind to colour over indirect and wrong designs from the world, and to palliate and excuse them in their own minds, liberty, in common with all other good things, is liable to be made this use of, and is also liable to it in a way more peculiar to itself; which was the second thing to be considered.
In the history which this day refers us to, we find our constitution in church and state destroyed under pretences not only of religion, but of securing liberty, and carrying it to a greater height. The destruction of the former was with zeal of such a kind as would not have been warrantable, though it had been employed in the destruction of heathenism. And the confusions, the persecuting spirit, and incredible fanaticism, which grew up upon its ruins, cannot but teach sober-minded men to reverence so mild and reasonable an establishment, now it is restored for the preservation of Christianity, and keeping up a sense of it amongst us, and for the instruction and guide of the ignorant: nay, were it only for guarding religion from such
