If mere dissent from the church of Rome be a merit, he that dissents the
most perfectly is the most meritorious. In many points we hold strongly
with that church. He that dissents throughout with that church will
dissent with the church of England, and then it will be a part of his
merit that he dissents with ourselves:--a whimsical species of merit for
any set of men to establish. We quarrel to extremity with those who we
know agree with us in many things, but we are to be so malicious even
in the principle of our friendships, that we are to cherish in our
bosom those who accord with us in nothing, because whilst they despise
ourselves, they abhor, even more than we do, those with whom we have
some disagreement. A man is certainly the most perfect Protestant who
protests against the whole Christian religion. Whether a person's having
no Christian religion be a title to favour, in exclusion to the largest
description of Christians who hold all the doctrines of Christianity,
though holding along with them some errors and some superfluities, is
rather more than any man, who has not become recreant and apostate from
his baptism, will, I believe, choose to affirm. The countenance given
from a spirit of controversy to that negative religion may, by degrees,
encourage light and unthinking people to a total indifference to
everything positive in matters of doctrine; and, in the end, of practice
too. If continued, it would play the game of that sort of active,
proselytizing, and persecuting atheism, which is the disgrace and
calamity of our time, and which we see to be as capable of subverting a
government, as any mode can be of misguided zeal for better things.