It is something extraordinary, that the only symptom of alarm in the
Church of England should appear in the petition of some dissenters; with
whom, I believe, very few in this house are yet acquainted; and of whom
you know no more than that you are assured by the honourable gentleman,
that they are not Mahometans. Of the Church we know they are not, by the
name that they assume. They are then dissenters. 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! The honourable
gentleman, in speaking of the lines of Chatham, tells us that they serve
not only for the security of the wooden walls of England, but for the
defence of the Church of England. I suspect the wooden walls of England
secure the lines of Chatham, rather than the lines of Chatham secure the
wooden walls of England.
Sir, the Church of England, if only defended by this miserable petition
upon your table, must, I am afraid, upon the principles of true
fortification, be soon destroyed. 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 establishment.
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 universities, not shook in any single battlement, in
any single pinnacle. ...
But if, after all, this danger is to be apprehended, if you are really
fearful that Christianity will indirectly suffer by this liberty, you
have my free consent; go directly, and by the straight way, and not by a
circuit, in which in your road you may destroy your friends, point your
arms against these men who do the mischief you fear promoting; point
your arms against men, who, not contented with endeavouring to turn
your eyes from the blaze and effulgence of light, by which life and
immortality is so gloriously demonstrated by the Gospel, would even
extinguish that faint glimmering of nature, that only comfort supplied
to ignorant man before this great illumination--them who, by attacking
even the possibility of all revelation, arraign all the dispensations
of Providence to man. These are the wicked dissenters you ought to fear;
these are the people against whom you ought to aim the shafts of law;
these are the men to whom, arrayed in all the terrors of government,
I would say, You shall not degrade us into brutes; these men, these
factious men, as the honourable gentleman properly called them, are the
just objects of vengeance, not the conscientious dissenter; these
men, who would take away whatever ennobles the rank or consoles
the misfortunes of human nature, by breaking off that connection of
observations, of affections, of hopes and fears, which bind us to the
Divinity, and constitute the glorious and distinguishing prerogative of
humanity, that of being a religious creature; against these I would have
the laws rise in all their majesty of terrors, to fulminate such vain
and impious wretches, and to awe them into impotence by the only
dread they can fear or believe, to learn that eternal lesson--Discite
justitiam moniti, et non temnere Divos.
At the same time that I would cut up the very root of atheism, I would
respect all conscience; all conscience, that is really such, and which
perhaps its very tenderness proves to be sincere. I wish to see the
established Church of England great and powerful; I wish to see her
foundations laid low and deep, that she may crush the giant powers of
rebellious darkness; I would have her head raised up to that heaven to
which she conducts us. I would have her open wide her hospitable gates
by a noble and liberal comprehension; but I would have no breaches in
her wall; I would have her cherish all those who are within, and pity
all those who are without; I would have her a common blessing to the
world, an example, if not an instructor, to those who have not the
happiness to belong to her; I would have her give a lesson of peace to
mankind, that a vexed and wandering generation might be taught to seek
for repose and toleration in the maternal bosom of Christian charity,
and not in the harlot lap of infidelity and indifference.