Defence of ecclesiastical establishments Author:James Lewis Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Marshall has fallen. After these exaggerated charges, he thinks it necessary to caution the friends of establishments, not to be irritated by his accusations, bu... more »t to " hide and repress the fiercer and less honourable passions," and to abstain from " crying out," as he supposes we cannot fail to do, " against his attempt as a wicked one, dictated by envy, and savouring of impiety." Never was author more mistaken in his power of exciting passion, or more needlessly alarmed lest he should bring upon himself the honours of persecution. Truth, when unwelcome, may provoke opposition, for when it is against a man, a man is likely to be against it. But what offence can be taken at an author who tells us that our establishment is " a system of antichristianism," and that it " forges chains for the understandings and consciences of men." The man talks loose and fancifully, and entertains us by fictions so wide of the truth, that we only admire the aptness of his imagination which can trace, in the simple presbyterian establishment of Scotland, the pollutions of Antichrist, and the forged chains of the inquisition. We may be sickened by the nonsense of such representations, or pleased, if in the humour, by their oddity and extravagance ; but assuredly, they have no power to stir the fiercer and less honourable passions. We might pity the man who had so strange a fancy, as to see a volcano in the curling smoke of every chimney, or a viper in every creeping insect that lay along his road, or who started at the sight of every quadruped, as if a lion and a tiger had passed before him, or who trembled to touch a ribbon in a lady's hand, lest it should prove a forged chain to bind him ; we might pity such a man, oreven laugh at his whims, but it were a waste pf good passion, pr worse, it were inhu...« less