742 THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

that this interested diligence of the clergy is what every wiselegislator will study to prevent; because in every religionexcept the true, it is highly pernicious, and it has even a na-tural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strongmixture of superstition, folly, and delusion. Each ghostlypractitioner, in order to render himself more precious andsacred in the eyes of bis retainers, will inspire them with themost violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continuallyendeavour, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotionof his audience. No regard will be paid to truth, morals, ordecency, in the doctrines inculcated. Every tenet will beadopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the humanframe. Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by newindustry and address in practising on the passions and credu-lity of the populace. And in the end, the civil magistratewill find, that he has dearly paid for his pretended frugality,in saving a fixed establishment for the priests; and that inreality the most decent and advantageous composition, whichhe can make with the spiritual guides, is to bribe their indo-lence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, andrendering it superfluous for them to be farther active, thanmerely to prevent their flock from straying in quest of newpastures. And in this manner ecclesiastical establishments,though commonly they arose at first from religious views,prove in the end advantageous to the political interests ofsociety.”

But whatever may have been the good or bad effects ofthe independent provision of the clergy; it has, perhaps,been very seldom bestowed upon them from any view tothose effects. Times of violent religious controversy havegenerally been times of equally violent political faction.Upon such occasions, each political party has either found it,or imagined it, for his interest, to league itself with some oneor other of the contending religious sects. But this could bedone only by adopting, or at least by favouring, the tenets ofthat particular sect. The sect which had the good fortune tobe leagued with the conquering party, necessarily shared inthe victory of its ally, by whose favour and protection it wassoon enabled in some degree to silence and subdue all its ad-versaries. Those adversaries had generally leagued them-selves with the enemies of the conquering party, and weretherefore the enemies of that party. The clergy of this par-ticular sect having thus become complete masters of the field,