God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power.

No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good.

I have read somewhere or other, - in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think, - that history is philosophy teaching by examples.

As well as might we say that a ship is built, loaded and manned for the sake of any particular pilot, instead of acknowledging that the pilot is made for the sake of the ship, her lading, and her crew, who are always the owners in the political vessel; as to say that kingdoms were instituted for kings, not kings for kingdoms.

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.

Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.

Lawyers must pry into the recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws.