When they have opened a gap in the ... wall of separation between the Garden of the Church and the wildernes of the world, God hath ever ... made his Garden a Wildernesse.

Reflect upon your own spirit, and believe Him that said it to His overzealous disciples, 'You know not what spirit you are of.'

But who is to decide who truly fears the Lord? The magistrate has no power to enforce religious demands. The laws of the First Table of the Ten Commandments are not regulations for a civil society or a political order. They belong to the realm of religion, not politics.

Consider England. Within a few score years how many unsettling changes in religion has the whole kingdom made, according to the change of its rulers, in the various religions which they embraced.

It is less hurtful to compel a man to marry someone whom he does not love than to follow a religion in which he does not believe.

Even if the civil magistrate is so gifted as to prophesy in the church, yet in the sphere of his civil duties he is forbidden to call down fire from heaven, that is, to procure or inflict any corporal punishment upon offenders in religious doctrine or practice, remembering Christ's admonition that He came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

'Tis but worldly policy and compliance with men and times (God's mercy overruling) that holds your hands from the murdering of thousands and ten thousands, were your power and command as great as the bloody Roman emperors' formerly was.