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.

While I deplored and denounced the incivilities of Quakerism in my day (such as the going naked in public by some at sundry times), my position regarding their religious views was, "They will answer to God, at their own peril, in the great day approaching [that is, the day of divine judgment]."

God requireth not an uniformity of Religion to be inacted and inforced in any civill state.

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.

'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.

That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it.

There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that Papists, Protestants, Jews, and Turks may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for turns upon these two hinges: that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ships prayers or worship, nor be compelled [restrained] from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.