A Man Does Not Serve God When

As To The Christian System Of Faith, It Appears To Me As A Species Of Atheism — A Sort Of Religious Denial Of God. It Professes To Believe In A Man Rather Than In God. It Is A Compound Made Up Chiefly Of Manism With But Little Deism, And Is As Near To Atheism As Twilight Is To Darkness. It Introduces Between Man And His Maker An Opaque Body, Which It Calls A Redeemer, As The Moon Introduces Her Opaque Self Between The Earth And The Sun, And It Produces By This Means A Religious, Or An Irreligious, Eclipse Of Light. It Has Put The Whole Orbit Of Reason Into Shade.

If Men Will Permit Themselves To Think, As Rational Beings Ought To Think, Nothing Can Appear More Ridiculous And Absurd, Exclusive Of All Moral Reflections, Than To Be At The Expence Of Building Navies, Filling Them With Men, And Then Hauling Them Into The Ocean, To Try Which Can Sink Each Other Fastester. Peace, Which Costs Nothing, Is Attended With Infintely More Advantage Than Any Victory With All Its Expence. But This, Though It Best Answers The Purpose Of Nations, Does Not That Of Court Governments, Whose Habited Policy Is Pretence For Taxation, Places, And Offices.

What More Does Man Want To Know Than That The Hand Or Power That Made These Things Is Divine, Is Omnipotent? Let Him Believe This With The Force It Is Impossible To Repel, If He Permits His Reason To Act, And His Rule Of Moral Life Will Follow Of Course.

The Bill Of Rights Should Contain The General Principles Of Natural And Civil Liberty. It Should Be To A Community What The Eternal Laws And Obligations Of Morality Are To The Conscience. It Should Be Unalterable By Any Human Power.

From The Errors Of Other Nations, Let Us Learn Wisdom.