When Tyranny Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty.

On The Dogmas Of Religion, As Distinguished From Moral Principles, All Mankind, From The Beginning Of The World To This Day, Have Been Quarrelling, Fighting, Burning And Torturing One Another, For Abstractions Unintelligible To Themselves And To All Others, And Absolutely Beyond The Comprehension Of The Human Mind.

The Contradictory Experiments Of Chemists Leave Us At Liberty To Conclude What We Please. My Conclusion Is, That Art Has Not Yet Invented Sufficient Aids To Enable Such Subtle Bodies [air, Light, &c.] To Make A Well-defined Impression On Organs As Blunt As Ours; That It Is Laudable To Encourage Investigation But To Hold Back Conclusion.

And For The Support Of This Declaration, With A Firm Reliance On The Protection Of Divine Providence, We Mutually Pledge To Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes And Our Sacred Honor.

Amplification Is The Vice Of Modern Oratory.

Are We To Have A Censor Whose Imprimatur Shall Say What Books May Be Sold, And What We May Buy? And Who Is Thus To Dogmatize Religious Opinions For Our Citizens? Whose Foot Is To Be The Measure To Which Ours Are All To Be Cut Or Stretched? Is A Priest To Be Our Inquisitor, Or Shall A Layman, Simple As Ourselves, Set Up His Reason As The Rule Of What We Are To Read, And What We Must Believe?