Where Mystery Begins Religion Ends.

We Must Soften Into A Credulity Below The Milkiness Of Infancy To Think All Men Virtuous. We Must Be Tainted With A Malignity Truly Diabolical, To Believe All The World To Be Equally Wicked And Corrupt.

Nothing In Progression Can Rest On Its Original Plan. We May As Well Think Of Rocking A Grown Man In The Cradle Of An Infant.

I Cannot Stand Forward, And Give Praise Or Blame To Any Thing Which Relates To Human Actions, And Human Concerns, On A Simple View Of The Subject As It Stands Stripped Of Every Relation, In All The Nakedness And Solitude Of Metaphysical Abstraction. Circumstances (which With Some Gentlemen Pass For Nothing) Give In Reality To Every Political Principle Its Distinguishing Colour, And Discriminating Effect. The Circumstances Are What Render Every Civil And Political Scheme Beneficial Or Noxious To Mankind.

It Is A General Popular Error To Suppose The Loudest Complainers For The Public To Be The Most Anxious For Its Welfare.

When You Find Me Attempting To Break Into Your House To Take Your Plate, Under Any Pretence Whatsoever, But Most Of All Under Pretence Of Purity Of Religion And Christian Charity Shoot Me For A Robber And A Hypocrite, As In That Case I Shall Certainly Be.