Book I. Part II. p.139.
The following Book of this Work is interesting and most instructive as
an instance of Syncretism, and its Epicurean 'clinamen', even when it
has been undertaken from the purest and most laudable motives, and from
impulses the most Christian, and yet its utter failure in its object,
that of tending to a common centre. The experience of eighteen centuries
seems to prove that there is no practicable 'medium' between a Church
comprehensive (which is the only meaning of a Catholic Church visible)
in which A. in the North or East is allowed to advance officially no
doctrine different from what is allowed to B. in the South or West;--and
a co-existence of independent Churches, in none of which any further
unity is required but that between the minister and his congregation,
while this again is secured by the election and continuance of the
former depending wholly on the will of the latter.
Perhaps the best state possible, though not the best possible state, is
where both are found, the one established by maintenance, the other by
permission; in short that which we now enjoy. In such a state no
minister of the former can have a right to complain, for it was at his
own option to have taken the latter; 'et volenti nulla fit injuria'. For
an individual to demand the freedom of the independent single Church
when he receives L500 a year for submitting to the necessary
restrictions of the Church General, is impudence and Mammonolatry to
boot.
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