I Dissenters

1. The inclination on the part of the […?] to destroy the Church, without the ability would afford no reason for putting them under any monumental /disagreeable/ restraint.

2. Coercive or attractive methods employed to produce conformity are either mischievous or useless.

3. Useless as to all those who would have conformed without them.

4. Mischievous as being productive of immorality, i:e. of falsehoods as to all those who would not have confirmed without them to 17

5. The text compel them to come in whatever be the interpretation put upon it, if it were to be understood to authorize persecution to induce men to become Churchmen could not to induce men to take a part in the controversive[?] among Christians.

6. Catholics no probability of their […?] – it would be for the world be for the world to go back upon in knowledge – enough conveniences by […?] not to be accounted as any thing

7. Persecution, if you can justify one degree, so you may every other

8. Such is the meanness of antipathy particularly religious antipathy, sooner than omit any chance of gaining its ends, it will put on the mask of cowardice.

9. All references to history is the story of the wolf & the lamb

10. Church to be defend – meaning the ecclesiastical as well as every other property of Churchmen

11. Every other apprehension of distinction of the church is a diffidence of, a rebelling against the general will.

12. It can not {but} be done but by a majority – Then you think the majority will be against you?

But if the majority are against you you are in the wrong. Fallible as it is, there is no other palpable […?] of truth […?] this

13. Those who say this will let it Atheists &c are certainly no friends to Atheists any more than to dissenters: they mean to stigmatize the one by the alliance and the other by the comparison

14. But by this supposition they pay Atheists the highest compliment, and give one of the strongest arguments that can be given for the innocence or rather mischievousness of Atheism – Atheists have then more conscience than believers.

15. There is a something which restrains men from being guilty of falsehood for worldly /gain/ advantage or to avoid suffering, even under /with/ the impossibility of detection even where detection is impossible.

16. Churchmen afraid of the destruction of the Church by the Dissenters must respect that the force of truth is against them – For what but the force of truth can prevail against the force /attraction/ of so /such/ many dignities and /a body of wealth/ {honour?}. Bishopricks so many bribes for keeping people to the Church

17. For 4 To maintain that […?] &c have any effect is to acknowledge the insincerity of those who take them.

18. There is no protection whatever you can not get people to subscribe to, {by} if you pay them for it, and punish them for not doing it.

19. What you want to come in for your share of the loaves and fishes? The complaint of the monopo[…?]t against the fur trader – of the rich shop-keeper against the poor hawker.

20. American a proof that dissenters are not intolerant now – This move is point than them history.

21. Catholics had a plea for persecution which Protestants have not.

22. …to punish men for continuing of the religion of their Fathers

23. Churchmen to inveigh against innovation! They who owe their existence to innovation

24. Finds for the propagation of the Gospel moderate. I wish they were more ample. Funds for the propagation of falsehood immense – 14,000 a year from Durham 10,000 from Canterbury, 6,000 from York,2,000 as an average for the other Bishopricks.

25. The real and true Members of the Church of England, are they, and the only, who would be so, were there nothing to be got by it.

26. Bolingbroke, to his other preferences, added that of &c. proscribing gainsayers to a system he did not believe

27. To exact oaths of Papists, saying Papists do not hold themselves bound by oaths, is to say I insist upon making use of this method because I am sure it can not answer its purpose.

Pu[…?] May 12. 1769

Philanthropos – ‘Is it not an article of faith in the Church of Provin…. Are men who hold such Doctrine . . . calculated to become good members of society in a Protestant country unless restrained by statutes containing some degree or an . . . . &c

Whatsoever would be saved must thus think of the Trinity.

I beg pardon of the Church &c I have never been able to hate those who differed from me: if I must hate it should rather be those who thinking with me with regard to those speculative points would be for employing the fruits of hatred to force others to think with me &c

In common cases a majority are bound /themselves/ by the Laws[?] they make – instance[…?], penal Laws &c

But in these laws are […?] acts of hostility of the majority against the minority, in which the rights of the one are sacrificed to the passions of the other.

Intolerant laws all turn upon confounding the truth of a proposition with the obligation to believe it.

It is universally believed that the garment of J. C. &c. […?] scorn. Suppose that by a collation of text or discovery of new ms any one should succeed in proving to deconstruction[?] that there was a scorn, would that {…?} impose on me an obligation to believe it

The only standard of importance used fundamentally is influence on moral conduct. […?] this and every thing is abundant to ones […?]ness & c[…?]

Of what importance can a truth be, how ever sublime from which nothing follows?

The constitution of the Godhead is with respect to us […?] and ignorant mortals of no {more} importance than the […?] or […?] of our luxurious […?].

Is it men with the max God as with the false ones of the heathens of different passions implied different […?], and by pleasing one a man had to fear the displeasing of {the} another then indeed it would be of importance.

As it is, it is of none: but what is of importance is that a person pronouncing one set of words should be led to conceive that a person using another set of words on that occasion

{indeed him}

[…?] the wrath of all those persons and that to such a degree as to be doomed by their […?] […?] to eternal misery.

The […?]ness the notion that every innovation is to wish the ruin of the Church is a consciousness /imputes a sort of/ of acknowledgement that it will not bear examination – In every department of government of government it would be concluded at once a proof of guilt

Pamphlets

Rights of the Protestant Dissenters to a compleat toleration affected 1789

Priestly: letter […?] P[…?]st 1786 or -7.

Brothers […?] of the Catholics.

Query of him whether the Papers are paid for insertions

Title

Thoughts on the claims of DIessenters

Two races – then of cost, & […?] . . . & Otions

It is the property of tyranny to provoke rebellion, and perhaps to justify it.