7226. RELIGION, Freedom of.—[further continued] .
Almighty God hath
created the mind free, and manifested His
supreme will that free it shall remain by making
it altogether insusceptible of restraint.
* * * All attempts to influence it by temporal
punishments or burthens, or by civil
incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of
hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure
from the plan of the Holy Author of our
religion, who, being Lord both of body and
mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions
on either, as was in his Almighty power
to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason
alone.—
Statute of Religious Freedom. Washington ed. viii, 454.
Ford ed., ii, 237.
(1779)
