7387. REPUBLICANS, New England and.—[continued].
The Eastern States will
be the last to come over, on account of the
dominion of the clergy, who had got a smell
of union between Church and State, and began
to indulge reveries which can never be
realized in the present state of science. If,
indeed, they could have prevailed on us, to
view all advances in science as dangerous innovations,
and to look back to the opinions
and practices of our forefathers, instead of
looking forward for improvement, a promising
groundwork would have been laid. But
I am in hopes their good sense will dictate to
them, that since the mountain will not come
to them, they had better go to the mountain;
that they will find their interest in acquiescing
in the liberty and science of their country,
and that the Christian religion, when divested
of the rags in which they have enveloped
it, and brought to the original purity
and simplicity of its benevolent institutor is
a religion of all others the most friendly to
liberty, science, and the freest expansion of
the human mind.—
To Moses Robinson. Washington ed. iv, 379.
(March. 1801)
