HKB
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Often appears with: religious toleration · religious persecution and toleration · political legitimacy and consent · political faction and religion · independents and pennsylvania · faction, party, and civil strife
Usually: argument (1) · reconciliation (1) · exhortation (1)
“This plan of ecclesiastical government, or, more properly, of no ecclesiastical government, was what the sect called Independents proposed to establish in England towards the end of the civil war.” Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth · observation
He claims that if politics had never favored one sect, people could choose their own priests, producing many small sects whose teachers moderate zeal through mutual competition, while civil order stays safer.
keep to himself, was seldom very forward to grant it. Necessity, however, always forced him to submit at last, though frequently not till after many delays, evasions, and affected excuses. But if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of another, when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt equally and impartiall…