fuch prefentee, fhall not be reviewed or fufpended by any court civil or ecclefiaftical. If the perfon is not found qualified, another perfon must be chofen by the minister and heritors within the remainder of the time; otherwise, the jus devolutum will take place.

The fees are to be fixed from time to time, at a meeting. called in the manner required by the ftatute, the schoolmafter teaching poor children gratis P. But the prefbytery have the power of correcting any thing that appears to them amifs, with respect to the hours of teaching, the length of the vacation ufually given, &c. Their regulations must be complied with by the schoolmaster, under the pain of cenfure, fufpenfion, or depravation, according to the difcretion of the prefbytery. In cafe of complaint being made against the schoolmaster for misbehaviour, the prefbytery are entitled to take cognizance of the fame; and their judgment is firfal without any appeal to or review by any court civil or ecclefiaftical. In cafe of depofition, the school shall immediately be declared vacant.

$5.

ELECTION.

SUPERIN

OF THE
PRESBYTE-

VI. THE prefbytery has no fuperintendance over private $ 6. fchools. By act 19 Geo. II, c. 39, no perfon can keep a TENDANCE private fchool for teaching English, Latin, Greek, or any part of literature, until their defcription be registered, and Y. the mafter qualify by taking the oaths, under the penalty of tranfportation; and 21 Geo. II, c. 34, §. 12.

* § 16. This makes it almost unneceffary to take notice of the cafe of McCulloch against Allan, 26th Nov. 1793; where the court of feffion decided, that the sentence of the prefbytery was reviewable by the court of feffion, and not by the ecclefiaftical judicatures. A decifion not in unifon

with that of the general assembly and
fynods, who had been in the practice
of exercising a power of review in
thefe queftions. This judgment, how-
ever, was reverfed in the Houfe of
Lords, 18th February 1800.
P§ 18.

9 § 20.

CHAP. XIV.

$ 1.

IN GEN

ERAL.

I.

THE

Of Religion.

HE State is "a fociety of men, constituted only for "the procuring, preserving, and advancing their "own civil interefts," ne quis fur effet, neu latro, neu quis State, what adulter. The magiftrate, therefore, has no right to punish Cannot or perfecute individuals on account of their religious opinions, intermeddle and never attempted to do fo without producing, more or lefs, mischief and injuftice.

is it?

with reli

gion.

Beneficial

operation

BUT the belief of a future ftate of retribution ever ap-. of religion. peared a powerful auxiliary to human laws, in order to the attainment, even of those temporal advantages, that secure enjoyment of property and public quiet and tranquillity, which are the great ends of civil fociety. Hence, religion was termed by the ancient philofophers and politicians, "the link of fociety, and foundation of legiflation; the bul"wark of authority, and bond of law." Accordingly, the

How term ed by the ancients.

a Locke's Works, Vol. ii, p. 244. Neque immerito Plato religionem propugnaculum poteftatis ac le

gum et honeftæ difciplinæ vinculum. Grotius de Jure Belli, &c. Lib. ii, c. 20, § 44.

ancient legal institutes, whether real or Utopian, are interwoven with ordinances touching religion.

IN GEN-
ERAL.

divine

origin.

HENCE, too, the more to increase their authority, the an- Affected a cient lawgivers endeavoured to trace the different codes to a divine original. Plato begins his dialogue on the laws with this question, "Do you think, O guests, that a god, or some man, was the cause of the establishment of laws?"... to which the answer made is, "A god, O gueft, a god; as it is "moft just to affert: with us, indeed, Jupiter; but with "the Lacedemonians, I think Apollo dictated the laws." In like manner, the kings affected a facred character, Kings alfo

For example: The prefaces to the laws of Zaleucus and Charondas, (who were contemporary with LyCargas, or 950 years before Christ), written, the one for the Locrians, the other for the Chalcidic cities

.

of Italy. Zaleucus begins his laws as follows: "Every inhabitant of

town or country fhould firft of all be firmly persuaded of the being and existence of the gods; which belief he will be readily difpofed to entertain, when he contemplates the heavens, regards the world, and obferves the difpofition, order, and harmony of the univerfe; which can neither be the work of blind chance, nor of man. Thefe

gods are to be worshipped as the caufe of all the real good we enjoy. Every perfon, therefore, fhould fo

purify and poffefs his mind, as to have it clear of all kinds of evil, *being perfuaded that God is not acceptably honoured by wicked "perfons, nor acceptably served with fumptuous ceremonies, or taken with coftly facrifices; but with

"virtue only, and a confiftent difpo-
"fition to good and virtuous actions."/
See this beautiful fragment of anti-
quity largely quoted, and its authen-
ticity defended, by Warburtop in his
Divine Legation.

d As the Dialogues of Plato, and
Cicero de Legibus.

Taylor's Plato, Vol. ii, p. 6.

f Hence Homer commonly applies to them the epithet Ayvus, born of the gods; and Aorgeous, bred by the gods: juft as the holy fcriptures call them the Lord's anointed-1 Samuel, ch. xxiv, v. 8. Or as, agreeably to the amplifying phrafeology of the eaft, the laws of Menu (more ancient than thofe of Lycurgus) fay," a king "was compofed of particles drawn "from thofe chief guardian deities, "Indra," &c.; and" confequently fur

did fo.

§ I.

IN GEN-
ERAL.

which, on the one hand, begot a veneration for their perfons and authority; juft as, on the other hand, the most despotical monarchs have been practically limited by their being Reafon and under the controul of laws, believed to be divine, with "which they never claimed any power of dispensing "."

effects of it.

BUT the derivation of the laws from the interpofition of fome tutelar deity in particular, so neceffarily linked the ecclefiaftical with the civil polity, that it was impoffible to reject the one without committing an offence against the other 1.

In our own country, as well as throughout all Chriftendom, the political ftate of religion was for many centuries ftill worfe, when the church claimed even fuperiority over the state, and when its priests were not amenable to the civil magiftrate, but affumed the power of trying individuals for the orthodoxy of their religious opinions, as an offence, not against civil society, but against the

Sir W. Jones's Preface to the
Commentary on the Mohammedan
Law of Inheritance. Works, Vol. iii,
P. 513.

h Yet, like Julian of old, Voltaire
in his Age of Louis XIV, and with
ourfelves the noble author of the
Characteristics, affect to contrast the
fociable and tolerant fpirit of pagan-
ism with the perfecuting and intoler-
ant fpirit of Chriftianity. In truth,
ancient paganism neither did nor
could tolerate the difbelief of the
national gods, or rejection of the pub-
lic worship. Chriftianity no fooner
made known its pretenfions to be the
only true religion, and recommended
the renouncing the heathen fuperfti-
tions, than it experienced the venge-
ance of the civil magiftrate; of the

moral and philosophical Antoninus, as well as of the bloody Nero. Even Plato, in his book of laws, lays it down, that no one fhall have a "temple in any private house"...And that " if it fhall appear that any one

poffeffes temples, and performs or"gies in any other places than fuch "as are public, he who detects him, "fhall announce the affair to the "guardians of the laws”. . . And “ if "any one act impiously, shall appear "to have committed, not the impious "deed of boys, but of impious men, « whether by facrificing to the gods "in private or in public temples, let "him be condemned to death, as one "who has facrificed impurely."Taylor's Plato, Vol. ii, p. 325.

fupreme Being; configning the execution of their fentences to the civil magiftrate, who had no difcretionary power, ERAL. but was neceffitated to commit the victims to the flames i.

II. CHRISTIANITY, however, while in its primitive purity, is faid to have been planted in this country by Chriftians flying or IT IN from the Roman empire, during the perfecutions; and by means of the culdees, or Irifh prefbyters, maintained among