Since the promulgation of christianity, the two greatest systems of tyranny, that have sprung from this original, are the _cannon_ and the _feudal_ law--The desire of dominion, that great principle by which we have attempted to account for so much good, and so much evil, is, when properly restrained, a very useful and noble movement in the human mind: but when such restraints are taken off, it becomes an encroaching, grasping, restless and ungovernable power. Numberless have been the systems of iniquity, contrived by the great, for the gratification of this passion in themselves: but in none of them were they ever more successful, than in the invention and establishment of the _canon_ and the _feudal_ law. By the former of these, the most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy, that ever was conceived by the mind of man, was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandisement of their own order. All the epithets I have here given to the Romish policy are just; and will be allowed to be so, when it is considered, that they even persuaded mankind to believe, faithfully and undoubtingly, that GOD ALMIGHTY had intrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure--with a power of dispensation over all the rules and obligations of morality--with authority to license all sorts of sins and crimes--with a power of deposing princes, and absolving subjects from allegiance--with a power of procuring or withholding the rain of heaven, and the beams of the sun--with the management of earthquakes, pestilence and famine.----Nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine, the flesh and blood of GOD himself.--All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people, by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity; and by infusing into them a _religious_ horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages, in a cruel, shameful, and deplorable servitude, to him and his subordinate tyrants; who, it was foretold, would exalt himself above all that was called GOD, and that was worshipped.----