These reasons may be quoted in mass. As regards Established Churches in particular, it is said there is a State compact or understanding with the clergy that they should teach certain doctrines and no other; that if tests were abolished, there would be no security against the most extreme opinions; men eating the bread of a Reformed Church might inculcate Romanism instead of Protestantism; the pulpits might give forth Deism or Agnosticism. No sect could hope to maintain its principles, if the clergy might preach any doctrine that pleased themselves. More especially would it be monstrous and unjust, to allow the rich benefices of our highly endowed Church of England to be enjoyed by men whose hearts are in some quite different form of religion, or no religion, and who would occupy themselves in drawing men away from the faith. On certain assumptions, these arguments have great force. Clearly a man ought not to take pay for doing one thing and do something quite different. When a body of religionists come together upon certain tenets, it would be a _reductio ad absurdum_ for any of its ministers to be occupied in denying and controverting these tenets. All this supposes, however, that men will not be made to conform by any means short of prosecution and deprivation; that the suspending of a severe penalty over men's heads is in itself a harmless device; and that religious systems are now stereotyped to our satisfaction, so that to deviate from them is mere wantonness and love of singularity. Such are the assumptions that we feel called upon to challenge. The plea that the Church has engaged itself to the State to teach certain tenets, in return for its emoluments and privileges, has lost its point in our time. 'L'etat, c'est moi.' The Church and the State are composed of the same persons. Gibbon's famous _mot_ has collapsed. 'The religions of the Roman world,' he says, 'were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful' The people are now their own magistrates, and the true and the useful must contrive to unite upon the same thing. If the Church feels subscription and fixity of creed a burden, it has only to turn its members to account in their capacity of citizens of the State to relieve itself. If it silently ignores the creed, it is still responsible mainly to itself. [POSSIBLE ABUSES OF CLERICAL FREEDOM.] The more serious objection is the possible abuse of the freedom of the clergy to utter opinions at variance with the prevailing creed. This position needs a careful scrutiny.