Every tenet will be adopted that best suits the disorderly affections of the human frame.

Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address, in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace.

And, in the end, the civil magistrate will find, that he has dearly paid for his pretended frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the priests; and that in reality the most decent and advantageous composition which he can make with the spiritual guides is to bribe their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and rendering it superfluous for them to be further active than merely to prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastures.

And in this manner ecclesiastical establishments, though commonly they arose at first from religious views, prove in the end advantageous to the political interests of society.
But we may observe, that few ecclesiastical establishments have been fixed upon a worse foundation than that of the church of Rome, or have been attended with circumstances more hurtful to the peace and happiness of mankind.

The large revenues, privileges, immunities, and powers of the clergy, rendered them formidable to the civil magistrate; and armed with too extensive authority an order of men who always adhere closely together, and who never want a plausible pretence for their encroachments and usurpations.