That sense not
only, like a wise architect, hath built up the august fabric of states,
but like a provident proprietor, to preserve the structure from
profanation and ruin, as a sacred temple purged from all the impurities
of fraud, and violence, and injustice, and tyranny, hath solemnly and
for ever consecrated the commonwealth, and all that officiate in it.
This consecration is made, that all who administer in the government of
men, in which they stand in the person of God himself, should have high
and worthy notions of their function and destination; that their hope
should be full of immortality; that they should not look to the paltry
pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and transient praise of the
vulgar, but to a solid, permanent existence, in the permanent part of
their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, in the example they
leave as a rich inheritance to the world.
Such sublime principles ought to be infused into persons of exalted
situations; and religious establishments provided, that may continually
revive and enforce them. Every sort of moral, every sort of civil, every
sort of politic institution, aiding the rational and natural ties that
connect the human understanding and affections to the divine, are not
more than necessary, in order to build up that wonderful structure, Man;
whose prerogative it is, to be in a great degree a creature of his own
making; and who, when made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold
no trivial place in the creation.
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