When gentlemen
complain of the subscription as matter of grievance, the complaint
arises from confounding private judgment, whose rights are anterior to
law, and the qualifications, which the law creates for its own
magistracies, whether civil or religious. To take away from men their
lives, their liberty, or their property, those things, for the
protection of which society was introduced, is great hardship and
intolerable tyranny; but to annex any condition you please to benefits,
artificially created, is the most just, natural, and proper thing in
the world. When e novo you form an arbitrary benefit, an advantage,
pre-eminence, or emolument, not by nature, but institution, you order
and modify it with all the power of a creator over his creature. Such
benefits of institution are royalty, nobility, priesthood; all of which
you may limit to birth; you might prescribe even shape and stature. The
Jewish priesthood was hereditary. Founders' kinsmen have a preference
in the election of Fellows in many colleges of our universities; the
qualifications at All Souls are, that they should be--optime nati, bene
vestiti, mediocriter docti.
By contending for liberty in the candidate for orders, you take away the
liberty of the elector, which is the people; that is, the state. If they
can choose, they may assign a reason for their choice; if they can
assign a reason, they may do it in writing, and prescribe it as a
condition; they may transfer their authority to their representatives,
and enable them to exercise the same.
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