Wherefore a
commonwealth not making provision of men from time to time,
knowing in the original languages wherein the Scriptures were
written, and versed in those antiquities to which they so
frequently relate, that the true sense of them depends in great
part upon that knowledge, can never be secure that she shall not
lose the Scripture, and by consequence her religion; which to
preserve she must institute some method of this knowledge, and
some use of such as have acquired it, which amounts to a national
religion.
The commonwealth having thus performed her duty toward God,
as a rational creature, by the best application of her reason to
Scripture, and for the preservation of religion in the purity of
the same, yet pretends not to infallibility, but comes in the
third part of the order, establishing liberty of conscience
according to the instructions given to her Council of Religion,
to raise up her hands to heaven for further light; in which
proceeding she follows that (as was shown in the preliminaries)
of Israel, who, though her national religion was always a part of
her civil law, gave to her prophets the upper hand of all her
orders.
But the surveyors. having now done with the parishes, took
their leave; so a parish is the first division of land occasioned
by the first collection of the people of Oceana, whose function
proper to that place is comprised in the six preceding orders.
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