Wherefore, neither
the honor bore by the Israelitish, Roman, or any other
commonwealth that I have shown, to their ecclesiastics, consisted
in being governed by them, but in consulting them in matters of
religion, upon whose responses or oracles they did afterward as
they thought fit.
"Nor would I be here mistaken, as if, by affirming the
universities to be, in order both to religion and government, of
absolute necessity, I declared them or the ministry in any wise
fit to be trusted, so far as to exercise any power not derived
from the civil magistrate in the administration of either. if the
Jewish religion were directed and established by Moses, it was
directed and established by the civil magistrate; or if Moses
exercised this administration as a prophet, the same prophet did
invest with the same administration the Sanhedrim, and not the
priests; and so does our commonwealth the Senate, and not the
clergy. They who had the supreme administration or government of
the national religion in Athens, were the first Archon, the rex
sacrificulus, or high-priest, and a polemarch, which magistrates
were ordained or elected by the holding up of hands in the
church, congregation, or comitia of the people. The religion of
Lacedaemon was governed by the kings, who were also high-priests,
and officiated at the sacrifice; these had power to substitute
their pythii, ambassadors, or nuncios, by which, not without
concurrence of the Senate, they held intelligence with the oracle
of Apollo at Delphos.
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