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Home  »  Familiar Quotations  »  6120 Rufus Choate 1799-1859 John Bartlett

John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

6120 Rufus Choate 1799-1859 John Bartlett

 
NUMBER:6120
AUTHOR:Rufus Choate (1799–1859)
QUOTATION:  There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop; 1 there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had framed.
ATTRIBUTION:Speech before the New England Society, Dec. 22, 1843.
 
Note 1.
The Americans equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.—Junius: Letter xxxv. Dec. 19, 1769. Compare the anonymous poem “The Puritans’ Mistake,” published by Oliver Ditson in 1844:—
  “Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring
  A Church without a bishop, a State without a King.”

  It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.—George Bancroft: History of the United States, vol. iii, chap. vi. [back]