This passage from Joseph Berington’s 1780 book The State and Behaviour of English Catholics, from the Reformation to the Year 1780 is an attempt to assert the liberties of English Catholics through a universal theory of religious toleration. Berington acknowledges that a religion truly destructive of the social order could and should be opposed by the force of the state, but he then denies that such a religion exists or has ever existed. Berington inverts the usual position of English Protestants accusing the Catholic Church of intolerance by pointing out that all established churches, including the Church of England, are intolerant and by accusing those who oppose Catholic toleration of hypocrisy.