I do as well.

“My brethren, will you not remember that none of you have any burden laid upon you by the Lord to publish your political preferences in our papers, or to speak of them in the congregation, when the people assemble to hear the word of the Lord?” {Lt 4, 1898, par. 10}.

“I call upon my brethren who are appointed to educate to change their course of action. It is a mistake for you to link your interests with any political party, to cast your vote with them or for them. Those who stand as educators, as ministers, as laborers together with God in any line, have no battles to fight in the political world.” {Lt 95, 1899, par. 14}.

Our fathers were not only Christains; they were, even in Maryland by a vast majority, elsehwere almost unanimously, Protestants. Now the Protestant reformation, considered in its largest influence on politics, was the awakening of the common people to freedom of mind.

During the decline of the Roman empire, the opressed invoked the power of Christianity to resist the supremacy of brute force; and the merciful priest assumed the office of protector. The tribunes of Rome, appointed by the people, had been declared inviolable by the popular vote; the new tribunes of humanity, deriving their office from religion, and ordained by religion to a still more venerable sanctity, defended the poor man’s house against lust by the sacrament of marriage; restrained arbitrary passion by a menace of the misery due to sin unrepented of and unatoned; and taught respect for the race by sprinkling every new-born child with the water of life, confirming every youth, bearing the oil of consolation to every death-bed, and sharing freely with every human being the consecrated emblem of God present with man.

But from protectors priests grew to be usurpers. Expressing all moral truth by the mysteries of symbols, and reserving to themselves the administration of seven sacraments, they claimed a monopoly of thought and exercised an absolute spiritual dominion. Human bondage was strongly riveted; for they had fastened it on the affections, the understanding, and the reason. Ordaining thier own successors, they ruled human destiny at birth, on entering active life, at marriage, when frailty breathed its confession, when faith aspired to communion with God, and at death. (History of the United States, Bancroft Vol. 1.)