Quote of the day: on church establishments and tests for office

"If Christian Preachers had continued to teach as Christ & his Apostles did, without Salaries, and as the Quakers do, I imagine Tests would never have existed:  For I think they were invented not so much to secure Religion itself, as the Emoluments of it.  When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support so that its Professors are oblig'd to call for the help of the Civil Power, 'tis a Sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."

- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Letter to Richard Price, October 9, 1780, quoted in The Founders on Religion:  A Book of Quotations, James H. Hutson, editor (Princeton University Press:  2005), pg. 155.