right of the laity to judge for themselves; the forming of all ecclesiastical polity by the legislature; and consequently, the creating of clergymen by the civil authority; a power forgot by too many of the clergy, and remembered against their wills, by the laity. Whoever would maintain the reformation, must maintain these principles; or embrace popery, if he desert them. Whether the solemn oaths of the clergy in general, have been sufficient pledges and motives for their believing and defending them, I appeal to their behaviour and their writings.

Being the sworn servants of the law, many of them have avowedly contradicted and bid defiance to the law. Being entrusted with serving and instructing the people, they have deceived and set up for commanding the people. Being chosen by the crown to ministerial offices, they have claimed a power above the crown; from which they acknowledge, upon oath, to have received all power. They have done what in them lay, to make the mercy of God of none effect, by damning whom they pleased; and to disarm his justice, by pardoning whom they would. They have made heaven itself to wait for the sentence from the priest's mouth, and God himself to follow the judgment of the priest. They have pretended to oblige God Almighty to open and shut heaven's gates. They have asserted that the priesthood is a princely power, greater and more venerable than that of the Emperor: that the spiritual government (that is, a government by priests) is farther above the civil power, than heaven is above the earth that a bishop is to be honoured as God: that the revenue of priests ought to be greater than the revenue of kings: that greater punishment is due to an offence against a priest, than to an offence against a king: that kings and queens are to bow down before the priest, with their face towards the earth, and to lick up the dust of his feet that it is the royal office of kings and queens to carry the priest in their bosom, or on their shoulders: that great men ought not to say my chaplin, in any other sense than we say, my king, or my God.'

As to the king's nomination of bishops, and the power that he has over the convocation, they have maintained, that the church should as reasonably have the nomination and deposing of kings; and that it is as reasonable that the parliament should neither meet nor act with out the bishop's licence and authority: that the chief magistrate is bound to submit to the Bishop, who may excommunicate bim: that it is a contradiction and an impossibility, for any state to have authority over the church, that is, over the priests: that the priest's power extends to the settling of fasting, and feasting, and clothes; that those clergy who comply with the government, and yet retain their old principles, are the best part, and most numerous of the clergy;' that is, that those of the clergy, who are perjured, are the best and most numerous. They have decreed, that to maintain that the sovereignty of England is in the three estates of England, namely, in king, lords, and commons, is a damnable principle. They have asserted that the lords and commons have no more share in the making of laws, than a beggar has in one's alms.: that all subjects are slaves as to life and property and that resistance is not lawful for the maintenance of the fiberties of ourselves and others; nor for the defence of religion; nor

for the preservation of church and state; nor for the salvation of a soul; no, nor for the redemption of the whole world.'

There is a choice catalogue of these extravagant doctrines, collected in a pamphlet published some years since, and entitled a new catechism, with Dr. Hick's 39 articles; and all of them taken out of the writings of men in the highest reputation amongst us. Yes gentlemen, all these impious, mad and selfish doctrines have been maintained by those of your order, and never yet contradicted by any publick act of your body. On the contrary, with your usual charity and good nature, you have fallen upon those who exposed them; though they were evidently the very corner-stones of popery, and a flat contradiction to the whole spirit and progress of the reformation.

There is no medium between popery and the reformation; that is, between the claiming of any power in religion, and the renouncing of all power in religion: (as you will find fully made out in the following sheets.) The latter is the characteristick of a protestant minister, and the former the black mark of a popish priest. You have it in your choice, gentlemen, which you will choose to resemble.

If you do not think fit to accept the Bishop of Bangor's protestant scheme, which is the same with that of the reformation, and has been ever since the law of the land, there is but one choice left you, name ly, that of working about a popish revolution, per fas and nefas; of bringing undisguised popery and the inquisition into the church; direct slavery upon your country; and upon your own order, the neces sity of throwing yourselves blindly upon the mercy of the court of Rome, for her protection, and licence to preserve your dignities and

revenues.

You have no possibility of keeping clear of the pope and the regale both. The king will not part with his prerogative; the parliament will not give up its authority; nor will the people entirely part with their senses. And for the bishop of Rome, you would do well to remember what tender usage your predecessors received at his hands. He indeed always discountenanced and oppressed them. The lazy monks, and debauched friars, were his darlings and peculiar care. They were thoroughly detached from the interests of the laity, tho rough dependents upon the holy father: they were therefore distinguished as his spiritual janizaries, and the guards of the papacy; and to them he gave away the revenues and maintenance of the secular clergy, not so much trusted by him.

If you remember this, you will easily judge how much more it is your interest to submit to the easy and gentle authority of the prince; to live under the protection of the laws of your country, by which your income and all your immunities are ascertained and secured; than to live exposed to the distrusts of a foreign cruel court, to the rapine of foreign and needy priests, who will be perpetually quartered upon you, perpetually drawing money from you: nay, probably it will grow a maxim in the Roman politicks, that you must be kept poor. But besides, however good the intentions may be of such men amongst yourselves, or of those whom you represent, to become the subjects, or, as you may vainly imagine, the confederates of Rome; they will in all likelihood, find it utterly impossible to execute their designs; and must in all appearance, venture their present possessions upon

the success of such designs. And if they should bappen to succeed, they may have the glory indeed of the wickedness; but the rewards will be, for the most part, reaped by new comers, who had no share in the toil. Foreign ecclesiasticks will be the first in favour, and the highest in place: they will carry off your honours and your preferments: the sincerity of your conversation will be questioned, or pretended to be questioned: there will quickly grow a distinction between old papists and new converts: as in Spain and Portugal, where a wide difference is made between old Christians and new; which difference holds for many generations; and, in short, all countenance will be shewn, all favours will be granted, to those who never bowed their heads to Baal. Your behaviour to the late king James will also be remembered, though you have forgot his to you; and you will be called ingrates, new hypocrites, or old rebels.

I am in hopes, reverend sirs, that from all these considerations, the gentlemen of these notions will find reason to look back to their origi nal at the reformation, and to preach up the principles upon which it stands, since they are like to stand or fall by these principles. Let them veer about once more; they know how to do it; and I will be the first to declare that they have been once in the right, once reconciled their views to the liberties of England.

I might likewise fetch an argument from their aukwardness in politicks, to convince them that they ought to be protestants. They have made it manifest, by many trials and long experience, that they are but heavy intriguers, and sadly want both the temper and talents of politicians. The protestant religion being a plain one, supported by obvious truth and common sense, and requiring no managements or finesse to make it go down with the people, would fit them well enough if they could be content with it. But it is quite otherwise with the religion of Rome; which being a surprising medley of various and contradictory parts, requires the utmost address, delicacy and skill to keep them from falling to pieces. And in this respect, the church of Rome owes its figure and preservation to the court of Rome, where all the nicest secrets of power are understood, all the most curious arts in politicks are practised; where every absurdity is finely disguised, every cruelty artfully concealed; where, in fine, they have the knack of making people pleased with being abused, and of forgetting that they are slaves, or of never knowing it.

Hitherto, gentlemen, it has been otherwise with you. Our pretenders of this cast have but grossly aped popery. Their aims have been too open, their management too coarse. A blunt demand at once for all the wealth, and reverence, and power of England, was so ridiculous, that, had we not before known their unhappy state of ignorance, we should have thought that they had been in jest when they made it. Nor has that incurable appetite of theirs, which they cannot hide, of combating conscience with downright force, and brutish violence, done them less harm. In short, good counsel they have seldom taken; their foolish counsels they never could conceal; and, God be thanked, their wicked counsels they never yet have been able, thoroughly to execute. They are in truth, but doggerel politicians. English priestcraft is as coarse as the Romish priesteraft is fine. Theirs is the

depths of satan, and ours his shallows; as is excellently said by the late Mr. Samuel Johnson.

The Romish clergy chose the days of darkness to sow their frauds in. They vended their holy trifles, when ignorance had increased the number of buyers. They planted their power in the fruitful soil of superstition; and by keeping the people poor, wretched, ignorant, wicked, and fearful, as they every where do, they still maintain their

dominion.

But our high gentlemen, who both know and lament, that this nation has seen more days of light and liberty (which indeed are seldom separated) since the revolution, than ever it saw before, have yet preposterously chosen that very time of light and liberty to advance all the wildest claims of popery, and all the vilest tenets of slavery. What could they mean? Did they not know, that the more men find the use of their understanding, the more loath they are to part with it? and that those men who are willing to part with their understandings, must have very shallow ones?

The English laity have been used pretty much of late, to think for themselves; and we find, as doubtless, gentlemen, you do, that the more men know of church power, the less they like it. They see that priestly pomp always stands on lay misery; that where the priests are princes, the people are the lowest slaves; and that church power always rises with the fall of liberty and knowledge.

The popish priests too, as they propagated their lying tenets in the dark, so they did it slily, and by well-weighed gradations. Every invention of theirs had its proper season. The fire of purgatory was kindled at one time; indulgencies were hatched at another; transubstantiation stole in at a convenient hour; and all their doctrines of gain and power, were broached at politick distances, and as opportunities invited.

But our high priests, as they have observed neither measure nor mercy in their demands upon us; so neither bave they made them at due and discreet intervals. By overloading the cart, they have overturned it. They have frighted us with the broad and black cloud of their pretensions, and made men unanimously oppose that heap of claims and absurdities, which, had they been wise, we might have been brought to swallow singly. They wanted patience, as well as policy.

We were not yet ripe for popery. We had judgment enough to see that all those claims, all those new doctrines, evidently and solely tended to the clergy's advantage, and our undoing. And we thought it was as consistent with natural equity and common sense, that we should be judges in our own case, as that you should be in yours. Indeed, if any amongst you had maintained doctrines evidently grievous to yourselves, and manifestly tending to the knowledge and external happiness of the people, we should at least have thought you in earnest. If, for example, you had contended, that the priests should fast three days in the week, the laity only when they pleased; that the priests should be entirely at the mercy of the people for a maintenance; should be restrained from taking above thirty or forty pounds a year salary; be for-. bid all pomp and affluence, because they vitiate the mind, and breed pride and laziness; two faults heinous in a minister of God: I say, , if

you had contended for such liberty in the laity, and for such rigorous restraints upon yourselves, it would have carried in it the face of sincerity and self-denial. But, for priests, who are known to have been, at first, the alms-men of the people, (and who mostly are still educated by the charity, and maintained by the benevolence of the laity) to talk of palaces, revenues, nay thrones and principalities, to be for assuming empire over their masters, and growing great by the poverty of the people, is such a stretch of arrogance and folly, as cannot be aggravated, as it would not be credible, did we not see it. The pretensions of the great Turk are not half so detestable.

Who would not rather be a slave to a monarch, than to a monk? The oppression of temporal tyrants never has been, never can be so great as the oppression of priests. Temporal tyrants only make their slaves as miserable as laymen can do. They take almost their all; but the little that is left, they leave them to use as they please. The priest, where he has power enough, exercises his tyranny over the bellies and palates of his more miserable vassals, and suffers them to eat (if be leave them any thing to eat) but what he pleases, and when he pleases. In truth, the subjects of priests, abroad, are in a viler state than the priests black-cattle. They are worse fed, and not more knowing.

Can you deny, gentlemen, that the more power the priest possesses, just so much the more men suffer in their souls and bodies? Nor can it be otherwise. Power produces pride and debauchery in the clergy, and vassalage begets baseness and poverty in the people. Whatever is gained to the clergy, is gained from the laity; so that for them to be rich, we must be beggars; that they may be lords, we must be slaves. This I take to be self-evident.

Will you, or can you say, gentlemen, that those claims are con ducing to the welfare of mankind; which, wherever they prevail, do effectually divest mankind of every thing that sweetens human life, and renders it desirable, or indeed supportable? Is that power for our benefit, which disarms us of our faculties, cows our minds with slavish fears, and gives us up a prey to those men, whose strength lies in our weakness, whose prosperity is owing to our undoing? this is what it has always done, and what it does at this day in Spain, Italy, and other priest-ridden countries; and this is what it would as effectually do in England, if Englishmen would suffer it.

These claims of yours, gentlemen, have done you great prejudice. They have made men afraid of your spirit, which seems to them to be merciless and insatiable. So that, if you are begrudged what you have, you may thank yourselves; it is owing to your claiming what you ought not to have. If a clergyman enjoy the tythes of part of my estate, by virtue of the law; and not content with that, would have tythes of the whole, in spite of the law; it is natural enough for me to think that the man is a knave, who would have no man's property secured by the law but his own.

Nothing is more common with you than to call the impropriations of the abbey-lands, by the dreadful name of sacrilege. You say, some of you have said it in print, and many more in the pulpit, that such impropriation was robbing the church. What church, gentlemen? Was it not the church of Rome? And are you of that church? It is certain, that the reformed protestant church of England never possessed