have so industriously laboured to deduce themselves from Rome, that they have given great suspicion, that in gratitude they desire to return thither, or at least to meet it half way. Some have evidently laboured to bring in an English, though not a Roman Popery: I mean not only the outside and dress of it, but equally absolute, a blind dependence of the people upon the clergy, and of the clergy upon themselves; and bave opposed the Papacy beyond the sea, that they might settle one beyond the water, (namely, at Lambeth.) Nay, common fame, is more than ordinarily false, if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England; and be so absolutely, directly, and eordially Papists, that it is all that fifteen hundred pounds a year can do to keep them from confessing it."He had said just before, that "they had first depressed preaching to their power, and next laboured to make it such, as the harm had not been much, if it had been depressed: the most frequent subjects, even in the most sacred auditories, being the divine right of bishops and tythes, the sacredness of the clergy, the sacrilege of impropriations, the demolishing of Puritanism and property, the building the preroga. tive at St. Paul's; the introduction of such doctrines, as admitting them true, the truth would not recompense the scandal; or of such that were so false, that, as Sir Thomas Moore said of the casuists, they served but to inform them how near they might approach to sin, without sinning."

What thinks your Lordship of this picture of those clergy? Is it not such as seemed to call for a real reformation, and was not the pretence of such as did so well warranted?

Your Lordship takes notice of the confusions which followed the king's death, as the just judgment of God for it. My Lord, this of God's judgments, is a subject infinitely nice and tender, and ought to be warily touched: nor can I help thinking that you clergymen generally do it too boldly, and even very partially. Judgments are very apt to pursue and overtake your enemies; but you are not so ready to see any befalling yourselves. The evils that fall to your lot, have generally another name, and are only misfortunes; but if they happen to those that you dislike, they are judgments. Pray, my Lord, what rule have you in this case to distinguish by ? I know none; unless he who only sends judgments, and only can tell what are judgments, would inform you. Where he does not inform you, it is at least great rashness, and I think very wicked, to call any calamity befalling others, however terrible it be, by the awful name of a judgment. It is representing them as enemies to God, and therefore exposing them to the abhorrence of men.

Divine judgments have always been the cry and common place of pious impostors, who part not readily with any topic of delusion; and therefore I am surprised to see your Lordship fall into the same strain.

Was the unsettled state of the nation a judgment upon it for the murder of the king? And were his misfortunes and fate no judgment upon him, for having abused his trust, and oppressed the nation? But why should the nation suffer for a fact, which almost the whole nation abhorred? And why did not this judgment reach those who committed it, and who remained the only men of power and prosperity after it? Why, particularly, should the church continue cast down, forlorn, and

distressed, for an iniquity abhorred by her, and perpetrated by her enemies? Or had the church never, by any acts of wantonness and injustice formerly, merited such a visitation as might be deemed a judg ment? But why should I, if I sin not with another, but avoid and detest sinning, suffer for what he does? And why should be, who is guilty, not suffer, or suffer less than I? Surely this reasoning cannot be sound divinity, since 'tis thus against all logic and sense.

Your Lordship must needs know that it is the way of parties, to throw judgments at one another, with equal bitterness. and equal folly. Whatever happens well to one side, is a blessing; whatever happens ill to the other, is a curse. To us evil is a chastisement, to others 'tis a judgment; and just so say others of us, and of themselves. Is there any misfortune or mischief incident to ill men, from which the good are exempt? Are there any worldly felicities attending the righteous, in which the wicked have no share, or not an equal share? If it be said, that their being wicked, is judgment enough; this argument, besides that it seems to make God the author of their wickedness, is a confession that what they suffer in common with others, cannot be called a judgment.

There is no end of exposing this pious absurdity, though it be easily done; nor yet in reviving it upon every occasion. The best that can be said for it, is bad enough; namely, that like other falsehoods, it serves the turn of angry and interested men; it startles and convinces bigots; it teaches men ignorance, and to hate one another; and it contributes to perpetuate party for ever. -A turn becoming an incendiary and deceiver, but not a messenger of truth and peace. It is therefore very unworthy of your Lordship. And, I dare say, upon reflection, you will condemnn it.

Your assertion," That the judgments of God for great sins may hang over a nation for many generations," is a very bold one, and admits of the same confutation. How hang over a nation? What, over the earth, and stones, and buildings? This your Lordship surely will not say, though things equally absurd are often said by some of your order; and Dr. Trebeck asserts in print, that in places consecrated there is an inherent holiness. Such judgments therefore must hang over the people only.But suppose another people may have taken possession of the land? Must that new people, who came from another climate, be also visited? If so, they might as well have suffered in their former habitations as in their new settlement: and then all the nations in the universe may suffer for what is done wickedly by, or even in any one of them. But if new comers are not to suffer for the iniquities of the former people, why must this generation, nay, every succeeding generation, be chastised for the sins of the dead, for whom they are no more answerable, than the wild Indians are for the oppressions of the Turks; no more than the Pope of Rome is anwerable for the sins of Romulus ? As for sinning ex post facto, it is a distinction which would involve every man in the errors of every man throughout the world. May not a man, without sinning, approve what really was a sin in him that committed it? He may approve it through misinformation about particular circumstances, or from want of right discernment : neither of which is a sin.

In consequence of your way of reasoning, you must make all the modern and late clergy, who approved Laud's violent doings, guilty of Laud's transgressions.Nay, all the future clergy of this spirit, must be thus wicked and guilty. As a farther consequence of this sort of doctrine, I should not wonder to hear your Lordship congratulating all good churchmen, and lovers of king Charles I. and his cause, upon the blessing derived to them from the merits of his life and sufferings. According to the rule of just distribution, if some are still cursed for him, why not others blessed for him?

The next topic of your eloquence is, the dread still remaining from the old republican spirit, which brought that king to the block. Upon this you raise terrors, and assert with your usual strength of style: "All places, you say, are filled with loose books, which tend to nothing but to destroy all principles, and set men free from all government Republican principles are as industriously propagated now, as they were then, and to the same ends; to introduce a change of government; and in order to that, to weaken it, by weakening first the influence of religion, and introducing infidelity: which attempts come chiefly from the republican quarter now, as they did then." And you quote Dr. Burnet, who says, "Many of the republicans began to profess deism, and almost all of them were for destroying all clergymen, pulling down churches, discharging tithes, and for leaving -religion without either encouragement or restraint."

My Lord, a profligate clergy has often tempted men to disbelieve religion, whilst they notoriously contradict it in actions, though they Joudly professed it with their lips.I know not but that very time might have unsettled the belief of some, and disposed them to deism. They had seen a domineering Episcopal church demolished; a Presbyterian church, equally domineering, raised in its room: both professing great holiness, even to be the oracles of God; both rapacious and insatiable; merciless to all that differed from them, tyrants to all who submitted to them; hypocritically disclaiming the world, and confidently grasping after all the power and grandeur in it; deriving all their wealth and power from the simple gospel of Christ, who disclaimed all power and wealth for himself, and bequeathed them none, but left his example and precepts to all men indifferently, as well as to them. They had seen preachers of the gospel, who never preached it, but rioted by the name and pretence of it; or, if they preached it at all, preached up themselves: They had seen explainers of the scripture, who never could agree in explaining it, yet obtruding their contradictory explanations upon all others: they had seen ministers who had been persecuted, as soon as they had power, persecuting others; seen others, who had been persecutors, complain of persecution; and both sorts ever accommodating their doctrines to their own views and passions, and to the views and passions of such as they were disposed to flatter; both sorts indifferent, or rather enemies to public and equal liberty; ever indeed contending for it to themselves when others oppressed them; ever denying it to such as they had a mind to oppress; fathering all their doctrines, and all their whims, however selfish, wicked, or foolish, upon the father of wisdom, of mercy, and of truth; pretending to have the call, and peaceful guidance of the Holy Ghost, yet swayed by the worst and most hostile passions; talking of Chris

tian meekness, and the forgiveness of enemies; indulging fury and vengeance upon every offence, or contradiction; calling themselves ambassadors of peace, nay, successors to the apostles; but sowing strife, and doing nothing like the apostles, nay, every thing unlike the apostles; still boasting that God was with them, and that the gates of bell could not prevail against them, yet frightened at every breath of oppo sition.

I say, some men seeing all these monstrous inconsistencies, and how small reliance there was upon the veracity, or reasoning of any set of churchmen, might be tempted to think that there was nothing in religion; because they perceived that the several bands of ecclesiastics had turned religion into a farce and a market, and professed what they seemed not to believe. Others too might be good Christians, yet join with no society of Christians, like Grotius and some others.

Or perhaps after all, there were then no deists, or signs of deism; but that this charge was invented by priests and bigots, who are always notoriously addicted to forge falsehoods and calumny against-those who differ from them in their dreams and forms. Nor indeed does infidelity appear to have been the turn of those times, but rather a humour quite opposite, that of enthusiasm, and of false and austere holiness. I know but of one writer then, who was generally suspected of infidelity, and that was Mr. Hobbes; no republican, your Lordship well knows, but an advocate for monarchy without bounds. Atheism came not in, at least with any countenance or force, till the restoration. Then it prevailed and grew fashionable, and whatever, or whoever had the look of seriousness and sobriety, grew an object of reproach and ridicule: all kinds of debauchery grew common; lewdness and riot overspread the whole land. So little was vice suppressed, or virtue promoted by the re-establishment of the church; nay, many of the clergy behaved themselves scandalously; and according to the same Dr. Burnet, Sheldon the arch-bishop, (though a zealous champion for the rights and powers of the church) seemed not to have had a deep sense of religion, if any at all; and spoke of it most commonly, as of an engine of government, and as matter of policy." Even before the restoration, impious opinions and sallies of blasphemy were grown common amongst the cavaliers, who were wont, especially in their cups, to revile Almighty God for his partiality to the sectaries, and for deserting the king and the church. The account which the bishop gives of the vileness, the bitterness, the barbarity, the debauchery of the clergy after the restoration, is astonishing, and would be incredible, if the facts were not known to be true.

My Lord, you will not surely say that such an open dissolution of manners, and such latitudinarian principles were promoted in that reign, in order to raise a republican spirit. Far different was the design, even to introduce popery and slavery, when both the king and the high-churchmen were aiming too openly at power without control; and nothing could possibly have kept alive a republican spirit (a spirit which had grown odious to the whole nation, by the late tyranny exercised under the name of the commonwealth,) I say nothing could possibly keep alive such a spirit, but the apparent ill designs and violent measures of the court and the clergy. Men who are oppressed, ar who foresce inevitable oppression, will be naturally thinking of the

means of security and escape. But when they are well and equally protected, when the laws are inviolable, and property secure, no general or violent change is to be apprebended, especially where the title to the crown is uncontested. Nor do I remember that a commonwealth was ever thought of in England, or any dislike conceived against the government, or any subversion of the church intended, till some of our monarchs had rendered monarchy distasteful; and the church, like the monarchy, when through the pride and fury of the bishops it was become terrible, became likewise odious.

It was this which first occasioned the notion and proposal of introducing a commonwealth, which yet never was settled, nor ever can be settled in England. Even the tyranny of king James, the second, (to say nothing farther of his brother's wild and unhallowed reign) as provoking and recent as it was, did not produce any effort for a commonwealth. I do not remember that the word was once mentioned in either house, upon their convention; and if it was mentioned at all elsewhere, it was only in whispers, by two or three visionaries, who were not regarded, and had no party.

A commonwealth in England will never be other than a dream, existing only in crazy heads. All men of common sense know that we enjoy more liberty, more equal protection under our own legal monarchy, as 'tis administered by his majesty, than we could in any commonwealth existing, or that ever did exist. Neither did I ever find that there was, nor do I believe that there is, one reasonable man in his dominions, that thinks such a change either eligible or possible. This I speak in the sincerity, and from the conviction of my heart.

It is therefore highly blameable in any one, much more so in one of your Lordship's great station and credit, to raise public alarms, and to endeavour to infuse fears into his majesty's breast, of principles that no where appear, and of a party that, from my soul I think, do not exist. This is as unjust, as it would be to raise in his people a dread of his majesty; nor can there be a greater crime than publishing terrors and tales, tending to break the confidence between king and people. Just such tendency had the old cry, about "the danger of the church;" a popular alarm then calculated only to frighten prince and people, and big with mischief and falsehood. This false terror, and party word, your Lordship has finely exposed, in a sermon, of yours, when you were dean of Worcester. I am sorry to find your courage smaller now when your church emoluments are much larger.

Your Lordship knows, that that cry of the church's danger, was accompanied with another, equally bold and absurd," the danger of a commonwealth." My Lord, you likewise know, who they were who raised and promoted those wild alarms, what violent effects they had, and what farther effects they were like to have had. Nor will you, I presume, say, that what evidently endangered the state and the Protestant succession then, will serve either now.

My Lord, where are these republicans? For myself, I know none; I protest solemnly to your Lordship, I know none; none who are for a commonwealth, or any other change of government, except the Jacobites. Where too are those loose books, which tend to destroy all principles, and set men free from all governments? Loose books are certainly punishable, and have been punished. For lewd and obscene