who would affront the divine Being, by believing that he, the author of mercy and wisdom, could contradict his own nature, to gratify the peevishness and cruelty of weak and revengeful men

They who are apt to bring the charge of blasphemy against others, often upon very small, sometimes upon very ludicrous occasions, would do well to consider, whether there can be higher blaspheny, than to assert a power in man of directing or obliging the Aimighty; a privilege to apply the might and terrors of Omnipotence, to the perdition of men? I presume you will not say of excommunication, what I am told the reverend doctor Fiddes says of Popish indulgences, in his History of Henry VIII." that they were a treasure which the church had been long in possession of."

I leave it therefore to your judgment, whether this spiritual engine be for the service of Christ's church, or for the credit of such as call themselves his ministers; and whether what is shocking to sense and humanity, can ever be true in religion, or a part of religion, I mean of the Christian religion.

I would also humbly propose it to your serious thoughts, whether amongst your public admonitions and reproofs to the laity, you might not think it advisable, and find cause, to let your brethren the clergy have their share. Are there no prevailing mistakes or disorders among them? No strange and unreasonable claims maintained by them who are called orthodox, no extravagant writings published, no wild and passionate sermons preached? Is orthodoxy alone never preferred by you to eminent piety and sufficiency, under suspicion of heterodoxy? Is the man who asserts "Christ's kingdom not to be of this world," as dear to you as they who would found worldly power upon the gospel of Christ, and erect a priesthood with power, in virtue of being successors to him, who had no power, and disclaimed all power? Are you equally tender to the failings of laymen, as to those of clergymen? Or is it your opinion and policy, that the same should be concealed and dissembled, at least not exposed to the profane laity ?

I remember an instance, where I thought the partiality of a more than reverend clergyman too apparent : for whilst he manifested much just zeal for capitally punishing certain beastly offenders against the law, and purity, and design of nature; I mean lay offenders; all his zeal cooled, at least produced small effect, in the case of a brother docfor found to have been flagrantly guilty of an abomination for many years, and often in a very sacred place. Yet this doctor escaped with an admonition and a small fine, in a court too where that more than reverend clergyman was thought to have no small influence. And I sup pose, that that unnaturall sinner was still esteemed to be a true minister of the church, since he is still left to act as such, and to receive the stipend of such, doubtless to the great edification of souls, and credit of orthodoxy and of Episcopal courts. So far was that more than reverend clergyman from applying, on this occasion, to the secular arm, though he had just before praised it for finding out, and pouring down its deadly terrors upon such bestial criminals.

A little of your public and private advice to your brethren, recommending to them more meckness and moderation, with a behaviour more complaisant, and less litigious towards their people, would be of use. I hear that you give them very different advice, even to be as trouble

some and vexatious to their people as they can, by departing from settled customs, and starting new demands. Such advice is by no means proper for them, nor do they want it. It is certain, they would do well not to render themselves daily more unpopular and obnoxious by haughtiness, greediness, and law suits. My Lord Clarendon owns, that the clergy of that time, supported and animated by arch-bishop Laud, grew assuming, and lived not well with their neighbours in the country: This bred ill blood towards them; and when they were pulled down, it was remembered how insolently they had behaved when they were uppermost. Hence the easier way was made for the sour and gloomy sett who succeeded them.

The present daily increase of their property, their monopoly of advowsons, their breaking all the Modus's, their frequent success, in troublesome suits, and their apparent fondness of such, help to sooth and exalt them. But as all this is seen, and felt, and regretted by the whole body of the laity, it may bring a storm strong enough to overthrow all these advantages. Perhaps too abuses, not now thought of, will be then sought, and found, and severely redressed.

This thought is really painful to me; in the sincerity of my heart I speak it. For I dread all great changes, and all approaches towards such. I would therefore have the clergy provoke none. They must not, in an enlightened age, and an age of liberty, think themselves a match for the laity, were the laity once tempted to exert themselves. Perhaps they were never less a match for the laity than now. Times and countries have been, when the people were so blind, or so awed, that though religion was turned publicly into power and gain, they could not perceive it, or durst not censure it. Such times are no longer, nor is England that country now.

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Modesty and meekness, in the language and writings of the clergy, is likewise always commendable, and no more than good policy. The fierce and provoking style is not the Christian, nor the gaining style ; and pride and passion are ill proofs of religion. But most unpardonable is the practice of such, who, when a man differs from them in any ecclesiastical point, though utterly foreign from religion, yet charge him confidently with infidelity, let his style be ever so Christian, and his professions for Christianity ever so strong. This practice, follow it who will, is unchristian and malicious, but shamefully common. therefore like Dr. Conybear's late book, for its temper and civility; nor, as far as I have looked into it, could I find any strokes of pertness or anger; two ingredients very common in the works of Ecclesiastics. Another doctor, of some name in controversy, and an advocate and an answerer on the same side, hath shown such wild transports, such virulence and scurrility, that it is not to be determined, whether the madman, the scold, or the executioner, predominate most in his composition.

I have heard that even you, holy Father, with all your affectation of smoothness and temper, have treated gentleman with very coarse names, for no other reason, than that they differed from you about matters of power and speculation. This was not wise: (that it was illbred I do not wonder,) and it might tempt, and perhaps warrant gentlemen so used, to treat you very roughly. A monster is by no means a proper name for gentlemen, some of them as well esteemed, and as

generally beloved as you are. I could paint such usage in colours which you would not like. I could likewise draw such a character of some who are dead (for upon the dead and living, monster and infidel are names, which, it seems, you freely throw ;) I say, I could represent some of them in such lights, such true lights, as would equal, and, I doubt, much foil the best that you can be shown in. I could represent their amiable and benevolent minds, their great knowledge, their elevated capacity, their universal integrity and love of mankind, their scorn of hypocrisy and little party views, of narrow spirits, and of every mean and selfish artifice.

But I want room and time to enter fully into the pleasing and mournful theme. Neither do I think myself qualified to make equal returns to coarse usage. Let me just say, that infidel and infielity, as they are grown terms of anger and reproach, can seldom become the mouth or pen of a candid or well-bred man. Pardon me, when I assert, that every man living has as good a right to differ in opinion from you, as you have to differ from him. If you think or maintain the contrary, you have a monstrous share of pride or folly; nor do I know a greater monster amongst men, than the solemn hypocrite, who pretends to derive pomp and power, and worldly wealth out of the New Testament; who would confine the uncontrolable freedom of the soul by human articles and restrictions, and treats such as follow reason, and not him, with spite and saucy language.—But I check myself; nor will I finish my picture of this sort of monster, lest the likeness. might be too glaring. I therefore return to advise you; and here let me assure you, that it is repugnant to all candor, and unworthy your character, to descend to mean solicitations, and to teaze for prosecutions against such writings and authors as thwart you. In matters of religion, no book which can be answered, ought to be prosecuted; nor can you find any honour in such prosecution, no more than you can shew charity in procuring it. A minister of truth begging the aid of worldly penalties in a dispute about spirituals, makes a poor, a strange, and a scandalous figure. Such conduct seems only to suit with worldly designs, and to bewray, if not the weakness of his cause, at least his insufficiency to defend it.

To oppose force to just reasoning is unjust; to answer false reasoning by force, is foolish and needless. A bad cause is quickly refuted, a good cause easily defended; and Christianity, though it can bear much severity and violence, can never exercise nor warrant any. Nor was the Christian name ever more abused, than when prostituted to justify rigor and violence: and punishment for opinion might indeed be of ecclesiastical, but could never be of Christian pedigree.

You have, holy Father, the reputation of a strong churchman; and charity obliges me to believe you a Christian; (for the Christian spirit is not suspicious, no more than revengeful. Be the Churchman still; but let the Christian predominate, and then I dare say you will never solicit another prosecution. The clergy, to a man, believe your heart bent upon church power, and upon all the means that lead to it. You have also thoroughly convinced the laity in this point, though 'tis said that you bad rather they were not so convinced; and are wont to speak to them in a style not at all savoring of a passion for sacerdotal rule: which behaviour in you is only artful, and must not be called false or insin

cere, since insincerity is not a Christian virtue. But such art, when found out, loses its use. You would therefore do well to drop such of your grand views as bode not well toward the laity; for they are upon their guard, and I would not have you put them upon trying their strength and mettle.

Rather take a contrary and securer method; surrender your weak passes, give up indefensible points, claim nothing but what the constitution gives you, affect not to be more than what the law makes you ; separate not yourself and brethren too much from the laity; for woe be to you, if ever they should separate themselves from you. If upon examination you find any millstones about the neck of your cause, any excessive absurdities, any contradictory tenets, any terrible claims, any hurtful or oppressive practices, any unpopular principles or rules, such as square not with the general interests and sentiments of the laity. Begin, O holy Father, to throw off such millstones into the sea, lest they pull you thither after them. "Tis better to quit, with a good grace, even the most favourite point or mistake, than be forced to quit it with shame, and the imputation of obstinacy.

What those millstones, those indefensible points are, I pretend not farther to explain to one of your sagacity. Some of them I have named. In your researches for others, perhaps it may merit some enquiry, or perhaps very little, whether ecclesiastical courts be any considerable support or credit to the cause of the church (for I think religion has little to do with them.) I will venture to say, that excommunication is a matter of very serious, of very melancholy attention, to every man who believes in God, and has a regard for the bodies or souls of men. Are there not moreover some things in the oath given to church wardens, hard, if not impossible to be kept; either obliging them to be perjured themselves, or uneasy, and even intolerable to their neighbours? And are there not certain odd and contradictory oaths in the Universities, which are a scandal to religion, and a contradiction to learning, and even to morality? And does it not become the zeal of any Christian pastor, to remove all such scandals? And would they not be removed, if religion were as much considered as ecclesiastical policy and power?

I would likewise humbly propose, whether a true, a good, or even a Christian use has been generally made of the 30th of January? Whether those of your order have generally acted upon it like ambassadors of truth and peace? And whether either the civil government of king Charles I. or the ecclesiastical government of archbishop Laud, be proper patterns to be followed in a free and a Christian country? I think that, in my sermon, I have amply shewn that they are not. Let me add here one remarkable passage out of Rushworth. "About this time (in the year 1636,) the new statutes for the University of Oxford were finished and published in convocation. The preface disparaged king Edward the VIth's times and government, declaring the discipline of the university was discomposed by that king's injunctions, and that it did revive and flourish again in queen Mary's days under cardinal Pool; when by the much to be desired felicity of those times, an inbred candour supplied the defect of statutes."

Was there ever in any declaration, even from the Vatican, more of the Popish stile and spirit? The times and government of that excel

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lent prince, that pious Protestant and reformer, Edward the Vlth, are traduced by an English convocation, for his having unsettled the old Popish discipline, and reduced it nearer to the genius of the Reformation. The days of that Popish bigot, queen Mary, are wished for; that is. when Popery, with all its power and fury, was restored, the Protestant religion abolished, and Protestants openly and mercilessly burned; a Romish cardinal is mentioned and extolled for his church government, and Popish superstition; and bigotry, and blind obedience, are represented as inbred candour.

Say, holy father, were the members of this convocation Protestants, or was Laud, who governed them a Protestant? And was it any hardship or wonder, that he and they were represented as Papists? And what was that king who submitted to, and assisted them in all their violent and Popish pursuits? Nay, was their advocate against himself; when instead of asserting his prerogative and supremacy, and supporting the University of Cambridge, who opposed Laud's visitation of them, as what he could not undertake without the king's commission; be, even the king in person, argued for this usurpation, for this invasion of his royalty, for this seizure and impropriation of his power and dignity?

Strange condescension and folly in him, as well as inconsistency of character! fond of exalting the prerogative over the belly of law and justice where the laity were concerned, yet poorly laying it under the feet of the clergy, where the protection of his people, and his own duty and honour, called upon him to preserve and exert it. I shall here add a further catalogue of his oppressions, as the same are summed up in a lively manner by the late excellent Mr. Trenchard, in his Short History of Standing Armies in England.

"This king's whole-reign was one continued act against the laws: he dissolved his first Parliament for presuming to enquire into his father's death, though he lost a great sum of money by it, which they had voted him he entered at the same time into a war with France and Spain, upon the private piques of Buckingham, who managed them to the eternal dishonour and reproach of the English nation; witness the ridiculous enterprizes upon Cadiz and the isle of Rhee. He delivered Pennington's fleet into French hands, betrayed the poor Rochellers, and suffered the Protestant interest in France to be quite extirpated: he raised loans, excises, coat and conduct-money, tunnage and poundage, knighthood and ship-money, without authority of Parliament; imposed new oaths on the subjects to discover the value of their estates; imprisoned great numbers of the most considerable gentry and merchants, for not paying his arbitrary taxes; some he sent beyond sea, and the poorer sort he pressed for soldiers: he kept soldiers on free quarter, and executed martial law upon them: be granted monopolies without number, and broke the bounds of the forests: he erected arbitrary courts, and enlarged others; as the high commission court, star-chamber, court of honour, court of requests, &c. and unspeakable oppressions were committed in them, even to men of the first quality. He commanded the earl of Bristol and bishop of Lincoln not to come to Parliament; committed and prosecuted a great many of the most eminent members of the House of Commons for what they did there, some for no cause at all; and would not let them have the ben