He had professed fairly, promised strongly, sworn solemnly, to maintain religion and law; because his priests told him, that falsehood and perjury were necessary to advance their cause, and seasonable to Jun their enemies asleep for what falsehood, what villainy, what cruelty, will not such priests promote, to serve their pestilent cause? When his priests thought their point sure, they taught him to throw off the cloak of deceit and perjury, roundly to assert the determined tyrant, and the implacable bigot.

He thus called upon the nation to turn him out of it, or rather fled from the nation. He ran to the French king, the inveterate enemy to his people, for succour against his people. It was upon promise of assistance from that king, that both this bigot, and the abandoned voluptuary his brother, had ventured to enslave this free nation.

Lewis XIV. was as dark a zealot as James II. with no exalted genius; but judging the ruin of England to be for the glory of France, sent forces to king James, then in Ireland, who put himself at the bead of these and his Irish troops: he indeed continued at their head, for he was the first that ran away.

Again he took refuge in France, where he remained, despised, to the end of his life; the more for his continual solicitations to France, to force him and slavery upon England: for, rather than England should remain free, he would have enslaved it as the deputy of France.

Had he an hereditary right to sacrifice England to France ? Can the heart of man conceive, that any man, with any name, has a right to violate any trust? Hath folly a right to dictate to wisdom; perjury, pride and oppression, to abolish wholesome laws; fraud and imposture to crush truth and religion?

In Ireland his government was as brutal as the manners of the native savages there he set out with deceitful promises, as he had done here; and continued repeating them all the while that he was breaking them. One constant declaration of his was most ridiculous, especially as he imagined it to be deep and wise, and as his flatterers applauded it for its candor: "That he would make no distinction between his Popish and his Protestant subjects." A declaration (if not a blunder) terrible to Protestants, who saw him thus, contrary to his oath taken to maintain them in their religion and laws, declare equal favour to their barbarous bloody enemies, who in fact reaped all his fa

vours.

He was so notoriously shameless in his breach of faith to Protestants, and in his bigotted partiality to the Irish, that, by a set of infamous perjured Irish judges, be discharged all the charters of the kingdom in a term or two. The estates of the Protestants, nobles and commons, were by the same judges surrendered as fast as claimed by any of the wild Irish, who had long forfeited them by rebellion and massacre. The Protestant proprietors, who had earned them by their blood and money, improved them by their long industry, and held them by acts of settlement, were thrust out of their freeholds and bread by the brutal butchers of their predecessors, of their parents and kindred.

But as process at law, however sudden and arbitrary, was too slow, an Irish Parliament of the furious natives, chosen by the king's new charters, or rather by his direction and nomination, did, in a solemn

act, confiscate most of the estates of the Protestants in the whole kingdom, and condemned the owners to die as traitors. They were all thus charged with treason, and all in a lump condemned to death and forfeiture; for they were declared convicted of high treason, tho' never tried, nor even summoned. The frightened victims had many of them recourse to England for bread; and families of fair fortunes in Ireland saw themselves reduced, for support, to alms and parochial collections in England.

This was adjudging a whole Protestant kingdom, at once, to execution and destruction. It comprehended near fifteen hundred of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and men of fortune, all said in the act to have been attained and convicted, and were therefore adjudged to death and confiscation. To render the deadly snare the more fatal and secure, no copy of the inhuman act was suffered to be issued for four months.

After this flight of tyranny (so wild and merciless !) no other excess of it need be wondered at. Subjects were imprisoned; their money, horses, houses, and furniture seized, by a mere order from the king; sometimes a mere verbal order. And James, one of the weakest men in the kingdom, and as blind a bigot as the blindest, acted like the confirmed master of the persons and property of all men in it; yet was himself all the while the wretched property and tame instrument of the Pope, and even of his own priests. Whilst it was inade treason and death for five Protestants to be seen together, even in churches, the king's chaplains, in their public sermons, maintained to his face the Pope's absolute sovereignty over kings.

Strange inconsistency! for a frail, vicious, silly man, to claim godlike power over God's creatures, made after God's image (many of them wiser and better, few worse or weaker than himself;) yet confess himself the implicit vassal of an usurping impostor at Rome, cheating the world with pious cant and mountebankry, impudently boasting lying wonders, and subsisting by manifest frauds !

Can there be a greater demonstration, that power without controul belongs to no human creature; than that sach as have most loudly claimed it over all, were unblessed with any superior capacity, or any better morals than the rest? Is it conceivable, that the God of wisdom should adjudge the government of the world to such as have none; the care of men to such as oppress men; should convey his own power to those who abuse it, or invest with a sacred character men who swear falsely by his holy name, or injure and cheat in it?

King James delighted in lawless proceedings, merely because they were lawless. Even when the law would have served him in some of his measures, it was answered, That the king would be served his own way; which was a confession, that he would abolish law.

James, when duke of York, and high commissioner in Scotland, had given a specimen of his spirit and government sufficient to deter all men from ever wishing him upon the throne. He opposed and defeated, or cancelled, every good law: he promoted all that were tyrannical and bad he had the earl of Argyll condemned to die, because he would not forswear himself. The earl was a good Protestant, had a great estate, great interest and abilities; all dreadful eye sores to the small spirit and great bigotry of the duke of York. His Royal High

ness besides, delighting in frequent victims and executions at Ediaburgh, distinguished himself by a symptom of cruelty almost peculiar to himself, and almost always avoided by the most cruel princes, by such as were proverbial for cruelty, even by Nero. James, besides encouraging the use of the rack, to force confessions from such who were obnoxious to the tyranny of the times, sat pleased with the shocking spectacle of seeing men racked, their bones crushed, broken, and bursting with their blood through the flesh a horrid sight to Britons! A hopeful successor to the British crown! It was a sight singular in Britain, and even at Rome, under the tyranny of the Cæsars, for near a century after the usurpation of the first Cæsar. That monster Domitian was the first of the Roman imperial tyrants that ventured upon it.

Neither did any of these imperial tyrants ever exercise such a piece of tyranny as was exercised in Scotland under Charles the Second. Besides all the daily oppressions and barbarities upon the Presbyterians there (forced out of their established church, and fiercly persecuted) to oblige the court, especially James the king's brother, there was an order of council for placing soldiers on the public roads, with instructions to ask such as passed by, insnaring questions, about the king and religion; and if they appeared to be Presbyterians (people conscientiously tender in the point of religion and oaths) and refused the test offered them by the soldiers, the soldiers had express orders to put them to present death.—A stretch of tyranny unmatched by the most decried tyrants!

These were some of the miscarriages, before the revolution, such as the present invader supposes to have happened, without owning any; and he claims the same right and power claimed by king James, nor offers one limitation or amendment. The government ever since then, that government, from which has been derived such a series of ease and liberty, and such an utter absence of all violent measures, as are matchless in history from the creation; has, he says, been all usurpation. It has been indeed a total deviation from the government of his ancestors, a government which he comes to restore. To prove bis right and descent, and to recommend his future measures, he invades the kingdom, defies the laws, robs, ravages, and goes to mass.

These are the proofs which he gives of his lineal claim, and he is welcome to the fame of them. He, and his barbarous train, act as if they studied and were paid to make themselves odious to heaven and earth, and were industriously calling for quick and signal vengeance from both. I bless God it hastens apace ;-let us pray for its sudden completion.

NUMBER 93.

How boldly the Popish Clergy abuse their Followers, by teaching them to deny with a Curse, the most obvious Impieties of their Church.

I HAVE lately read a very seasonable pamphlet, of real use, good sense and knowledge, called, "An Inquiry how far Papists ought to be treated here as good Subjects, and how far they are chargeable with the tenets commonly imputed to them." It is written in answer to a Popish pamphlet, carefully distributed, full of glaring deceit, boldly denying all the detestable tenets and horrors of Popery; and, still further to cheat the ignorant, denying them with a curse, as Peter did bis master, and with the same sincerity. For example :

Cursed be he (says the Popish apologist) that commits idolatry, that prays to images or relics, or worships them, for gods. To this curse, and to all that follow, he makes his miserable votaries say, Amen.

This sounds strong, and is indeed strong fraud. Do not Papists adore relics? Do they not openly worship images, and pray to saints? as the author of the Inquiry clearly proves. Yes; but it seems that this is no idolatry, for they do not worship them as gods; that is, they do not call them God Jehovah, nor God the creator of all things; they only invoke them as deputy deities, generally in the same high devotional strain and such divine invocation, implying a divine prerogative to relieve and save the invoker, is a declaration of deity in the being invoked it is therefore idolatry, when made to any being except the Supreme.

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They ascribe godlike power to their most ridiculous relics, stocks and stones, old iron, bones, nails and hair, by making them work miracles, heal the sick, raise the dead, and exert the like acts and attributes of Omnipotence. Neither do they pray to their saints only as mediators and intercessors with God, as is sometimes pretended; they pray to them directly, and for what none but the Godhead only can grant, all the blessings of this life and the next. This is all obvious in their Breviaries and Catechisms, where prayers are framed immediately to the saints, and in a stile as high and rapturous as to God himself, as is at length explained in the Inquiry.

This apologist pronounces another bold curse upon every goddessworshipper, who believes the Virgin Mary to be more than a creature. I must own, that amongst all the extravagances of the Papists, I never knew a Papist deny that God created the Virgin Mary; but I never beard of a Papist who did not treat her beyond the quality of a creature, and with all the awful epithets of a Deity. They all pray to her, they all worship her. Is such divine treatment due to any creature? But there follows a reserve that justifies all ;—Cursed is he whe honours her, worships her, or puts his trust in her as much as in God. A curious come-off! He makes his votaries own, that the omnipotent God is superior to one of his creatures; but still they are to adore and invoke this human creature with the worship and language due only to God, her Creator. They implore her in form," to deliver them from sin, to protect them from evil, and to receive them at the hour of

death." What could they ask more of their Maker? Is not all this treating her as a Deity, a sovereign Deity? Did the blindest heathens ever apply such strains of adoration to any of their deities, even to the highest of all, Jupiter Optimus Maximus!

The curse is, however, repeated upon him who believes her above her son, or that she can in any thing command him. Above her son, is an odd phrase, but hath its art and meaning here. It sounds as if they denied the idolatry of worshipping her as well as the Son. We know it to be idolatry to worship her at all, and we know that they worship her. This is enough to fix the charge upon them.-Or, that she can in any thing command him. If she can protect and pardon sinners, and receive their souls into eternal bliss, without bim, she need not command him; she hath thus sufficient godlike power without him. But, if I am not mistaken, I have seen a Popish prayer, invoking the Virgin to command her Son, in terms, impera filio tuo: nor can such language appear strange in Popery.

The next curse is upon him who believes the angels and saints in heaven to be his redeemers, who prays to them as such, or who gives God's honour to them, or to any creature whatsoever. Was ever such mock defence! We do not charge them with believing saints and angels to be their redeemers, but with worshipping saints and angels: Nor can they deny that they do. It is the constant practice of their church, and it is enjoined by the authority of the church, to worship and invoke the angels, who are always in the presence of the Lord, and willingly watch for our security, which is committed to them. They are also ordered to invoke the dead saints, and to reverence their relics. All this is amply proved in the Inquiry.

'Tis a miserable subterfuge to say, that they reverence the Deity more, or, in their own words, that they do not give God's honour to them; and yet in reality, they do it, by putting them in God's stead, and complimenting them with God's power. Out of the vilest amongst dead men they choose their heavenly protectors and idols. The implacable traitor, Becket, bad infinitely more worship and oblations paid him than all the host of heaven; not only than Jesus Christ, but even than the mother of Christ, though she was then infinitely more revered than the Deity. Indeed, for many centuries, consummate madness, or consummate villainy, was the chief recommendation to saintship; and the blackest character upon earth, the Roman Pontiffs presumed to furnish heaven with such rivals to the Deity, as were too infamous to live amongst men. It is certain, than many who had adorned gibbets, or deserved them, helped to swell the Roman Calendar, and were complimented with a seat on the right hand of God, with the title of his chief favourites and counsellors.

The pleasantest curse follows: Cursed be he that worships any breaden god, or makes gods of the empty elements of bread and wine. A safe curse! Well may the tramer of it make his true Catholic say Amen to it! Before it is consecrated 'tis not God; and he deserves to be cursed who will worship bare bread as God. After it is consecrated 'tis God, our blessed Saviour in person; and who can be cursed who worships our blessed Saviour?

This fallacy is too gross; but a gross imposture will bear no better. A wafer is no God; but a few words and grimaces of the priest make