ger of the church. Who were, who could be, such successful promoters of all impiety as themselves? Who, who but they could so effectually endanger any Christian church? Without conscience, which is the seat and centre of religion, there can be no religion. Besides their own want of conscience, they would allow none to other men, and were implacable, indeed professed enemies to tender consciences: A sad proof, that they were themselves unacquainted with any such tender

ness!

The cry of atheism, a cry much in their mouths, as ill became them. Men who live as if there were no God, are the most likely to disbelieve the being of a God. And by this rule, they themselves had the best claim to that character, which they so freely bestowed upon men unresembling themselves. It was therefore no wonder to hear Dr. Hickes call Dr. Tillotson an atheist, and publish him in print as the gravest atheist that ever lived. For Hickes, though he had not taken the oaths, was as furious a Jacobite as those that had. He entertained all their uncharitable fierceness and infamous principles; and I do not believe that any set of men, not owning the Romish communion, ever entertained so bad principles, or laboured so vehemently to introduce every public crime and curse, invasion from France, the restoration of a Popish tyrant, the deposition, nay the assassination of a Protestant hero and deliverer, with the re-settlement of the worst parts of Popery, and the exertion of all barbarity against Protestant Dissenters.

Mr. Collier had the traiterous assurance and impiety to exercise openly in the face of the day and the crowd, one of the most dangerous and detestable articles, or rather abominations of Popery, in absolving at the gallows an assassin hanged for a conspiracy to have murdered king William. That divine thus committed such an insult upon the Godhead and the government, as was new in the creation, at least in the eyes of Englishmen. What were all the offensive drolleries of the stage, which Mr. Collier has passionately treated as profane, compared to the devilish crimes of treason, civil war, national desolation, Popish tyranny, and the murder of a king, all pardoned by Mr. Collier, in the person of a bloody traitor ?

All this shows, that our preacher might have found national provocations, at least as shocking as those of the Jews, nearer home, and not so long ago; such dreadful provocations to God as must make the ears of a Christian to tingle. Here he had ample room to have dise played his discernment, his judgment, and his eloquence, upon such as deserved them. A contemptible libel is a contemptible topic for so able a preacher.

Here too he had an ample field for panegyric upon the present clergy, who have gloriously departed from the corruption, disloyalty, uncharitableness, and all the profligate principles of the former; their sincere zeal for this Protestant king, church and government, their abhorrence of Popery, and their alacrity to defend it, their excellent sermons, and all the noble testimonies they have so seasonably borne.

For myself, I truly honour, I shall ever honour, all such of them as have thus distinguished themselves; as I shall ever heartily despise all mean halting temporizers, and thoroughly detest all parricides, who longed for a change, and wished our misery complete, by the success of the rebels, whom God, of his infinite mercy to this nation, disappoint

and confound! and in order to it, disclose and punish all their secret abettors and favourers !

But I return to say something more of the half Protestant clergy before the revolution; and then proceed upon the behaviour of those after it.

These prostitute preachers, formerly, surrendered the poor people, who fed them, to beggary and slavery, and the crown, which promoted and enriched them, to delusion, desperate courses, and final ruin. I own, there were then, and always, excellent men amongst the clergy, but what an unequal portion of the clergy they then were, any man that can read may see. One thing was very remarkable and very shameful (if any thing could have been so to men so lost to truth and shame) whilst they were zealously dooming all men to be absolute slaves to the sovereign, they excepted themselves, and confidently as serted an independent power in themselves; a power destructive of sovereignty as well as of liberty.

Who were the greatest sinners then in the nation, and who so properly the subjects of divine judgments? But they who most freely scatter such judgments, never fix them where most due. Could there be a more national, a more crying sin, than such an open, such a pernicious attack upon the happiness of all men, upon their laws, liberty and conscience? Could there be higher mockery of God, than to preach up tyranny (the root and engine of all evil under the sun) as the ordinance of God? To leave it implicitly to the will of a weak, passionate or debauched man, to make and unmake laws, to exalt the worst men, and to reward the best with gaols and gibbets? To damn the best and only remedy against the most direful curse that can befal society? To compliment a prince void of probity and morals, a Charles II. with the modelling or mangling of the constitution, and with the fate and fortune of all men?

When such parasites (the more malignant as well as more inexcusable for their holy character) had tempted their sovereign to provoke his subjects to rebel, it was high assurance in them to condemn rebellion, to condemn what they really caused. They were the original incendiaries, and laid the train. Rebellion was but the explosion, and naturally followed.

The same incendiaries, who led, or rather drove our princes into violent and despotic counsels, before the revolution, incensed the people into unprovoked disaffection, after it. They misrepresented the public saviour as a public usurper. They took all oaths. They taught their hearers to break all, and shewed them the way.

What could be a more hideous iniquity, a more threatening curse, a bolder disowning of the living God; a more impious insult upon the reason of man; a more dangerous assault upon civil society, or a more desperate renouncing of all morals, and defiance of all shame ?

Was not national perjury a crime terribly complex, pregnant with guilt and woe, a national provocation of divine justice? Yet upon this alarming subject auditories were rarely roused. What is still more monstrous, perjury was accounted merit. And whilst the most Conscientious Dissenter, religiously true to the government and his oath, was traduced and damned; a perjured High-Churchman, brutal and debauched, was a favourite character.

SECTION IV.

The passionate and ridiculous Application of Divine Judgments, by visionary, selfish, and factious Spirits. It is urged for Argument where Reason is wanting.

COULD there be a broader way to national perdition, than what I have above specified? Or could the terrors of divine vengeance be more seasonably urged? Yet this was a topic not in fashion, and whoever would have presumed to have urged it, would have not only passed, but been damned, for a false brother.

Very different offences, none against God, but high ones against themselves, were the burden of their outcries for divine wrath; airy notions, crabbed, unmeaning distinctions; tithes given by men, not allowed to be of right divine; rituals, postures, cloth and colours; blood shed an hundred years ago; a vicious Jacobite priesthood, not respected as the vicegerents of God, though daily forswearing by his holy name, and propagating perjury and treason for such impious crimes as these, public woes and wrath divine were usually denounced, and seen just approaching.

It may be easily remembered what a malignant spirit possessed the then bigoted, factious clergy in the former rebellion; how little the duty of loyalty, and their sacred oaths, influenced such men. Could there be a greater sin personal or national? Yet I do not remember, that it was then the common subject of declamation from the pulpit, or menaced with divine judgments.

The ministers of the Kirk of Scotland, an hundred years ago, threatened all who took not the covenant, or forsook it, with the fearful judgments of the Lord, and were wonderfully quick-sighted in perceiving the same dreadfully overtaking all backsliders; that is, all who would not form their opinions, their religion and their politics, just according to the fierce humours and narrow pattern of the saints. The English clergy reviled the saints, as traitors and hypocrites, and derived all national judgments, from the sins, the frenzy and rebellion of the saints, consigning them freely to eternal wrath, as the saints did these their enemies, returning curse for curse, as well as angry names, lordly prelates, priests of Baal, dumb dogs, and persecutors of the brethren.

The Almighty was claimed as a partial champion on either side: both sides defended injustice by religion; ingrossed. Christianity whilst they wounded charity, besought the merciful God, in wrath, to blast one another, and applied the divine thunder with infernal fury. The gross of both parties blindly believed, and devoutly confirmed the voice and impious censure of their lying leaders; and the same eyes, who clearly saw roguery and fanaticism in the opposite party, perceived not the same roguery and fanaticism as obvious in their own.

Could there be more anti-christian bigots than such clergymen, on both sides? What would become of religion, and of mankind, were such madmen left to govern them? Yet, who so eager as these madinen to govern the world, religion and human-kind ?

Hh

A clergyman in the west, bearing that a farmer in the village had perished by lightening, cried with extacy and uplifted hands, The Lord will be gorited in all his doings: This man was an unchangeabe Anabaptist, and could not be brought into the way of salvation. Walther be is gone, I do not say; but I would not follow him for the expire of the globe." He scarce bad finished this pious uncharitable rant, before he was told, that Sympson the parish clerk, a zealous Charchiinan, who suited proper psalms to Jacobite holy-days, had fallen even as the farmer had fallen, close by his side, and by the same stroke." The Lord giveth, said the good doctor, and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord."

This gloomy bigot and party man (for he had been on both sides, though strong y suspected to be still of that which he had upon oath renounced, treated the great Sovereign of universal nature, like a party man, narrow and prejudiced as himself! He presumed to apply everlasting mercy and everlasting wrath, just according to the measure of his own peevishness and partiality.

These dealers in judgment never see, nor apprehend any, for their own enormities and excesses, however scandalous, however affecting the public weal. They generally apply them to persons and opinions, which they themselves dislike; to opinions which discredit and cross their interested maxims; to persons who expose clerical faults, and call for clerical amendment, and therefore are proper objects of clerical vengeance, consequently of divine judgment. All such reformers are terrible atheists and unpardonable sinners, and with John Huss, our Cranmer and Ridley, consigned to temporal and eternal flames; the best men cursed and martyred by the worst.

This wantonness in applying at random the awful judgments of God, where he himself does not declare them such, would appear as ridicu lous as it is bold (generally blasphemous) were it not for the dangerous and cruel use, which the pretended and designing explainers make of it. For, it is a special market for craftsmen.

An idle, romping school-boy trod upon his grandmother's toe, and put a capital corn into a raging fit. The old woman lost all temper, and in a fury as bitter as her pain, told him "That the Lord would requite him." The lad, in infinite confusion and affright, had recourse to his heels, and sprang down stairs in such a hurry, that he fell and broke his leg. "Did I not tell you so, sirrah?" says his grandmother, falling into a fresh passion with him for his misfortune. She, however, prayed the Almighty to forgive the poor child, and to correct him no further; for that she had forgiven him.”

Vice is usually followed by misfortunes: evil doings, both in a nation, and in the individuals of a nation, produce evil consequences, and punish themselves. Debauchery brings diseases, as idleness and profusion do penury. That all evil is displeasing to God, we all know, and he is no respecter of persons. Doubtless he considers and hates crimes according to their malignity and degrees. As nothing can burt him, it is probable, that the men who offend him most, are they who do most hurt to one another; that consequently, all oppressors, all persecutors and deceivers, are the most odious in his eyes: that mental errors and erroneus worship, well meant cannot displease him; and that sincerity in devotion is ever acceptable to him; that no religion

but that which plagues and punishes men (as all cheating religions do) can be offensive to him; that living well, and doing well to one another, are the capital duties amongst men, and the most acceptable to God that whoever does these duties, need fear no judgments.

As to words and professions and symbols, it is in the power of the men to utter and perform them; and such utterance and performance, however solemn and seemingly devout, are no proofs of a sincere or. devout heart. The greatest impostors are always the most pompous,

pathetic and grave.

It was a rational and an honest answer, which the oracle returned to a state of Greece, going to war with another Greek state, and desiring to know, what they must do to make Apollo their friend?" If you will but act like honest men, and fight like brave men. Apollo will always be your friend," replied Apollo's priest, though generally a lyar, and always a cheat yet in the language of these cheats, heaven was constantly interposing and sending down judgments, in their defence, upon all lovers of truth, who profanely laughed at their trade, and detested their imposture.

An emperor of China was superstitiously alarmed to see a mulberry tree in his garden covered with leaves in the space of seven days; then wither and lose them all, in three days more. The solemn prophesying bigots about him, increased his panic with a doleful tale of terrible judgments to ensue. His minister, to whom he communicated his fears, and the terrible presage of his pious fortune tellers, calmed his mind with the argument of an honest and a rational man: "virtue, said he, rules all presages, and renders them good or evil: govern your subjects with equity, and nothing can shake your repose.'

A Pagan priest of old, and interpreter of omens (which all men alike misunderstand and misconstrue) would on such an occasion have filled the temples with the smoke of incense, which had signified no more than so much air; or made them flow with the blood of victims; of just as much use as so much water: a Popish priest would have enjoined fasts, processions, masses and penance; proper means to make the people idle, superstitious, and idolators of their priests; but, above all, riches and oblations to the church, fresh honours and prerogatives to the clergy, with the lives and estates of all such as had offended the clergy, confuted their lyes, laughed at their grimaces, and detested their bold mockery of God and man.

Such are the profit and advantages accruing to crafty men from the system of judgments; no wonder it has never dropped; a system which makes priests the privy counsellors of the Almighty, the oracles of his will, the heralds of his wrath, the intercessors for his mercy, armed with a divine claim to all means of supporting their dignity, and executing this their high deputation below; a claim to princely revenues, implicit reverence, all secular authority, ecclesiastical courts and inquisitions; powers to crush all gainsayers, and all such as presumed to think or to dream contrary to their standard of thinking and dreaming; a presumption which, in the cry of craftsmen, will always be the crying profaneness and great curse of the age, and always be drawing down judgments opon the nation.

This cry answers another end, equally wicked; it constantly serves the outrageous spirit of faction. The decay of religion, and the con