pish laity are, by being Papists, obliged to love or hate by the direction of the Popish clergy. Have the Popish clergy ever hesitated to propagate their faith by fire and sword, and to employ both against Protestants, whenever they had power, opportunity, or even temptation? Wherever they fail to execute such treason and cruelty, it is where they dare not: nor have they, nor can they have, any other restraint. Where violence is like to succeed, and promises them the abasement of heretics, the extinction of heresy, and the exaltation of Popery, it is impious in them not to exercise violence.

All their declarations of being peaceably disposed, and enemies to public disturbances, are insidious. Perhaps too they may be in earnest just at the time when they say so. But when opportuny offers; when their bigotry is awakened by the call of their priests; when the cause of religion is to be served, heaven opened to the zealous and active, and hell to the backward and slow; dare they reason, or hesitate, and look on with unconcern? Dare they then preach peace and submission to an heretical government?

There are, doubtless, God forbid that I should deny but there are worthy, moderate, and peaceable men amongst the papists. Nature hath formed them like other men. But their religion is stronger than nature; and their priests having the direction of their religion, have of course the management of their conscience, and can rouse it or calm it at pleasure. What will not a man do for his soul? And who is to advise a papist but his priest? If he be assured, that rebellion and treason are his duty, will he pause to commit them, when by them he saves his soul, or damns it by his refusal? Will he scruple to burn a heretic, though a kinsman, or a neighbour, when excited by the same premium, and the same terrors ?

1 am far from calling for any hardships upon papists. It is none to be upon our guard against them. They are the professed subjects of the Pope. The Pope is a professed enemy to our constitution. Can they be, will he suffer them to be, friends to it? They are assiduous in making converts to their superstition: I wish others were equally so in recovering such, and exposing the fraudulent and miserable arguments of the perverters. To me it seems blasphemy against God, to make nonsense and self-contradiction, necessary to please him; such as transubstantiation, and making the salvation of souls depend upon the word or consent of a priest. It seems a denial of Jesus Christ, to kill or punish men in his name, for taking the best course they can to serve him, though it were even a foolish one. It seems an abolishing of civil society and morality, to persecute, or even to tax and mark men for differing in opinion from one another, or to settle penal opinions by a majority, or by the power of one, or by any power whatsoever. That of the Pope is established in fraud and blood, trampling upon the Scriptures of truth, the power and mercies of God, and the reason of man; supported by fear and ignorance, by egregious nonsense, impudence, false terrors, and real cruelties.

NUMBER 77.

Further Observations upon the French Government. The Excellence of our own, confessed by French Writers.

THE French government, though a mild one for an arbitary one, is yet a very terrible one to an Englishman. All the advantages in it are not comparable to one single advantage in ours; I mean the act of Habeas Corpus, which secures, at least rescues, you from all wanton and oppressive imprisonment. In France, by the word of a minister, the greatest, the most innocent subject, may, from caprice, or a whisper, or the pique of a mistress, be committed to a dungeon for his life, or the best part of it, or as long as the minister, or his mistress or minion, pleases. Some bave been thus shut up in dismal durance and solitude for years together, though no harm was meant them; not for any offence, real or imaginary, but only through mistake and likeness of names. Thus a minister has sometimes committed his favourites, and useful agents, who lay in misery for years, and might have perished in it, had not accidents contributed to undeceive him. I think it is Cardinal de Retz that says (I am sure it is some good French author,) that he always dreaded the favour of being removed from a bad to a better apartment in the Bastile, because in the passages there were trap-doors suspected, and armed wheels beneath, where a prisoner was in an instant so minced and grinded as to leave behind him no memorials of his person.

Next to their arbitrary imprisonments, come their arbitrary banishments; and for small offences they are often inflicted, as well as for great. If any member of the Parliament have the honour and courage freely to remonstrate against registering an oppressive edict (for no edict is valid, unless registered by the Parliament) a few lines presently dispatch him from his seat there, and from the city, into exile: how far and how long, depends, like all things else, upon the anger or mercy of the monarch, or of those who direct the monarch.

Such orders, called letters of the signet, lie in the bands of the ministers, as well as in those of the under governors of provinces, to be used at their discretion, frequently to gratify their own vengeance. Is an intendant piqued against any man of quality; or a minister against a president of Parliament ? Such a letter is strait sent to him, and he instantly from home, sometimes into a remote province. Is the governor's lady, or daughter, disgusted at another lady in the place, finer and more admired than herself? Her punishment is decreed, and the poor rival sent a wandering; a crime is easily forged, and the sufferer has no remedy. The smallest affront to a monk in favour (and monks, God knows, are soon offended!) finds the same compensation; a victim must be offered to his holy rage. I saw, at Vannes in Bretagne, a lady in years, banished thither from her family in Perigord (some hundreds of miles off) for speaking slightly of that libidinous impostor

the Jesuit Girard, famous for his pretended devotion, and real debauchery, committed with the devout damsel Cadiere.

The abuse of raising and sinking the French coin, at the pleasure of the French king, is most alarming to all men of property: an industrious merchant lies down to rest, happy in his wealth, perhaps twenty or thirty thousand pounds, the just effects of his industry; and wakes next morning reduced to half, stripped by the edict of a night. When the king's coffers were filled with the money of his subjects, and he had payments to make, he raised the coin to an enormous value : when his finances were exhausted, and he wanted to replenish them from the purses of his subjects, he sunk the coin extravagantly low. How would the English relish or bear such grinding and robbery?

The French king levies money, and raises taxes, at his pleasure; and punishes such officers of justice in Parliament, as dare dispute his pleasure. He furnishes the farmers of his revenue (generally upstarts and bloodsuckers) with all, his boundless power to raise it how they can. Nor can we be surprised at any the most merciless treatment from such sons of rapine, thus armed with sovereign power to spoil and oppress. It is common to see a whole village stripped of all the effects and furniture in it; nay, to see the very houses pulled down, the roofs and timbers carried off, and the wretched inhabitants exposed naked to wander and starve.

Has not the English freeholder, farmer, manufacturer, cause to bless his own government, and different happy lot? These have no arbitrary demands to apprehend, and know to a farthing what they have to pay, long before the payment is asked. If they be injured in their portion of payment, they have easy recourse to tribunals and protectors of their own, generally their neigbours, who will chuse to do them justice, or dare not refuse it.

A French gentleman who travelled through England after the peace of Utrecht, says, in his travels, which are printed, "That he believes that there is no instance in any nation whatsoever, of so great a revenue raised with so much ease to the subject, at so small an expense to the public, and with so little danger to the liberties of the people." A remarkable testimony from a Frenchman! What is more remarkable, he is speaking of an English tax much decried, our excises. He adds, "What an army of officers does the French king employ, only for his duty upon salt, in the several provinces? What an army in his customs? The excise in England (says he) is collected with all possible ease, whilst in France, they are every day making terrible examples, hanging, confiscating, and tearing the poor people to pieces." Mind this, O my fellow citizens! Learn to love your own desirable condition, and to hate the parricides, who would labour to make you sick of it, and willing to risk or change it. This author observes, candidly, "That the tyranny of farmers of the revenue, who exact payment with rigor, is not felt in England, as it sadly is in France."

"In all the cities and great walled town in France (says another French author of quality, and great family) there are armed men posted at the gates by the farmers of revenue, to examine all who pass. any one is found defrauding the excise, perhaps under half a crown,

If

the offender, if a man is sent to the galleys; if a woman, and poor, she is whipped by the hangman; if she have an estate, she forfeits it If a man all, or most of it, and lies at the mercy of a brutal farmer. of the first fashion, a great Lord should be found, after severe searches, to have in his baggage a pound of salt, of about a penny loss to the farmer, his Lordship's whole equipage is forfeited, his person is imprisoned, and he is fined in a great sum.'

Remember this, O Britons! Rejoice and tremble!

NUMBER 78.

The

Persecution and cruelty, Marks of Apostacy from Christianity. The Doctrine of Transubstantiation, how impious and impossible. Inconsistency, Impotence, and Absurdity of all Popish Miracles.

A RELIGION which damns all others, exposes itself at first sight to be suspected of imposture, as it breathes a spirit so opposite to the spirit of the gospel. Nothing but the clearest and most express warrant from the mouth of God, can excuse any man for pronouncing such a horrid sentence against another man. The very name of the man, as well as the name of his maker, ought to be seen in that warrant. No less authority will do. Whoever pretends to it, impiously apes the Almity; presumes to do in the name of God, what God himself never did; and impudently practises a cheat covered and recommended under the names and attributes of truth and piety.

These blaspheming impostors usurp the place of almighty God, and act like Satan in it. They turn religion into a trade, and damn all that refuse to deal with them, and them only. This charm and the gains they make of it, are symptoms of a spirit truly worldly and devilish, of wicked combinations and mountebankry, destructive of all religion, and of all human liberty; a design which none but the most unrelenting tyrants can attempt, and which the most successful tyranny can never accomplish.

It is against common reason, 'tis against the wisdom and mercy of God, and indeed against all his attributes, and very essence, to presume that he divests himself (all-wise and infallible as he is !) of his indispensable power of eternal rewards and punishments, which he only is able to inflict or bestow; and transfers the same to any frail human creature, subject to constant weakness, passions and folly, as all human creatures are. To suppose that he does so, is an imputation of wantonness or frenzy, upon the deity, as if he contrived to make sport of the creation, and render men dupes and slaves to one another; as if he delighted in exalting pride, and oppressing innocence; delighted in the tyranny and wicked craft of one or a few; and in the delusion and vassalage of all the rest.

Whom has the Almighty created resembling himself, able to dictate, without opposition, in his name, or to exercise his infinite power, with

out appeal? How much the Popes are unlike him, or rather, how profanely most of them have belied him, and how absolutely renounced his rules and laws, I have shewn in a former. The best of them were counterfeits, all usurpers, assuming all earthly, indeed all heavenly power, to which no earthly creature was equal, or indeed had any pretence. Did it appear upon their election, that they had then gained one ability or talent, which they had not before, or lost one failing which they had before? The father of christendom, the infallible guide of Christians, the unerring vicar of Jesus Christ, instead of better, grew generally worse, more addicted to sinful pursuits, more proud, more unforgiving, more craving, less merciful, and less and less resembling our blessed Saviour. The same behaviour, (still continued, or worse) inferred the same character still to continue, or to grow worse, and consequently the vanity and extreme impropriety, and even forgery of bis new titles. His infallibility was a flagrant jest and imposition. As infallibility implies the present aid of the divine Spirit, which does not besitate, nor proceed by examination, nor stay for better lights; it was plain that the Pope had no such aid; for he always acted in form in ali perplexed questions, called consistories from time to time; consulted learned men; put off the decision from year to year; sometimes durst not decide at all. and sometimes decided wrong. At least, the next infallible head (his successor) was in the wrong, by deciding it a contrary way. For it was no new thing for Pope to contradict Pope, and to curse one another, each of them always first invoking the Holy Ghost.

The infallibility of counsels is equally ridiculous; and so were many of their decisions, generally carried by balloting, often by faction, sometimes by fighting; the members cursing and contradicting one another; and guided, or rather infatuated and inflamed, by the worst and most unchristian passions.

Infallibility is not to be found amongst men; it is one of the perfec tions of God, peculiar and incommunicable; whoever claims it, may, with the same craziness. or from the same craft and impious purpose, claim omnipotence. Whoever is subject to sin, is subject to error: Are not all men subject to sin? Have there been greater sinners than the Popes? And are offenders against the majesty of God, and the purity of the gospel, proper vehicles of godlike infallibility, or proper explainers of the gospel, of itself so plain, as to want no explanation, at least for gospel ends; and it is profaned, when wrested to any other! Who can discover the simplicity of the gospel in the various and intricate grimaces of the mass, or any of the meek gospel spirit in such as follow the mass?

The mass, like the whole of Popery, is invented and calculated for the exaltation and profit of the Popish clergy, and to bind, and blind, and plunder the laity. What can be added to the imposture of crea ting God by consecrating bread, but that it is the highest blasphemy that ever shocked the reason of man, or gave the lie to demonstration, and the five senses? Other impostors have devised lying genealogies for the eternal Being, related false wonders about him, pretended great interest in him, with a power to mollify or inflame him, and got a good livelihood out of him, with suitable reverence from dupes and the rabble, and were always striving to frighten such as they could not per