all the heads of the Papists, brought a horrible stain upon Popery, then your preachers, and confessors, and writers, were taught boldly to deny it.

C. My Lord, I always thought it too bad to be probable.

L. What think you of the massacre of Paris ?

C. I never justified it.

L. The Pope did;

therefore you must. Then there is that

of which we have spoken, the inquisition, I think the worst of all. A horrible tribunal! settled for the constant execution of cruelty and fraud: you are far from giving up that.

NUMBER 91.

Remainder of a Dialogue between a Noble Convert and his late Confessor.

C. My Lord, I have blamed its excesses-

L. Without naming them.-Father, the thing itself is an excess, an infernal excess. You know the whole of it as well as I do; but dare not own it, in any of its just colours, to your English penitents. You cannot but remember what you told my bricklayer's labourer when he broke his leg, and you, in the poor fellow's affright and distress, plied him about his being a heretic, and insinuated to him, that this was the cause of so heavy a judgment upon him.

C. Perhaps it would have been well for him if he himself had believed so.

L. Yes; then you would have had him sure. I say you must remember, that when you were haranguing to him upon the matchless charity and tender mercies of the Catholic church, in order to bring him into it, and the poor man mentioned the inquisition, of which it seems he had read a good deal more than you cared he should, you cried out, with hands lifted up, and a heavy sigh, "O the flagicious malice of men!"Then turning to the poor man, you added, 66 You see, dear child, how one fatal error brings on another, and many. Had you been of the church, you would have found how grievously the church is wronged." You then assured him, that the Inquisition was a criminal court, set up chiefly by the state, against apostate infidel Moors and Jews, who were all public traitors; but that it never hurt any good Catholic; or, which is the same thing, any good Christian. C. Was there not great truth in this? L. There was great truth concealedInquisition?

C. I think it was pretty near the matter.

-Was this a picture of the

L. Not the least resemblance. Your authority, with your gracious and devout manner, staggered the weak fellow, and you might have probably got him over: but my old steward Goulding overhearing you when you least thought of it, asked you, with a great zounds," Are

not the inquisitors all priests, and the only masters there; and are not all Protestants burnable by the laws and constant practice of the Inquisition?"-A question which you chose not to answer, but went away, pitying, as you went, the poor passionate man for cursing so abominably. Goulding replied, "Whoever it is that curses, by I know who it is that lies." You then complained of persecution, and retired. C. Your Lordship is very particular.

L. I had it from La Trappe, my valet de chambre, whom you once attacked, but soon gave over. He produced you Mons. Daillé and Dr. Tillotson-No wonder the latter is so great an atheist. I cannot say but I then first began to doubt, next to examine; and whoever does both will soon leave you. A church of such a lying, cruel, damning, burning spirit, ought to be the abhorrence of all men.

C. Could you not leave us without becoming our enemy?

L. An enemy to your system, I own I am, without any prejudices purely personal. All that leave you are in your opinion certainly damned, though they left you upon the fullest inquiry and conviction. C. It is possible that they may be too rash, whatever they think.

L. They can never be too hasty in going over to you, but are always rash in deserting you. Nothing can be more dishonest than this your conduct; you pretend to convince people by reason and the Bible, but will you suffer them to be re-convinced when they find ever so just cause from both to leave you?

C. When they are in the right way, my Lord, we are willing to keep them there. Are we to be blamed ?

L. Yes, if you would keep them against their conscience, when you had gained them by appealing to their conscience. They must then follow you, and obey you, and renounce their reason, their conscience, and their Bible. This is ensnaring and enslaving men, and not converting them.

C. Their conscience may mislead them, and often does.

L. If they mean conscientiously it is sufficient, and God will pardon their involuntary mistakes. Conversion, not founded upon conscience and conviction, is hypocrisy or servitude. The truth is, as you teach an implicit faith, that is, religion without reason; and as ignorance is confessed to be the mother of devotion, that is, of devotion without sense, you hold your followers not by conviction, which only can make people religious, and keep them so; but by the force of superstition, by fairy menaces, or by temporal terrors; all which keep them fast in your chains. Your true Catholics are not followers of Christ, but followers of you. He who is not a Christian by conviction is no Christian; and conviction implies reason.

C. We deny no man the use of his reason.

L. When he uses it not against you, nor in religious points. But dare a Spaniard, dare an Italian, dare any Papist whatsoever, reason with you upon religion, and oppose his doubts to your dictates? If any man dares to do so abroad, the inquisition waits for him with all its flames and rage. If any man thwarts your authority and tenets even bere, he will have hell set open to swallow him, and all its furies let Joose upon him.

C. Are men always to wander in uncertainty?

L. Yes, 'till they are fixed by conviction and conscience.

C. What if they never fix?

L. If they never do, no man can force them; they must be left to God. Better their minds wander (a thing that hurts no man) than be cowed, and their bodies punished or enslaved.

C. Is it not a great blessing to be restrained from foul error?

L. No error is foul if it be harmless; besides, if what would re-. strain error, would also restrain reason and truth (the genuine end of all your restraints) I detest the impious policy. The noblest notions of God appear atheistical to all bigots; and all bigots are persecutors. Socrates was put to death for his rational sentiments of the Deity; nor was be the last. The wisest men are often sacrificed to what mad zealots call holy. It was capital in Egypt to kill one of their sacred beasts, a wolf, a crocodile, or a cat.

C. Do we, my Lord, defend heathen idolatry and heathen cruelty? L. No, you only imitate them, and exceed them. These heathens, though mad enough to destroy such, who hurt their ravenous objects of worship, were not so mad as to kill or punish men for refusing to worship them.

C. My Lord, what wild beasts do we worship?

L. You worship worse objects, Ignatius Loyola, and that most bloody priest, Dominic, founder of the inquisition. What ravenous beast ever proved such a pest to society as Thomas à Becket did to England?

C. He was indeed passionately zealous for the church.

L For Popery, and for tyranny in his own person, a lawless and vindictive incendiary, who defied the laws of the land, and even those of the living God.

C. Your Lordship is assuredly too just to think him an atheist.

L. I think him worse; as no atheist ever did so much mischief. Under that character a man can never do much, but will rather frighten men than convert them. But Becket played the devil by affecting saintship; and, to the eternal infamy of your church, obtained it. The dead traitor had more oblations paid him, than our blessed Redeemer and his blessed mother.

C. My Lord, this is a wide field your Lordship is got into, and— L. Father, I see that you are tired, and so am 1-Let me, however, offer to your consideration a passage from the judicious Plutarch: Speaking of human sacrifices offered to Saturn by the Carthaginians, during a famine, five hundred at once, two hundred of them picked from the best families, the rest volunteers from amongst the citizens, he asks, "Whether that people had not acted more wisely, if they had chosen for their legislator a Critias or Diagoras, both known atheists, than to have established such a sanguinary institution?"

C. What would your Lordship infer from all this to our present purposes? Not surely, that Catholics are worse than atheists !

L. The word Catholic bath a solemn, indeed a deceitful sound, and is very boldly assumed, to exclude all other Christians from Christ's church and from the benefit of his death. But it is of a piece with the devilish spirit of Popery, which avowedly damns, and, where it can, actually destroys all those of a different faith.This, father, you cannot deny.

C. We would willingly save all men.

Сс

L. And allow none to be saved but yourselves-Those who will not submit to your terms of salvation, must be victims and fuel to the inquisition.

C. Still, my Lord, this is not Atheism.

L. It is human sacrifice, and worse than Atheism.-Nor can I conceive so wicked, so dreadful a being, in the whole compass of nature, as a Papist heated with bigotry and vengeance, and acting up to the rigour of Popish principles-Is a devil worse than an inquisitor, who is only a punisher for religion, or a persecutor, acting in his highe est sphere? What a pestilent ingredient must a zealous Papist be in a community of Protestants?-His zeal makes him a busy seducer; and every person seduced is, must be, a keen enemy to the community. And as the seducers are many and indefatigable, the seduced are without number. Let the legislature attend to this, Moreover, the conscience of every convert to Popery is the Pope's, and obliges him to bate all who abjure the Pope and the Pope's pupil. Yet what tender usage you all find, father, under this government! Dare any Popish state be guilty of the like tenderness to Protestants ?

C. My Lord, your Lordship will allow

L. Father, I will allow nothing to the temper of you and your converts.I know how determined, how ready you all are, and for what. You and they are all warm zealots. They are mostly as poor as ignorant, and subject to none of those pauses which retard men of fortune and families, and who have some sense, in spight of bigotry.I know your ardour and influence, and the spirit of your religion, so well, that I often rejoice and wonder, that I am not hanged. Ah! father, had I been advised or frightened by you (for you impor tunately tried both ways) where must I have been?

C. If not here, I hope in heaven.

L. By your help and that of Mr. Ketch-After all, as much as I dread Popery, I am not for destroying Papists, though they have always, and every where, shewn us the way, and wantonly tempted us to follow them in it.But I am earnestly for disabling Popery from destroying Protestants; and if some such scheme is not effectually pursued, I shall think the Parliament in a lethargy, the government infatuated, and the nation desperate.

Adieu, father, I shall be glad to see you sometimes.But no wispering, no closeting, no dark applications to my family.--I shall heartily endeavour to reclaim those of them whom you have already poisoned.

NUMBER 92.

King James II. his disgraceful reign. His Impotence and Cruelty. He exposes and deposes himself.

AN hereditary right to preserve the laws, is inherent in all lawful kings; an hereditary claim to break the laws, is a forfeiture of all kingly right. Indefeasible hereditary right is jargon, the cant of usurpers and impostors, to cheat the many, and abuse all men.

Blood is only one qalification in a prince, and not the highest; justice and capacity are the greatest and the best. As the prince may be a child, and yet must reign like a man, because he reigns over men, the laws must govern those who govern the prince; else the will of his ministers, or bis playfellows, must be the law. If he prove a lunatic, the next of kin, or a counsel, must rule in his stead. He who hath no sense cannot exercise government, which is the direction of the public He who wants justice and integrity, and regards not oaths and laws, is at least under equal disability. This is moral, as well as political lunacy; therefore a moral and political disqualification.

sense.

Whoever is intrusted with government, having the interests of all men under his direction, has the highest occasion for a good heart, as well as a sound head: but where the laws prevail, though he be weak, yet, by letting the laws take place, his government may be easy. If he be wilful, as well as weak, yet will needs be wiser than the law, dispense with law, and set up his own humour, his peevishness, or his superstition, for law, he becomes a public enemy, a tyrant, who deposes himself.

Such a public enemy was king James, an obstinate bigot, a perjured oppressor, an open foe to the laws and to his people: he therefore regularly dethroned himself. He can scarse be said to have ever filled the throne he began to forfeit it e'er he was warm in it. The English throne, established and limited by laws, ceased to be his, when he became a tyrant in it. Whilst he held it, he held it not for himself, but for miserable monks and hot headed zealots, who set up a government against law, a religion against sense, and the shadow of a king to support both. He never had much understanding; what little he had he forfeited, and with it his crown, to the infatuation of Popery.

A weak man makes a very good Papist, indeed the best; but a weak Papist makes a wretched king. I own, that a man of sense may be a Papist; but I deny, that he makes use of his sense : the grimace and fraud of priests blind him, and fairy terrors awe him..

King James, the weakest of his race, (though not the worst nor the falsest) yet strove for some time to dissemble; but wanting capacity even for that (which requires so little, and is often found in the silliest women) soon exposed his heart quite bare, contracted with bigotry, panting for tyranny, and cankered with rage.