the fiercest tyranny can try to oppress them. I am almost of opinion, that if it had not been for the Puritans, we should have been long since, not only without the Protestant religion but without any religion at all. It is certain, these old fellows, as queer and fantastical as they were, always opposed the growth of ceremonies and arbitrary power; and, if your grace's predecessor, archbishop Laud, when many peaceable and industrious Protestant dissenters fled from his fury to the wild beasts and rattlesnakes of America, could have sent all the rest after them, he might have successfully Popified us into that abject slavery and uniformity, which his good catholic Christianity had projected for us.

And therefore, without disguising the matter, or falling into the senseless ditty of lamenting our divisions in opinion, I heartily thank God that we have dissenters, and I hope we shall never be without them. They are sentries and watchmen against the sly intrigues and conspiracies of designing churchmen, who, could they but wheedle, or drive all men into one belief, would soon grow as independent and uncontroulable as the Pope or the Czar. Bigotry, chains, and cruelty, are always, and in all places the certain issue of uniformity; which is itself of an infamous race, being begot by the craft of the priests upon the ignorance of the laiety. I think that it puts uniformity and what is generally called schism, in a true light; that tyranny can never sub sist without the first, nor liberty without the latter.

For my part, I do not know one dissenter in England, but who sincerely believes the Scriptures, and faithfully adheres to king George and his government; and, in consequence of both, prays to God heartily, and pays his taxes cheerfully. Let the church boast as much of her conforming sons if she can.

Oh! but schism and dissenters break the peace of the church !———— I never much liked this same phrase, The peace of the church, because there is always something very bad tacked to it. For, in short, those who have the impudence to appropriate that name (the church) to themselves, will never be at peace till they have got the possession of our estates, and the keeping of our senses; so that religion, and property, and reason, and conscience, must all go to ruin, to give such a church peace. Nothing else will do. At this present time, the church, besides the great increase of her revenues, enjoys all the advantages which she ever had since the reformation, except that of worrying schismatics; and yet, by daily experience we see, and by this very letter we see, that the high-church parsons will not be at peace.

I have thus far spoke my mind trankly upon the topic of schism, emboldened so to do by your grace's great name and example, who have in many places and discourses, taught mankind not to be alarmed with words and bugbears. Your grace* "accounts it a meanness of spirit to desert the truth, or be afraid to own it, though never so much clamoured against by ignorant or designing men;" of which truth, you say, every man must judge for himself; as I have quoted it already.

The next complaint in the letter is, " Of men who speak perverse things, and of pastors, nay bishops, who pull down the church, and undermine its authority, though they have subscribed to its doctrine, and therefore ought to contend for it, and even die for it."

State of the church, &c. page 3,

Here is the most rank, though impotent malice shewn against the best bishop, best protestant, and best man, who ever adorned the mitre ; and for the best actions which he was capable of, viz. for his compre hensive love to mankind, and for strenuously supporting those principles, upon which alone the protestant religion, his majesty's title, and the liberties of the world can be defended; all which entitles him in a particular manner to your grace's protection, who have always maintained the same, and now worthily enjoy the rewards of your virtue.

But it is no wonder that my lord bishop of Bangor,* should suffer under the rage of a wicked and despairing faction, when even your grace's great post and character do not protect your innocence from their feeble assaults; otherwise they could never have surmised your grace to be the author of so senseless a declaration, against one of your own order, and in contradiction to the whole tenour of your life, the expectations of your friends, I will not say engagements to those who had the honour to prefer you.

Your grace has always, in your excellent writings, asserted the contrary principles, and therefore this foolish paper must have come from some foul mouthed high-church man, and one of that new sort of disciplinarians, who, your grace, in your Appeal, assures us "are risen up from amongst ourselves; who seem to comply with the goverment of the church, much upon the same account as others do with that of the state, not out of conscience to their duty, or any love they have for it; but because it is the established church, and they cannot keep their preferments without it. They hate our constitution, and revile all that stand up in good earnest for it; but for all that, they resolve to hold fast to it, and so go on to subscribe and rail."

These are the church monsters, or many headed hydras heroically vanquished by your grace and the bishop of Bangor, who have ever maintained the king's supremacy, and the total dependance of the clergy upon the laiety; and have manfully opposed civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, in all their shapes; for which you have been falsly represented as Judas's, Chuch Empsons, and Church Dudleys, and what not? And now, my lord, you having disarmed them of all fair weapons, they have recourse to the blackest calumny, and the fiercest railing.

The letter writer comes next to shew, What are the pleas and pretensions of these innovators, as he calls them; and these, he says, may be learned from a couple of French pamphlets lately published, the authors of which, and their confederates, whom he has before described, are angry at all confessions of faith, and all subscription of articles, and are for a general toleration, which he invidiously calls, a general licence; and he might, with the same candour, have christened it a general libertinism.

I

One of the Treatises here referred to, is written by Mr. Durette, and suppose, the other by Mr. De la Pilloniere, and both intended to expose the absurdity, and shew the ridicule of broad-brimmed hats and grave faces, meeting in synods to reveal the revealed will of God; and to make creeds and confessions of faith, and carry them by a majority of voices (often of proxies) which creeds the laiety are to believe at present, and in all generations to come.

* Dr. Benjamin Hoadley, now Lord Bishop of Winchester.

I very much suspect the virulent libeller, under the shelter of oppossing these poor French refugees, intends to level his bold invective against your grace's person and writings, in which you have so openly and significantly declared your opinion of what is to be expected from such assemblies of clergymen, who have no other business there but to spread uncharitableness and dissension amongst the people; and to usurp wealth, dominion, and power to themselves.

In your Authority of Christian Princes, you excellently well observe, "That nothing more exposed our Christian profession heretofore, or may more deserve our serious consideration at this day, than the violence, the passion, the malice, the falseness, the oppression, which reigned in most of the synods held by Constantine, and after him by the following emperors, upon occasion of the Arian controversy. Bitter are the complaints which we are told that great emperor made of them The barbarians, (says he in a letter to one of them.) for fear of us, worship God; but we mind only what tends to hatred, to dissension, and in one word, to the destruction of mankind."

You further observe of synods in general: "What good can be expected from the meeting of men, when their passions are let loose, and their minds disordered; when their interest and designs, their friends and parties, nay, their very judgments and principles lead them different ways, and they agree in nothing so much, as their being very peevish; when their very reason is depraved, and they judge not according to truth and evidence, but with respect to persons, and every one opposes what another of a different persuasion moves or approves of ?"

I heartily concur with your grace in your opinion of such assemblies; and, indeed, I cannot see what good they can do, were it possible they were inclined to do it: the common pretence is, to make faith to explain religion, and to teach the Holy Ghost to talk intelligibly. Vain and weak men! as if the Almighty was not capable of making himself understood without their help, when he intends to be understood; or, as if a few fallible mortals, neither more wise, or more honest than other men, were capable of discovering what the Almighty has a mind to conceal; or as if the divine goodness would cruelly hide from us what is necessary for us to know.

If the scriptures are so abstruse, and want so much explanation, bow are they so plain, that he who runs may read? And how can God Almighty (whose laws they are) be said to will that all men should come to the knowledge of the truth? And how are the great things of religion revealed to babes and sucklings, and hid from the learned and wise?

The Romish clergy act consistently with themselves, when they pretend to believe that the Holy Ghost presides in their general councils, and consequently may be allowed to explain his own meaning. But it is incorrigible impudence in Protestant priests, to assume to talk or write better than the Holy Spirit himself, when they pretend not to his assistance, nor will accept of any other if they can help it. And therefore I shall conclude this head, and stop this reviler's † Page ibid.

* Page 307.

mouth, by telling him in your Grace's words: "That nothing at this day preserves us from ruin and desolation, but that we (the clergy) have not power of ourselves to do the church a mischief; and the prince, who sees too much of our temper, is too gracious to us, and has too great a concern for the church's good, to suffer us to do it."

The letter goes on, and the next passage is pregnant with anger and scurrility. "Who," says the author," that is a Christian, can avoid lamenting that these ravening wolves, (I wish he does not mean such men as your Grace, and the bishop of Bangor, &c.) are not only not driven far away from the sheepfold, but even received within the Inclosures of the church, and admitted to her honours, her offices, and her government? But so it unfortunately is, while we only strive for the things of this life, we wofully neglect those which belong to another. And because some hope by the toleration, and advancement of such men, to acquire the favour of the people, and thereby maintain themselves in that which they have only at heart, their power and places; they care not what becomes of the church, or of the faith, or of religion, or indeed of Jesus Christ himself, and his cause."

Here is a volley of rage and ugly names, enough to distance Billingsgate, and to put all reasonable and moderate railing out of countenance for ever. How thought I, when I read it first, have we got Bungey † here? It savours filthily of the sermon at St. Paul's, and breathes the very same truth, and good sense. Pray God the poor orthodox lunatic may come off no worse than he did last time I know a galled back will not agree with his choleric soul, and I see no hopes of escaping. Blessed memory is no more; and within these five years we have had one rebelling priest hanged, and another seditious priest set in the pillory- Once more heaven preserve poor Bungey. But while I was in the midst of my soliloquy, I happily remembered that the letter was written in Latin; and so I cleared myself of my fears, and the doctor of the learned scandal.

From the falsehood of the assertions, and the bitterness of the style, I should have suspected friar Francist for the author; but as it bears no tincture of his spirit and parts, I am sure none of this dull dirt is of his flinging.

Upon the whole, my Lord, I am come to a persuasion, that this wretched author is some wooden implement of the late reign; some northern genius, some holy bigot, and § bungler of peace, made use of by his masters, as a foul hand to sign away the Protestant religion, and the liberties of Europe.

Supposing this author to be a Papist (which is most likely) this doleful ditty of his will run most naturally, in the following style, into which I bave paraphrased it.

"Who that is a good Catholic, can avoid crossing himself, and saying his Pater Noster, when he sees that, though the titular bishop of Bangor's heterodox principles are the barrier of the great schism, called the reformation, and are the gulph over which no rational Englishman

* Dedication to the Appeal, &c.

A name given to Dr. Sachs erel.

Dr. Francis Atterbury.

Some have applied this (I suppose maliciously) to Dr. Robinson, late bishop of London.

can pass into the bosom of mother church; yet that arch heretic is not only not burnt, but even sacrilegiously exercising the office of a pretended bishop, and poisoning the people with the damnable doctrines of private judgment, and liberty of conscience; and falsely asserting that the priests cannot forgive sin, and command heaven. But so it unfortunately happens, that while we only strive for religion and liberty, we woefully forget those things which belong to the church; and because some hope, by their favouring and protecting of Protestants to gain the good will of Protestants, and thereby gratify their schismatical ambition of being at the head of the Protestant interest; they care not what becomes of his holiness the Pope, nor of tradition, the real presence, nor indeed of transubstantiation itself."

Your Grace, my Lord, will perceive how naturally this silly declamation, full of froth, and empty of reasoning, runs into ridicule. And, in short, there is no other way of answering it, but by giving it a turn of this sort; for it is all noise and scolding, it fixes upon no certain point, nor does it state or confute any particular error.

Our author's concluding words are remarkable ones. Says he, "You will pardon me, sir, that, to gratify a just sorrow, I thus express my indignation, with more bitterness than usual, against these enemies of our religion. I should accuse myself of betraying the faith, did I not on every occasion denounce damnation against these heretics."

Here is a true image of a priestly spirit, destitute of all humanity and the fear of God, and fraught with fire and brimstone, which he scatters so freely among the sons of men. 'Tis (I had almost said) well, that the more merciful devils have the custody of these flaming materials. Dreadful! that honest men, and sincere Christians, should be wantonly consigned over to eternal flames, for adhering to the truth, or what appears to them to be so, which is all that is required of them! This, in short, is the case-They please God, and make the parsons mad.

Your grace perceives, and, no doubt, with horror, the execrable genius and malice of this author, who, by the assuming style of his cursing of Christians, seems willing to be thought a firebrand of authority, and an atheist of power. What a blessing it is to this church and nation, that such a ravening wolf does not fill your Lordship's chair!

Gratulor huic Terræ

I wish that this curser would be instructed by your Lordship's excellent words, particularly where you so warmly, so Christianly recommended a "mutual charity, which alone, (you say,) can secure us amidst all our errors; and which with an agreement in what is most necessary, will to the honest and sincere, be sufficient for our eternal security. This, (your grace adds,) should make us more sparing in our anathemas and more zealous in our prayers for one another." With much more excellent advice to the same purpose, your Grace also in your excellent Sermon printed in '89, has this remarkable and Christian passage: "Who am I, that should dare to pronounce a sentence of reprobation against any one, in whom there will appear all the other characters of an humble, upright, sincere Christian, only because he