when did they begin? Were they not all derived from the same root, from the same quarter and devilish policy, from whence we are just now threatened with relief? They all came from France, and from the pernicious subserviency of our former princes to France. All that was sacred and valuable to England was then sacrificed to France; English honour, the religion, the trade of England, with a balance of millions yearly in favour of France. These are, most probably, the intended blessings under which we are to be reinstated by the revolution now threatened.

Religion too often follows power, or is changed and subverted by power. France, by extending her sway, will extend Popery; and if by planting a French deputy upon the English throne, she can master this great source, and asylum of Protestantism, religion will too naturally end, where there is an end of liberty.

What can be a more alarming call, what a more interesting quarrel? It is literally pro aris & focis; for whatever concerns God or conscience, whatever concerns our liberties and fortunes, to keep them or to lose them; nay, to keep them or lose them for ever, is the dispute. Our enemies will be as eager to keep footing, as to gain it. If present defence and spirit be wanting, future remedies will probably be ineffectual.

What can be a more sensible insult, or higher provocation, than that a nation, whom we have always beaten, and are now beating, should dare to face our coasts, and audaciously threaten to conquer us, and even to rule us by a deputy? Indeed, if they carry this point, they carry all. If they fail in this, they fail in all. The decision is short and comprehensible on both sides. It she succeed, we are undone : If she miscarry, she is finally baffled and vanquished.

NUMBER 87.

The shocking antipathy of Popery to Common Sense and Christian Charity.

THE further enthusiasm departs from reason, the more secure it is against reason. Moderate nonsense, nonsense that comes near the reach of reason, may be cured by reason; but downright nonsense and contradiction is an overmatch for all the reason of mankind, especially when such nonsense is accounted sacred, and reason reckoned profane. Popish craft is aware of all this; it knows where its chief strength lies, and never cheats by halves. Its delusion is above all human comprehension, and scorns argument as the work of carnal reason, perhaps a temptation from Satan.

By the same craft and fanaticism, the scriptures may be grossly abused by such as think that they believe the scriptures; cruelty may be made to pass for charity, imposture for instruction; and the gospel

itself for a book altogether unintelligible, and even dangerous, without the explication of the priest; who therefore carefully keeps it from his poor dupes, and lets them have neither a New Testament nor a Saviour, but what are of his own making.

Their tenets, like their miracles, are foolish enough to raise laughter, were it not for their cruelty, which is without bounds, and, but for the daily practice of it, would be beyond belief. Whatever follies and extravagancies are found in all other religions, come far short of those in Popery, all wonderfully improved by all the visions of dreaming monks, and by all the adopted drolleries of Paganism.

But, reserving the fooleries of Popery for another paper, I shall observe here the mad assurance of Papists, in damning at once whole pations and empires; indeed all that are not perverted into their own complication of frauds, nonsense, fanaticism, contradiction, bypocrisy, and cruelty. A Pagan perverted into Popery, is to be pitied; yet, to make such proselytes, is the great boast and pursuit of their missionaries, who thence make them ten times more the children of delusion.

Father Alexander de Rhodes, makes a bold, and I think an impious observation concerning the Chinese, though he makes it from what he thinks a spirit of piety. After he bas computed the number of souls in that immense empire to be two hundred and fifty millions, he adds, with a sigh, That at least five millions of them are damned every year." That is, the whole nation are as surely damned as they die, and as fast as they die. Helas! J'ay souvent fait le Compte, que tous les ans au moins cinque millions descendent aux enfers.

Would any rational man, can any Christian man, be of the same religion with this blasphemous enthusiast, or bear to see such blasphemy and enthusiasm propagated in the world? Such a principle charged upon Christianity would deter all who consult reason, and honour the Deity, from embracing it. Who, that does either, can believe that all the souls whom God creates, or hath created, are damned, unless they learn the Popish creed, which, perhaps, they never heard, or, perhaps, wanted capacity to understand, or thought themselves not obliged to believe upon the word of a missionary? Could it be half so great a crime to deny the existence of a Deity, as to conceive the Deity to be such a cruel, such a diabolical being.

That crazy father adds, "That yet we remain with our arms across, whilst Jesus Christ suffers such a mighty reproach." A mighty reproach! Who is it that offers it, except this father, or such enthusiasts, or impostors, who turn God into a tyrant, and religion into blasphemy. Father Dandini breathes the same arti-christian spirit, which is indeed the spirit of that church. He was missionary and apostolic nuncio to the poor Christian Maronites upon mount Lebanon. He says, that they defer the baptism of their children 'till they are fifty or sixty days old and then adds these horrible, these antichristian words: "It thence happens, that they (the poor infants, guiltless, and incapable of guilt) die with the loss of their souls." Such madmen and blasphemers are called teachers! What tyrant, what demon, was ever charged with such transcendent cruelty, as is here charged upon the Father of mercies and of men?

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Can Protestants be too often warned against this restless, this bloody imposture, which abolishes truth and reason, and the mercies of God; an imposture which professes to banish Scripture, enslave conscience, and persecute Protestants; to usurp their wealth, to damn their souls, and to burn their bodies and Bibles.

NUMBER 88.

Dialogue between a Noble Convert and his late Confessor.

Conf. My Lord, I am sorry, seriously sorry, for the danger of your soul, from your wavering in the faith.

Lord. Father, I doubt I shall increase your sorrow when I assure you, that I do not waver-I think my soul safe in my present faith.

C. This fatal change touches my heart.

L. I dare say it does-you have lost me, and I have found myself. C. My lord, you have made a sad change, and you are the chief loser by it.

L. One of us is--I have gained my senses, and you have lost the keeping of them.

C. That gain, I fear, will prove your perdition-would your lordship trust to the guidance of your senses, rather than to the guidance of the church?

L. You mean to your guidance; for you priests call yourselves the church. Do you, or do any of you, permit your followers to know any thing of the church, or of religion, but what you tell them?

C. We tell you what are the duties of religion, and teach you how to practise them: your senses may deceive you.

L. Or shew us that you do-an unpardonable offence and presump

tion !

C. In that very thing they deceive you, and ruin you, by depriv ing you of our guidance.-

L. And in this very thing you deceive us, by depriving us of the guidance of our senses.

C. Alas! my Lord, they are dangerous guides! They are snares, by which Satan leads us into all error and peril, with our own consent and approbation.

L. That were dreadful indeed, if it were true!-But, father, I beg your pardon, I cannot take your word; for you are pleading your own cause. I am maintaining the use and clearness of my senses, in all duties moral, civil, and religious. My senses can have no interest in misleading me; nay, 'tis their interest to lead me right; for they are part of me, and in acting for me they act for themselves: neither can they hurt me without hurting themselves.-And if you have any interest in view, different from that of our senses, as it is manifest you have; it is likewise manifest, that it cannot be our interest.

C. How, my Lord! Are not we your spiritual guides, engaged in your interest, your best interest, the interest of your soul?

L. What! against my senses?

C. Yes; I have told your Lordship, that your senses may prove snare and a false light.

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L. You have, indeed, often told me so; and I too long believed you: but I now plainly perceive that my senses are my best preservatives against snares and false lights. Suppose my spiritual director imposes upon me, and carries on designs against me for his own advantage (sather, such things have been !) how am I to detect him and escape his frauds? Must I not consult and follow my senses?

C. If your Lordship will be making uncharitable suppositions→

L. Father, do not force me into a detail of the cheats and combinations, and usurpations of your Romish priests--you know I have lately read some of your history.

C. We are not exempt from human frailty.

L. 'Tis too soft a name for such doings-But, if you are subject to these terrible frailties (and surely, spiritual fraud and villany are the greatest of all) are you proper guides to conduct us to heaven? Or can we be so injurious to God and religion, as to think you have any credit there?

C. My Lord, had not even the blessed apostles their infirmities? L. Not such as I mentioned-they were the best teachers, because they were the best of men. They wrought miracles publicly, which were therefore never suspected of forgery-They claimed no power, but persuasion. They did not turn the souls of men into commodities of price, nor salvation into a market-they neither sold, nor said, mas

ses.

C. Perhaps they might not celebrate public devotion just in the same form that we do-but our forms are still apostolic, because framed and enjoined by the church-for the model and direction of religion are left by the apostles to the church; and therefore whatever the church does is apostolic.

L. However unlike the apostles it be, it is well for you, that those first and true followers of Christ are above all vengeance: and whoever is not, is no follower of his. What dreadful examples they might make of you, for your infinite slander upon them? Did the apostles convey to you what they had not themselves, nor sought; and what their master had not, wealth and worldly dominion?

. C. My Lord, nothing is perfect at first; no institution ever

was.

L. How, father! Could not he, who was perfect, make his own institution perfect?

C. It is plain he did not he left it to his apostles to improve it, and they to us, their successors.

L. So you were to complete what they did not, what the Son of God and his chosen twelve did not ?

C. He left us to explain his will, and to perform his ordinances. L. As if he could not himself explain what himself revealed and dictated. And as to his ordinances, as they were the means of edification to all, they were left to all alike. The particular modes of adminis

tering them were framed and limited by the consent of societies, w the policy of states.

C. Can your Lordship possibly think them valid without us?

L. God forbid that I did not-what a shocking notion would it covey of the Father of wisdom, and of mercies, and of men to suppose him to leave the salvation of men, whom he has made and redeemed, to the mercy, and discretion, and designs of monks, passionate and greedy monks?

C. What designs can they have, but to save men?

L. Yes; to enslave men, and to enrich themselves--have they not, under all the vows of poverty, engrossed, and are still engrossing, endless wealth? Do they not labour to govern the world, which they have renounced? And are these spiritual men exempt from the works of the flesh?

C. I have owned to your Lordship, that we have human frailties like other men.

L. If you be like other men, frail and fallible (for the former will for ever imply the latter) how are you better qualified than any others to save all?

C. Because we have a commission

L. From one another, to serve yourselves, by selling the favours of heaven for you do nothing for nothing; and whatever you have, you are still craving for more-can men be more abused, or the Almighty more belyed, than to suppose that any set of men, especially the most worldly of all men, the most vain, proud and vindictive, and equally vicious, should be trusted with a power to save all men? This would be to make the Almighty their confederate in a fraud.

C. Whatever mean opinion your Lordship has lately conceived of us, we have his commission.

L. You say that you have, and never was any thing more un truly said, even by you. Christ bade the apostles, "Go and speak to all uations." But what are you the better for that? He did not apply himself to you, father Ambrose, and direct you to count your beads, or say mass, nor order me, Lord to pay you for your

pains."

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C. I hope, my Lord, he hath not left the Christian flock without Christian guides.

L. No, he left them the Bible.

C. The Bible! Alas, what a nose of wax?

L. You make it so, and pervert it abominably, to warrant all your impieties, contradictions, frauds and usurpations.

C. A heavy charge! What impieties, my Lord? What contradictions, frauds, and usurpations?

L. Whatever you rest. e, without warrant, is usurpation. The Scriptures gave you neither lands, nor dominions, nor tities.

C. Is not the labourer worthy of his hire?

L. No, if he be not hired, and yet would measure his own wages.Father, you no longer labour for me, and I shall no longer give you

hire.

C. Hath not the Protestant church of England ministers ; and have not these ministers a stated livelihood?