with all the force they can, but without the asperity of words, or a contemptuous behaviour; in which they have succeeded so well, that they see no cause to change their conduct

They do indeed make a great difference between Dissenters and Papists: They consider the one as a handful of people true to the Protestant religion, and to our national interests, not capable of doing us much mischief, and who are, as far as appears to them, contented with their toleration, and are only desirous to secure and maintain it. They have another and a very different opinion of Popery: They consider that church, not only with relation to the many opinions and practices held by them; such as transubstantiation purgatory, and the worshiping saints and images, and a great many more: They are persuaded that these are false and ill grounded, but they could easily bear with them, as they do with other errors; But they consider Popery as a conspiracy against the liberty and peace of mankind, on design to engross the wealth of the world into their own hands; and to destroy all that stand in their way, sticking at no practice how false, base, or cruel soever, that can advance this. This is the true ground of their zeal against Popery, and indeed against every thing that has a tendency that way.

The pretending to an independency of the church on the state, is not only in their opinion a plain attack made on the supremacy, vested by law in the crown, and a casting a disgrace on our reformers, and on every step made in the reformation, which are openly owned by the chief promoters of this new conceit; but it is a direct opposition to the famed place, so much stretched by the same persons to serve other purposes, in the 13th

of the Romans, Let every soul be subject to the higher pow ers; in which all subjects are equally comprehended. The laws of God are certainly of a superior obligation to any human authority; but where these laws are silent, certainly all subjects of what sort soever, are bound to obey the laws of the land where they live.

The raising the power and authority of sacred functions beyond what is founded on clear warrants in scripture, is, they think, the readiest way to give the world such a jealousy of them, and such an aversion to them, as may make them loose the authority that they ought to have, while they pretend to that they have not.

They dare not unchurch all the bodies of the Protestants beyond sea; nor deny to our dissenters at home, the federal rights common to all christians, or leave them to uncovenanted mercy. They do not annul their baptisms, or think that they ought to be baptised again in a more regular manner, before they can be accounted christians. They know of no power in a Priest to pardon sin, other than the declaring the Gospel-pardon, upon the conditions on which it is offered. They know of no sacrafice in the Eucharist, other than the commemorating that on the cross, with the oblation of the prayers, praises, and almsgiving, prescribed in the office. They are far from condemning private judgment in matters of religion: This strikes at the root of the whole reformation, which could never have been compassed, if private men have not a right to judge for themselves; on the contrary, they think every man is bound to judge for himself, which indeed he ought to do, in the fear of God, and with all humility and caution. They look on all these notions as steps towards Popery;

though they do

not conclude, that all those who have made them, design, ed that by so doing.

This is a short account of the Low church-men's now tions, with relation to matters of religion among us. As to our temporal concerns, they think all that obedience and submission that is settled by our laws, to the persons of our Princes, ought to be paid them for conscience Bake: But if a misguided Prince shall take on him to dis solve our constitution, and to subject the laws to his, pleasure, they think that if God offers a remedy, it is to be received with all thankfulness. For these reasons they rejoiced in the revoluton, and continue faithful and true to the settlement then made, and to the subsequent settlements. They think there is a full power in the legislature to settle the crown, and to secure the nations; and so they have taken the oaths enjoined with a good conscience, and with fixed resolutions of adhering firmly to them, without any other views but such as the laws and the oaths pursuant to them do direct. They know of no unalterable or undefeasible right, but what is found ed on the law.

This is their fixed principle; and they are the more fixed in this, when they remember that a Prince educated among us, and singularly obliged by the zeal our church expressed for his advancement to the throne, upon which he made great acknowledgments, and promises, and who by his temper seemed as much inclined to keep them as his religion could admit of; yet upon his eleva tion did so entirely forget all this, that he seemed pecu liarly sharpened against those who of all others had the least reason to have expected it from him.

This was notorious and evident in the Father: What

then can be expected from him who calls himself his Son, who has had his breeding in an absolute government, where Protestants are persecuted with an unrelenting cruelty, and who has been obliged to wander so long beyond sea, and stands attained and abjured here, and is loaded with other indignities, but that as his religion is still the samé cruel and bloody conspiracy against Protestants that it was, so it must have its full swing in" one sharpened by so much provocation.

It bewrays a monstrous ignorance of the principles and maxims, as well as of the history of Popery, to imagine that they can ever depart from the design of extirpating heretics settled by so much authority, held sacred by them. Every look in the Low church-man towards a popish Pretender, is to him both perjury and treason.

1

I have thus freely opened all that I know of the principles of those called the Low church-men among us, I will not pretend to tell what are the principles of those called the High church-men; I know them too little to pretend to tell what their maxims and views are. I will with great joy own my mistakes and misapprehensions of any of them, who, upon this candid avowing what the Low church-men hold, will come to have juster and more charitable thoughts of them, and upon that will concur with them in such measures and counsels as may yet give us some hope, if that is not now too late, or may be at least an abatement of our misery, if not a reprieve from it. I unwillingly mention a long disappointing among us as to convocation-matters.

I will avoid saying any thing that may give a new irritation, my design being to do all I can to heal our

breaches. I will not enter into the merits of the cause further than to observe that the Bishops have begun no new practices, but go in the steps in which their predecessors went, without varying from their practices in a tittle; they find themselves bound down to the methods they adhere to, by such a series of precedents, that unless the legislature interposes, they think they cannot alter them. They have made no new attempts, nor have they invaded any rights of which they found the clergy in possession. And what is there in all this to occasion such tragical outcries; and to engage so many of the bodies of the clergy into jealousies of their Bishops, and into combinations against them, as if they were betraying the church, and its liberties?

It is true, many of us opposed the occasional bill, from which such great things were expected. We thought there were ill designs under it; we thought it ill timed; we looked on it as tending to a breach on the toleration; and now, that the bill is past without any opposition, we hear of no great effects it has had; nor are jealousies extinguished; the chief promoters of it are scarce thanked for it. But since we are so openly attacked, and as it were exposed to the insults and fury of distracted multitudes, we may be pardoned, if we venture on somewhat like an imitation of what the great apostle writ upon a like occasion, calling it indeed a folly, for it will pass for such with inveterate and inflamed spirits. What have other Bishops done to express their zeal for the church, and their fidelity to heir vows, and to what became their character and station, that we have not done? Have we not lived so hat we may say, Ye are witnesses? And which is more,

B