ftitution is the admiration of the world: you are either not known, or you are despised. Even the historians of your own country feem defirous to confign you to oblivion. They reluctantly and fparingly mention thofe facts by means of which fuch important benefits have enfued; but they afford you no credit or praise! What can be the reason of these things? You have ever done good that evil might come: you have opposed aspiring and arbitrary princes, to introduce a worse kind of ty ranny under the name of a Republick; and you have struggled against perfecuting priests, in order to get their power into your own hands, and to introduce a more compleat, a more gloomy, and more unrelenting oppreffion. It is not neceffary to prove this by arguments; you have taken care to prove it by facts. In every cafe where you have obtained power, you have exhibited your principles and views. You loft all share in the honour of beheading King Charles, and in the newfangled government under Oliver, by a vindictive and cruel Intolerance. A man who had divested his mind of every moral and religious principle, though he affected them on occafions; who had waded into power through all convenient kinds of iniquity, and through rivers of blood, was fhocked at the fpirit which actuated your views and plans of go

vernment.

"When an impolitic and fevere treatment of you, under the reftored princes of the Stuart family, obliged you to fly to America; when you made your complaints found through the world, as abridged in your liberty of thinking, and perfecuted for your manner of worfhiping God; you feized the first opportunities of exercising the fame cruelty on those who differed from you, and were unfortunate enough to be in your power. In England, though it was with difficulty you could obtain a partial and restrained toleration, you still proceeded on the fame narrow and iniquitous principle; that you were orthodox, and all the world heterodox, and that, in confequence, you had a right to govern it. You formed Prefbyteries, or what you called affemblies of your principal minifters, where you could vent only your spite to the Lord against thofe who kept from you the fpoils of all the people; but when your hypocritical fervices were followed by fuch abuse of an affumed, iniquitous, and paltry power, as will ever brand you with infamy. Your congregations, from the different fituations and circumftances of their members, differed greatly in their opulence. This fuggested the thought that the rich should not only support their own minifters, but contribute to the fupport of those who fed the poorer flocks. This gave rife to your funds, and power to your affemblies to do mifchief: hence the dependence of your poor ministers on those who are rich and hence the numerous dark, infernal, though bloodlefs tragedies, which you have caufed to be acted. No people on earth can understand better than you the important principle, that there are many more effectual ways of tormenting and fending a man out of the world, than by killing him. Thousands of families, in remote generations, have rued the dark and fecret measures you have taken with their ancestors. A gloom has been fettled on whole neighbourhoods for ages, from the diftrefs, poverty, contention, lofs of reputation, usefulness and happiness, which you have occafioned. Thefe things in a great and active nation, and done by a fecluded people,

were

were private tranfactions, and were either unknown or unnoticed. They come not within the province of the hiftorian; or I would not have recorded them."

He inftances the perfecution of the learned Pierce of Exeter, the amiable Fofter, Huxham, and Mudge: but, fays he,

"The inftances would be almoft endless, if I were able or inclined to enumerate them, in which your affemblies of minifters, managers of funds, and trustees of charities, have fhewn that conftant invariable difpofition to intolerance, which feems to have been your diftinguifhing principle. Every poffible occafion within my knowledge (and my knowledge of your tranfactions is not very confined) every occafion has been taken by your ministers to advance themselves into power, in order to perfecute for opinion, and to controul, and ftop the progrefs of knowledge. Injuries have been done you, it is true. An impolitic and bigotted Hierarchy has fometimes ill-treated you for opinions; but the government has generally found it neceffary, under religious pretences, to restrain your ambition; for you never meant by Liberty, any thing more than the liberty of deftroying the Church of England; and fetting up Presbyterianism in its stead. Hence the epithets of factious and feditious, which have been ever applied to you by the state; hence your want of credit and influence with the public; and your want of fuccefs in any measures you have taken. Is it to be imagined that a dutiful, harmless body of people, would have been harraffed fo long as you have been, if you had discovered no aims beyond those of freedom of thinking, and of worshiping God according to your confciences? If this might have been the cafe under the Tudors and Stuarts, how came it to pafs that the Revolution made fo little change in your affairs? And when you had given all your affistance to the elevation of the Hanover family, what are the reasons that you have been not only neglected, but that penal laws, of a fevere and cruel kind, are ftill thought neceffary to be held over you? It is probable they will be brought forth only on occafions; for the most effectual way of destroying you is to leave you to bite and devour each other. Your enemies have found their account fo much in this conduct, that nineteen in twenty of your meeting-houses are either fhut up or nearly deferted. For your principle being Orthodoxy and not Liberty, and neither your authority nor emoluments being fufficient to restrain and corrupt your minifters into an apparent uniformity, you have ever exhibited a scene of ridiculous confufion. In one quarter of the kingdom, where Calvinifin had been your established religion, we faw a young imprudent teacher starting out of his trammels as an Arian, and all the fons and daughters of godlinefs in full cry after him: in another, a freak of gentility feizing a fpark, and inducing him to wear a gown, that fign of the whore of Babylon in another, a difpofition to conform and accommodate matters with moderate churchmen, tempting a fet of liberal men to try a liturgy; and this exciting an universal commotion and a holy anger, in the breast of every faint in the land. Thus, faith being your object, and intolerance your difpofition, you have ever been worrying each other, and you have reduced your numbers, your credit, and your influence, almoft to nothing.

"Do not imagine," continues he, that "I hold these things before you from ill-will. As a part of that publick which has been often fo

much

much benefited by your well-timed and firm oppofitions, I owe you` refpect as an enthufiaft for Liberty, which, without intending it, you have often contributed to preferve, I owe you fome kind of grati tude: and I never contemplate your prefent infignificant and dishonourable fituation, and confider what you might have been, without the deepest and bitterest regret. In all your late efforts to obtain any points with government, you have felt that infignificance and difhonour in a mortifying manner.-When you applied for a repeal of the teft laws, Sir Robert Walpole infulted you with a bribe! nay, bought your filence and future obedience for fifteen hundred pounds a year! This could not buy a single attendant in the train of the minifter; and it is given with full effect to the whole body of Diffenters! Eight of your minifters are employed to diftribute it; and they ferve as fpies and informers. This paltry fum is held out in fuch a way before the longing eyes of your half-ftarved country minifters, as to keep them directed to the powers that be, and induce the poor men to obey those powers in thought, word, and deed. In your late application, you were treated with a contemptuous duplicity. You were told, that government wished to relieve you from the inconvenience and terror of penal laws; and that your bill was thrown out by the Bishops.-A bill fabricated, as yours was, by Mr. Dyson, with the pretended approbation of the miniftry; and yet thrown out by the Bishops! that part of à fervile Parliament, which is moft devoted to the will of the minifter! And you have pretended to believe this! Be affured, if that power which holds the Parliament in its hand, as I hold my pen, and directs it at its pleasure, had thought you worth an act of Parliament, you would have feen the Bishops thrown out of the windows, fooner than your bill out of the Houfe of Lords. You were not even thought worth a 1-e from the minifter; and thofe of his dependants who had the least credit to lose were employed to deceive you. In this state I view you with regret and forrow."

This may be, and yet we think the writer ufes the language rather of refentment and ill-will, than that of grief or compaffion. But, perhaps, this is only his manner; and it would be wrong to refuse the affiftance of an able furgeon, because he is rather rough in his manner of handling his patients. If we may believe this very plain-fpeaking remonftrant, he means nothing but good to thofe, whofe cafe he reprefents to be fo very bad: nor doth he point out the evil without propofing a remedy.

"You have," fays he, "reduced your party to infignificance, by bigotry and intolerance; and if you mean or wish to recover and increase your numbers and weight in the community, it must be by an univerfal toleration; nay, an univerfal difregard, in all public meafures, to tenets and opinions; and by opening your arms to all without exception, who fufer with you in the caufe of Liberty."

In doing this, he advifes them, "to change the reafon of their diffent, which used to be an opinion of fuperior orthodoxy and fuperior purity of worship, for another, which is the only rational and juftifiable reason of diffent; the inalienable

and univerfal right of private judgement; and the neceffity of an unreftrained enquiry and freedom of debate and difcuffion on all fubjects of knowledge, morality, and religion *."-" You muft adopt a new principle; and you must form your affemblies and prefbyteries with one fimple public view, the prefervation of freedom to all men in their enquiries after truth +."

"Arrange, and order, and difcipline yourselves, that you may come out in a body. You have a right to do fo, by nature; by the plainett views of public good; and by prefcription. You are tolerated, and in effect incorporated by act of parliament; and you only want unanimity, and perhaps a little honesty, to be the guardians not only of the religious but civil liberties of this country."

It is in confequence, we fuppofe, of our letter-writer's here pointing out the way for the Diffenters to become thus important and confequential as a political body, that he adds to his letter the following poftfcript.

"I have fome right to expect that, in confequence of this Letter, you will call your minifters and your principal people together; renounce the Donum Regis; declare your principle to be the right of private judgement to all men without exception; and establish fome mode of uniting your body, for the perpetual prefervation of it."

We hope this Letter was not written by the poor minifter, who has fo often complained, of late, in the newspapers, that he has no part in the Donum Regis abovementioned; which he fufpects never travels beyond the bills of mortality. Indeed it is too contemptible a modicum to be fuppofed to extend its influence much farther. We rather hope, therefore, it hath not fo bafe an influence as our author imputes to it even within that narrow circle. We shall not enter upon a defence of the Diffenters as a political body, or endeavour to fhew that their fituation, even in that light, is mifreprefented, and made much worse than it is. We admit that it is bad enough, nor do we regret it; while, at the fame time, we have the most fincere regard for that body, on the ancient principle of their diffent, viz. a religious, and not a political principle.-If they have found out that fuch ancient principle is falfe, and that they now do not fo effentially differ from the eftablishment; that they have no fuperior orthodoxy in matters of faith, or fuperior purity in matters of difcipline; for heaven's fake, why continue Diffenters any longer? Why not return to the bofom of the established Church? If they are to be ftill diffenters froin the Church, for confiftency's, for confcience, fake, let it be on account of religion. If they diffent from the conftitutional establishment only in temporal matters, they may preach political fermons, and hold party cabals, as well in a church + Ibid. 25.

VOL. VI.

* Page 23.

G

as in a conventicle. For our part, if religion were not fo clofely connected in practice with politics, we fhould have no objection whatever to an univerfal toleration. It has been fhrewdly, though ludicrously faid, that when people take different roads to heaven, they are the lefs liable to joftle one another, out of their path, in the courfe of their journey. The more Diffenters, therefore, in this refpect, poffibly the better, provided they diffent only about matters relative to the next world, and not to this. We are perfuaded that the acts of intolerance and periecution, with which our letter-writer reproaches the Diffenters, did not arife from their ancient principles of diffent from the Church, a concern for fuperior purity of faith and worship; not from any fpiritual motive; but from the natural abufe of carnal power, fo common to man, whenever he becomes poffeffed of it, to tyrannize over his fellow-creatures. Diffent of opinion is fuch an impeachment to a vain man's understanding, that, if he have not the power to perfuade or convince others of the rectitude of his opinion, he will gratify his pride by punishing them, if in his power, for their diffent from it. What is applicable to the individual is, in this cafe, more fo to a body either corporate or incorporated.-Setting religion and confcience afide, however, it is a wild and impracticable scheme which this reformer fuggefts. The Diffenters are to unite and form a confiftent body on the principle of univerfal diffention. "The general reaton of diffent fould be, what may be called Intellectual Liberty.”Doubtless "Thought is, and fhould be, free." But does this fage and ancient maxim include " an unrestrained enquiry and freedom of debate and difcuffion on all fubjects of knowledge, morality, and religion ?"—If it do, the union recommended is, as before observed, an union founded on univerfal difagreement; a focial compact in which all agree to differ!-There may, for ought we know, be fome finifter politics, some lefthanded cunning. in all this; but, if there be any thing of that fimplicity and brotherly love, inculcated by religion, in such a project, we own, we are at a lofs to find it out.-We are equally puzzled to difcover whence arifes the great zeal, which this letter-writer affe&ts for the difcovery of truth. He does, indeed, link ignorance, vice, and mifery together; as if they were infeparable attendants, But innocence is full as natural an attendant on ignorance, as vice is of knowledge, and happiness equally diftant from thofe, who know too much, as from thole, who know too little.

In the course of his Letter, this writer is pleafed to cenfure Dr. Prieftley for his prefent pursuits in natural philofophy, and

to