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"to know good things, and with the dearest Charity to "infuse the knowledge of them into Others, WHEN

SUCH A MAN WOULD SPEAK, his words, like so many "nimble and airy Servitors, trip about him at command, "and in well-ordered Files, as he would wish, fall aptly "into their own places."

To live in the voice and memory of Men is the flattering dream of every adventurer in Letters; and for me, who boast the rare felicity of being honoured with the friendship of two or three superior Characters, Men endowed with virtue to atone for a bad age, and of abilities to make a bad age a good one, for me not to aspire to the best mode of this ideal existence, the being carried down to remote ages along with those who will never die, would be a strange insensibility to human glory.

But as the protection I seek from your Lordship is not like those blind Asylums founded by Superstition to skreen iniquity from civil vengeance, but of the nature of a TEMPLE OF JUSTICE, to vindicate and support the Innocent, You will expect to know the claim I have to it; and how, on being seized with that epidemic malady of idle, visionary men, the projecting to instruct and reform the Public, I came to stand in need of it.

I had lived to see-it is a plain and artless tale I have to tell-I had lived to see what Lawgivers have always seemed to dread, as the certain prognostic of public ruin, that fatal Crisis when RELIGION HATH LOST ITS HOLD ON THE MINDS OF A PEOPLE.

I had observed, almost the rise and origin, but surely very much of the progress of this evil: for it was neither so rapid to elude a distinct view, nor yet so slow as to endanger one's forgetting or not observing the relation which its several parts bore to one another: And to trace the steps of this evil may not be altogether useless to those, whoever they may be, who, as the Instruments of Providence, are destined to counterwork its bad effects.

The most painful circumstance in this relation is (as your Lordship will feel), that the mischief began amongst our friends; by men who loved their Country; but were too eagerly intent on one part only of their Object, the security of its CIVIL LIBERTY.

Το

To trace up this matter to its source, we need go no further back than to the happy Accession of that illustrious House to whom we owe all which is in the power of grateful Monarchs, at the head of a free People, to bestow; I mean, the full enjoyment of the common rights of Subjects.

It fortuned that at this time, some warm friends of the Accession, newly gotten into power, had too hastily perhaps suspected that the CHURCH (or at least that party of CHURCHMEN which had usurped the name) was become inauspicious to the sacred Era from whence we were to date the establishment of our civil happiness; and therefore deemed it good policy to lessen the credit of a body of men, who had been long in high reverence with the People, and who had so lately and so scandalously abused their influence in the opprobrious affair of Sacheverell. To this end they invited some learned men, who in the preceding reign had served the common cause, to take up the pen once more against these its most pestilent enemies, the JACOBITE CLERGY. They readily assumed the task, and did it so effectually, that under the professed design of confuting and decrying the usurpations of a Popish Hierarchy, they virtually deprived the CHURCH of every power and privilege, which, as a simple Society, she had a claim to; and, on the matter, delivered her up gagged and bound, as the rebel-Creature of the State. Their success (with the prejudice of Power, and what is still stronger, the power of Prejudice, on their side) became yet the easier, as the Tory Clergy, who opposed these Erastian notions, so destructive to the very being of a Church, reasoned and disputed against the Innovators on the principles commonly received, but indeed supported on no sounder a bottom than the authority of Papal, or (if they like it better) of Puritanical usurpations: principles, to speak without reserve, ill founded in themselves, and totally inconsistent with the free administration of Civil government.

In this then, that is, in humbling disaffected Churchmen, the friends of Liberty and the Accession carried their point. But in conducting a purpose so laudable at any time, and so necessary at that time, They had,

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"to know good things, and with the dearest Charity to "infuse the knowledge of them into Others, WHEN

SUCH A MAN WOULD SPEAK, his words, like so many "nimble and airy Servitors, trip about him at command, "and in well-ordered Files, as he would wish, fall aptly "into their own places."

To live in the voice and memory of Men is the flattering dream of every adventurer in Letters; and for me, who boast the rare felicity of being honoured with the friendship of two or three superior Characters, Men endowed with virtue to atone for a bad age, and of abilities to make a bad age a good one, for me not to aspire to the best mode of this ideal existence, the being carried down to remote ages along with those who will never die, would be a strange insensibility to human glory.

But as the protection I seek from your Lordship is not like those blind Asylums founded by Superstition to skreen iniquity from civil vengeance, but of the nature of a TEMPLE OF JUSTICE, to vindicate and support the Innocent, You will expect to know the claim I have to it; and how, on being seized with that epidemic malady of idle, visionary men, the projecting to instruct and reform the Public, I came to stand in need of it.

I had lived to see-it is a plain and artless tale I have to tell I had lived to see what Lawgivers have always seemed to dread, as the certain prognostic of public ruin, that fatal Crisis when RELIGION HATH LOST ITS HOLD ON THE MINDS OF A PEOPLE.

I had observed, almost the rise and origin, but surely very much of the progress of this evil: for it was neither so rapid to elude a distinct view, nor yet so slow as to endanger one's forgetting or not observing the relation which its several parts bore to one another: And to trace the steps of this evil may not be altogether useless to those, whoever they may be, who, as the Instruments of Providence, are destined to counterwork its bad effects.

The most painful circumstance in this relation is (as your Lordship will feel), that the mischief began amongst our friends; by men who loved their Country; but were too eagerly intent on one part only of their Object, the security of its CIVIL LIBERTY.

Το

To trace up this matter to its source, we need go no further back than to the happy Accession of that illustrious House to whom we owe all which is in the power of grateful Monarchs, at the head of a free People, to bestow; I mean, the full enjoyment of the common rights of Subjects.

It fortuned that at this time, some warm friends of the Accession, newly gotten into power, had too hastily perhaps suspected that the CHURCH (or at least that party of CHURCHMEN which had usurped the name) was become inauspicious to the sacred Æra from whence we were to date the establishment of our civil happiness; and therefore deemed it good policy to lessen the credit of a body of men, who had been long in high reverence with the People, and who had so lately and so scandalously abused their influence in the opprobrious affair of Sacheverell. To this end they invited some learned men, who in the preceding reign had served the common cause, to take up the pen once more against these its most pestilent enemies, the JACOBITE CLERGY. They readily assumed the task, and did it so effectually, that under the professed design of confuting and decrying the usurpations of a Popish Hierarchy, they virtually deprived the CHURCH of every power and privilege, which, as a simple Society, she had a claim to; and, on the matter, delivered her up gagged and bound, as the rebel-Creature of the State. Their success (with the prejudice of Power, and what is still stronger, the power of Prejudice, on their side) became yet the easier, as the Tory Clergy, who opposed these Erastian notions, so destructive to the very being of a Church, reasoned and disputed against the Innovators on the principles commonly received, but indeed supported on no sounder a bottom than the authority of Papal, or (if they like it better) of Puritanical usurpations: principles, to speak without reserve, ill founded in themselves, and totally inconsistent with the free administration of Civil government.

In this then, that is, in humbling disaffected Churchmen, the friends of Liberty and the Accession carried their point. But in conducting a purpose so laudable at any time, and so necessary at that time, They had,

as we observe, gone much too far; for instead of reducing the Church within its native bounds, and thereby preserving it from its two greatest dishonours, the becoming factious, or the being made the tool of Faction, which was all that true Politics required, and all perhaps that these Politicians then thought of; their Instruments, by discrediting every right it had, and even stripping it of some of them, in a little time brought it into general contempt.

But this was not the worst. These Enemies of obnoxious Churchmen found much assistance in the forward carriage of the Enemies of Religion itself; who, at this time, under pretence of seconding the views of good Patriots, and serving the State against the encroachments of Church-power, took all occasions to vent their malice against Revelation itself: And Passion, inflamed by opposition, mixing with Politics throughout the course of this affair, these Lay-writers were connived at; and, to mortify rebellious Churchmen still more, even cried up for their free reasonings against Religion, just as the Clergy-writers had been, for their exploits against Church-government. And one man in particular, the Author of a well-known book called The Independent Whig, early a favourite, and to the last a Pensioner, carried on, in the most audacious and insulting manner, these two several attacks, together: A measure supported perhaps in the execution, by its coinciding with some Statesmen's private opinions: though the most trite maxims of Government might have taught such to separate their private from their public Character. However, certain it is, that the attack never ceased operating till all these various kinds of Free-writing were gotten into the hands of the PEOPLE.

And now the business was done: and the sober Friends of the Government were become, before they were aware, the Dupes of their own policy. In their endeavours to take off the influence of a Church, or rather of a party of Churchmen inauspicious to a free State, they had occasioned at least, the loosening all the ties which till then Religion had on the minds of the Populace and which till then, Statesmen had ever thought were the best security the Magistrate had for their

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