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neighbourhood is to give them warning either to arm themselves or not come in its way.

Could I have hoped for any figns of remorfe from the leaders of that faction, I hould very gladly have changed my style, and forgot, or paffed by, their million of enormities. But they are every day more fond of difcovering their impotent zeal and malice: witness their conduct in the city about a fortnight ago, which had no other end imaginable, befides that of perplexing our affairs, and endeavouring to make things defperate, that themfelves may be thought neceffary. While they continue in this frantick mood I fhall not forbear to treat them as they deferve; that is to fay, as the inveterate, irreconcileable enemies to our country and its conftitution.

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NUMBER XXXIX.

Thursday, May 3, 1711.

Quis tulerit Gracchos de feditione querentes?

THERE have been certain topics of reproach liberally bestowed, for fome years paft, by the whigs and tories upon each other. We charge the former with a design of deftroying the established church, and introducing fanaticism and free-thinking in its ftead. We accufe them as enemies to monarchy as endeavouring to undermine the prefent form of government, and to build a commonwealth, or fome new fcheme of their own, upon its ruins. On the other fide, their clamours against us may be fummed up in those three formidable words popery, arbitrary power, and the pretender. Our accufations against them we endeavour to make good by certain overt acts; fuch as their perpetually abufing the whole body of the clergy, their declared contempt for the very order of priesthood, their averfion against epifcopacy, the publick encouragement and patronage they gave to Tindal, Toland, and other atheistical writers; their appearing as profeffed advocates retained by the dif fenters, excufing their feparation, and laying the guilt of it to the obstinacy of the church; eir frequent endeavours to repeal

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the test, and their fetting up the indulgence to fcrupulous confciences as a point of greater importance than the established worship. The regard they bear to our monarchy hath appeared by their open ridiculing the martyrdom of king Charles I, in their calve's head clubs, their common difcourfes, and their pamphlets; their denying the unnatural war raised against that prince, to have been a rebellion; their justifying his murder in the allowed papers of the week; their industry in publishing and fpreading feditious and republican tracts, fuch as Ludlow's Memoirs, Sidney of Government, and many others; their endless lopping of the prerogative and mincing into nothing her majesty's titles to the crown.

What proofs they bring for our endea vouring to introduce popery, arbitrary power, and the pretender, I cannot readily tell, and would be glad to hear. However, thofe important words having, by dextrous management, been found of mighty fervice to their caufe, although applied with little colour, either of reafon or juftice; I have been confidering, whether they may not be adapted to more proper objects.

As to popery, which is the first of these; to deal plainly, I can hardly think there is any fett of men among us, except the profellors of it, who have any direct intention to introduce it here; but the question is, whether the principles and practices of us,

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or the whigs, be moft likely to make way for it. It is allowed on all hands, that among the methods concerted at Rome, for bringing over England into the bofom of the catholick church, one of the chief was to fend jefuits, and other emiflaries, in lay habits; who, perfonating tradesmen and mechanicks, fhould mix with the people, and, under the pretence of a further and purer reformation, endeavour to divide us into as many fects as poffible; which would either put us under the neceffity of returning to our old errors to preferve peace at home; or by our divifions make way for fome powerful neighbour, with the affiftance of the pope's permiffion and a confecrated banner, to convert and enslave us at once. If this hath been reckoned good politicks (and it was the beft the Jefuit fchools could invent) I appeal to any man, whether the whigs, for many years past, have not been employed in the very fame work. They profefied on all pccafions, that they knew no reason why any one fyllem of fpeculative opinions (as they term the doctrine of the church) fhould be eftablished by law, more than another; or why employments fhould be confined to the religion of the magistrate, and that called the church established. The grand maxim they laid down was, that no man, for the fake of a few notions and ceremonies, under the names of doctrine and difcipline, fhould be denied the liberty of ferving his country:

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as if places would go a begging, unless brownifis, familifts, fweet fingers, quakers, anabaptifts, and muggletonians, would take them off our hands.

I have been fometimes imagining this fcheme brought to perfection, and how diverting it would be to fee half a dozen fweet fingers on the bench in their ermines, and two or three quakers with their white ftaves at court. I can only fay, this project is the very counter-part of the late king James's defign, which he took up as the belt method for introducing his own religion under the pretext of an univerfal liberty of confcience, and that no difference in religion fhould make any in his favour. Accordingly, to fave appearances, he dealt fome employments among diffenters of most denominations; and what he did was, no doubt, in purfuance of the beft advice he could get at home or abroad; but the church thought it the most dangerous ftep he could take for her deftruction. It is true king James admitted papifts among the reft, which the whigs would not: But this is fufficiently made up by a material circumstance, wherein they feem to have much outdone that prince, and to have carried their liberty of confcience to a higher point, having granted it to all the claffes of free-thinkers (which the nice confcience of a popish prince would not give him leave to do) and were therein mightily overfeen; because it is agreed by the learned, that there is but a very narrow ftep from

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