of Rome and England*. By his account, we have some doctrines of Popish original; we have others which naturally lead to Popery; and have nothing to plead in favour of the establishment, which will not equally justify all the Romish errors, and even the Inquisition of Portugal itself. Every subscribing Member of the Church of England is affirmed to be in a train which would lead them with equal security to acquiesce in the genuine impositions of popery ; that is, a train which leads them to subscribe doctrines that may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture, will lead them to subscribe the worship of Saints and Images, the vicarial power of the Pope, transubstantiation, indulgences, &c. Therefore these, in the Author's opinion, may be proved by the Scripture as well as our's. To such a length of absurdity will a man's wrath carry him, when he is determined to make the best of an insupportable cause! He will clean the streets of the Papists with his own hands, rather than be in want of some dirt to cast at his brethren of the Church of England! He brings it as a general charge against the Clergy of this Church, that none of them know how to confute Popery; their discourses on the subject are superficial-and they omit the MASTER ARGUMENT against Popery. Here the Author is pretending to great things, and, like other pretenders, affects an air of depth and mystery: for he is not kind enough to tell us what this argument is. It may, however, be conjectured from the spirit of his Book, that if we would confute Popery in a masterly way, we must first confute our own Church: and, I believe, if we humour him thus far, he will trust us for the rest. * See p. 87. Note 7 & alibi pass. + Pref. p. 72. t Ibid. By the Papists we are admonished, that we can never maintain ourselves against the disorder of the Sectaries, unless we admit of the Pope's infallibility as the Master Argument: By the Son of liberty we are instructed on the other hand, that unless we preach down the establishment, we shall never be able to keep out Popery. It being impracticable to please both these advisers at once, will it not be the wisest way to argue as we have hitherto done, and not to offer any direct affront to either, by taking the other's counsel? Such principles as these of the Confessional have made very few, if any, converts from Popery; and its Priests need not wish for any circumstance more promising, than that of seeing the people of this Church universally inclining to his opinion. The confusion that must necessarily arise if his project were to take place, would soon yield them a plentiful harvest. Besides, his accusation of the Clergy, as if they were already generally indifferent about Popery, or even well inclined to it, must give encouragement to popish emissaries, if they will be weak enough to believe his reports. As he hath been so free in censuring the Clergy for their superficial discourses, and is himself so accurate and masterly in his confutation of Popery; he will give me leave, before I quit this topic, to present the public with some of his own sentiments upon the subject. He complains of the unwearied endeavours of treacherous Priests to pervert his Majesty's Protestant subjects to their intolerant superstition: but allows, in the very next page, that their notions of the religious kind, such as transubstantiation, purgatory, saintworship, relics, masses for the dead, penances, and other articles, have no immediate ill effects upon civil society*. * Pref. p. 68, 69. He has discovered that their superstition is intolerant ; that is, it will bear no contradiction; it persecutes, imprisons, tortures and burns the members of society, for opposing it. And what is this superstition? It is the belief of transubstantiation, purgatory, saint-worship, relics, masses for the dead, penances, and other articles, which have no immediate ill effect upon civil society. Did this gentleman never hear of the bloody act of six articles, upon which Henry the Eighth burnt his subjects for denying transubstantiation*? Why did Queen Mary drive so many martyrs to the stake? and to what shall we impute all the disturbances that have happened in France, such as regicides, proscriptions, murders, and massacres, but to these controversies of the religious kind? He professes a particular aversion to the spirit of intolerancy; though (by the way) he hath discovered as much of it in himself, as it is possible for any man to discover with his pen, (and God forbid he should ever have the direction of any other weapon!) but happening not to see the connection between that and the superstition from which it arises, he exclaims furiously against the effect, and leaves the cause out of the question. Whereas, if the religious superstition of the Church of Rome were once reformed, her spirit of intolerancy would presently abate, and civil society would soon have less reason to complain of her practices. For when a man is sensible that the truth is with him, he may possess his own soul in patience, though he sees other people strongly deluded; and hath no more reason to be provoked with them for their misfortune, than with a miserable object who hath lost his sight, or broke one of his legs. But error depends only upon * See Strype's Mem. Book I. chap. 49. violence for its support; when it is tried, it is easily enraged, because it is sensible of its weakness; and hence men are generally inclined to persecute others, as they themselves are more or less mistaken. Experience hath rarely failed to confirm this observation. Heathens, under their own religious differences, could be civil to one another, because they were all upon an equal footing in point of evidence and authority. The Romans made no scruple of tolerating the superstition of their neighbours: they adopted the Isis and Serapis of the Egyptians into the number of their deities; and, probably, had charitable sentiments of their Cats, Beetles, and Onions: but at the same time hated and vilified the Jews, who had the knowledge of the true God: and when the Christians appeared, with truth, and reason, and facts invincible on their side, had recourse to fire and sword throughout the world, for want of better arguments. But the Christians themselves, in their state of purity, were never guilty of molesting any sort of people, or meddling with the affairs of civil society: though this writer, with a view of apologizing for the factious tendency of his own work, strives very hard to make Christ and his Apostles accountable for all those struggles and tumults, which, he says, were occasioned by attempting to introduce the kingship of Jesus*: and is pleased to instruct us, that our Lord would certainly have prescribed other measures, had these been unjustifiable. As if he had prescribed all those struggles and tumults of unbelieving Jews and Heathens, as necessary to introduce the Gospel, which were actually raised only with a design to keep it out; and cannot be imputed to the Apostles, or to the Gospel, but * P. 312. only to the blind zeal and fury of its adversaries, whom no sensible Christian did ever suppose to have acted in this matter by a divine prescription. They found me, saith the Apostle, purified in the Temple, neither with multitude nor with tumult. Acts xxiv. 18. No; where the ignorance, the error, and the bigotry is, there will the tumult be; unless we should argue, like Tertullus the orator, in behalf of the Jews, that Paul was a mover of sedition, and was guilty of all those tumults, in which he was passive, and they themselves were the only actors. Upon the whole, I believe there hath seldom been any error of the religious kind, which was without some ill influence upon the order of a common-wealth; to say, therefore, that the Papists are mistaken in their religious opinions, is but to affirm in other words, that they are the disturbers of civil society. Our author, who supposes any of the errors of popery to be without this ill effect, goes contrary to reason and fact, and contrary to his own opinion in other cases. The Church of England, as he imagines, hath its religious errors of the most palpable kind. These errors, in his opinion, lead directly to tests and subscriptions, which are subversive of the civil rights of mankind. He takes occasion also to inform us, how "the Calvinists certainly inferred the lawfulness of resisting wicked and unrighteous princes, from their theological doctrines of Election and Grace*;" though the connection between these principles and the inference is not very easy to be understood. In a word, he "knows not of any truth or error of the religious kind, that could be called merely speculative +:" and can see how civil society is affected by all doctrines, ། W |