and all errors, except the above-mentioned errors of popery. Therefore, skilful as he is in the invention and use of master arguments, he shall never teach me how to preach against popery, till I want to give Protestants a better opinion of it*. The parallel which was laid down toward the beginning of this chapter, requires me now to consider some of his reflections upon persecution; the odium of which he endeavours, as often as he can, to fasten upon his superiors, both civil and ecclesiastical; and, in this particular, doth strictly follow the puritanical system of opposition described by Mr. Hooker. وو He complains, that "the Clergy of Protestant establishments have been protected in their opposition to innovations," (that is, in their defence against the opposition of innovators) "by the higher powers, as well as Monks and Augurs†. It is an hackneyed artifice to couple good and bad things together, that both may appear equally odious. The religion of Monks was idolatrous; and the religion of Augurs was diabolical: if any man can delight himself with placing the Clergy of Protestant establishments in such company, it will scarcely be worth our while to interrupt his amusement. The cases, however, so far as the higher powers are concerned, ought to be distinguished. The religion of Monks and Augurs was indefensible, * In the Occasional Remarks, Part I. p. 51. he sneers at the Letter-writer as a man not fit to be argued with, a pretended de fender of a Protestant Church, because he either is or pretends to be ignorant of the master argument against popery. But behold, at p. 138 of the 2d part, when he had a little more time to look for it, he says, "I can but guess what the MASTER ARGUMENT against popery, alluded to by the Author of the Preface, may be." Such are the unhappy fluctuations of writers who are determined to confute the Church, and have no principles to begin with. either with or without the protection of the higher powers; but the religion of Protestant establishments may be generally defended by Scripture and reason, though all the powers of the earth were in a confederacy to abolish it. Therefore the intrinsic merits of any religion are independent of the higher powers; who, in different ages, have taken both sides of the same question. But then Monks and Augurs, through their interest with the higher powers, could stir up persecutions against innovators, who would have corrected their superstition by the introduction of some beneficial truth: and the Clergy of Protestant establishments, by the report of the Confessional, have succeeded in the same way. But here the parallel will not hold, for two reasons; first, because Christianity is a better thing than the religion of Heathens, and more worthy of every kind of protection: whereas it doth not appear that the Calvinistical forms are in any respect better than the Episcopal; or that the heresy of Arius would be any improvement upon the Creeds. Secondly, because the same species of protection is not common to both cases: for the higher powers protected Monks and Augurs by leading their opponents to the stake, boring their eyes out of their heads, and tearing their flesh from their bones with red-hot pincers. But the Clergy of Protestant establishments, at least of this Protestant establishment, desire no more than protection to themselves, without persecution to their adversaries. If any of them did ever expect more, it was in an age when rigour was more generally adopted as the governing principle of all parties; or when religious error hath been attended with some practices against the state; by which every case of this sort is very much altered: for then the cause is properly of civil concern; and the protection of the Church becomes the same thing with the security of the government. We see here, how artfully, by a turn of his pen, he has transformed the defence made by the Clergy of Protestant establishments into an opposition; as if the quarrel was always started on their part. By another figure of oratory, he improves bare neglect (perhaps, not so much) into actual persecution. "A man," in his judgment," must be in a very uncommon situation, as well as of an uncommon spirit, even in this land of liberty, who is bold enough to undertake the patronage of a cause, to which so many, at different periods, have fallen martyrs. Not always, indeed, by fire and sword, but by what kills as surely-hunger and nakedness." This is a lamentable picture of martyrdom, but it is little more than a vision: for some of the Author's chief martyrs have died in peace upon the best preferments in the Church; and, during the state of their earthly pilgrimage, found a Bishoprick, or a Mastership, or one of the higher Rectories, a very comfortable protection against hunger and nakedness. If any foreigner were to read this lamentation, and understand it according to the letter, he must of course think it no uncommon sight to meet Confessors against the Test and the Creeds, walking about the streets of London without shoes or stockings, under all the misery and contempt of Christian slaves in the states of Barbary! But such a person ought to be told, that party-language, in this country, hath flights, figures, and phrases, enough to furnish out a tropological Dictionary: and that a man is said to be hungry and naked, when he cannot threaten his su períors into a good opinion of himself, or get a seat 1 * Pref. p. 16, 17. in the House of Lords; or drive those out of the house, who are already in it. Thus again, when a controversial adventurer of the reforming tribe exclaims against inquisitions, racks, and tortures; nothing more is to be understood by these terms, than that somebody hath written against him, and contradicted him. The Author of the Confessional, in his Occasional Remarks upon the Three Letters, suspecting that his principles cannot be upheld by evidence and argument against a writer so well furnished; has recourse, as before, to this low thread-bare expedient of dressing up his answerer in the garb of an inquisitor, invested with the powers of the holy office: and puts such a speech into his mouth as would be addressed to himself, if he were called to an account under ground in a dungeon at Lisbon*. I never heard that any man did himself or his party much good by these dreadful complaints of persecution; and the reason is plain enough: because those real martyrs, who suffered for the truth, and received nothing but evil in return for their good works, took it all with patience; submitting themselves to the will of God, without whose permission no persecutor could have power to hurt them, and employing their last breath in devout expressions of resignation and forgiveness. But pretended martyrs to falsehood and sedition, can find no relief, but in giving vent to all the uncharitable passions, when pride, self-deceit, or enthusiasm, hath drawn them into a snare. When the straying sheep is brought back to the fold, spoiled of its fleece, or even led out to the slaughter, it is silent and unresisting: but there is another animal of a different spirit, which * Occ, Rem. P. ii. p. 12, 13. will neither be led nor driven; and against which, if a man doth but hold up his finger, it is instantly tormented with the blackest apprehensions, and fills the air with its outcries. After so many severe reflections upon every degree of literal or figurative persecution, it might be imagined that the Author dislikes persecution in every shape, and hath a general tenderness for the interests of the human species; but persecution is a terrible thing, only when a man dares to speak, write, or act against the interests of the Confessional. Then hunger and nakedness, whips, scourges, and all the implements of the holy office, are set before the reader, to inspire him with a pious zeal against inquisitorial remarkers and letter-writers.. But if persecution operates ever so sharply, in its literal sense, against the objects of his own aversion, he has then no fault to find with it. "Laud and his fellows," as he will have it, were going to introduce popery consequentially at a back door by means of the Arminian doctrines, but were seasonably stopped in their career*: that is, Laud himself had his head chopped off before the rabble upon a scaffold, many of his fellows were worried out of their lives without mercy and without law; and those who were more gently dealt with, (as Durel expresses it) were only plundered, turned out of their livings, or imprisoned t. But all this, as it stands in the Confessional, was a seasonable stoppage! because popery was going to be introduced by a writer, whose work against the Papists is as solid, extensive, and unanswerable, as any the Reformation hath to boast of. Sir Edward Dering, a great enemy to Archbishop * P. 254. + Durel's View of the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas, p. 93. |