ling the magistrate from his chair, the judge from his bench, the two houses of parliament from their seats, and the king from his throne. These are the prospects I have before my eyes, when I hear Deists and Socinians haranguing the public upon the subjects of Conscience and Imposition: which prospects having been once realized in this church and kingdom, cannot be deemed altogether chimerical. Such popular reasonings as I have now been contending with, have already produced the most fatal consequences, to the triumph of the Papists, and the scandal of the reformation: they have deceived you once and unless you are upon your guard, they will deceive you again: and the last error shall be worse than the first: worse in ititself, and worse in its consequences. It pleased God to deliver the Church from its captivity under the Puritans, and the people from their infatuation: but if experiments, when they have been tried, leave us no wiser, or, perhaps, not so wise as they found us, it is much to be questioned whether we shall again meet with the like indulgence: at least, it will be safest always to bear in mind, that Course course of divine Providence in a similar instance, proposed as a warning to all Christians by the apostle St. Jude, How that the Lord having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that believed not. Those authors who would stir you up to seditious motions, make you so many fair speeches, and lay claim to so much candor and charity, that you may easily mistake them for your best friends. But I must now leave you to judge for yourselves, whether a writer, who lies sculking in the dark, under a nameless title-page, can really love you better than one, who is not afraid to subscribe his name at length to what he has written, and is exposing himself for your sakes to be reviled and persecuted in the monthly publications of infidel critics, who on account of the information I have here given you, with a desire to clear away some of that dust, which they and their friends are perpetually throwing into your eyes, will find, if possible, some worse names for me than they have ever done yet. They have expressed their wrath against me more than once or twice; and probably they will now do it again, But But a little more ill language will do me no harm; and if I can do you any good at. such an expence, it will all be chearfully taken by your |