Imatges de pàgina
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yet my paffion for ftill-life is fo great, that I prefer the most filent retreat to the pleasures and fplendors of the greatest town. If it was in my power to live as I pleafe, I would pafs my days unheard of and unknown, at Orton-Lodge, fo my little filent farm is called, near the fouthern confines of Cumberland, with fome bright partner of my foul. I am fure I fhould think it a compleat paradife to live in that distant folitude with a woman of Mifs Spence's form and mind.

But

of Jefus, who was fent from God, and was a worshipper of God; who lived obedient to the laws of God, preached thofe laws, and died for them in the cause of God; who was raised from the dead by God, and now fits on God's right hand; intercedes with God, and in his Gofpel owns his Father to be his and our only true God. This is fad accommodation. Tho' the words never fignify more than a degree of likeness in the Greek claffics, yet our headstrong orthodox monks will have them to mean ftrict equality; and Alexander the Great and Alexander the Coppersmith are the fame Being. Amazing! Gentlemen; here is but One Ball, and out of itself you fhall fee this one ball fend forth two other balls, big as it is, and yet not lofe one atom of its weight and grandure. Hocus pocus, Reverendiffimi fpectatores, the One is Three.

And now, Gentlemen, be pleased to obferve the miracle reverfed. Pilluli pilluli, congregate, Prefto prefto, unite: obfervate, Signori Dottiffimi, the Three are One. Such is the hocus pocus the monks have made of their Trinity.

But tell me, I request, Maria said, how did you get to the confines of Westmoreland over Stanemore hills, and what was that accident that put you in poffeffion of OrtonLodge? It must be a curious account, I am fure.

This, I replied, you fhall hear to-morrow morning after breakfaft; there is not time for it now. All I can fay at prefent is, that it was love kept me among the mountains for fome years, and if the heaven-born maid (vastly like you, Mifs Spence, she was) had not, by the order of heaven, been removed to the regions of immortality and day, I fhould not have left the folitude, nor would you ever have feen me at Harrogate : but destiny is the dirigent: mutable is the condition of mortals, and we are blind to futurity and the approaches of fate. This led me over the vait mountains of Stanemore, enabled me to cross the amazing fells of Westmoreland, and brought me to that fpot, where I had the honour and happines of becoming acquainted with Mifs Spence. Thus did we chat till eleven, and retired to our chambers.

But the old gentleman, the doctor, when he came with me into my apartment, told me we must have one bottle more, for it

was his nightcap, without which he could not fleep: he then bid the fervant make hafte with it, and when that was out, we had another. He was a fenfible agreeable man, and pleased me very much, as he appeared a zealous friend to the illuftrious house of Hanover; whereas almost all the clergymen I had been in company with fince I came to England, were Jacobites, and very violent ones.

A converfation relating to the Revolution, and the exclufion of James II.

§. 3. I remember, among other things, I asked this Divine, over our wine,- If popery is ever fo corrupt,

could men be debarred of their rights for an attachment to it? Are not crowns hereditary? And is not treason in our country itamped with fo peculiar an infamy, as involving the delinquent's innocent children in the forfeitures, or penal confequences that await it, on purpose to check the rebellion of Britons by fuch an accumulated punishment of evil doers ?

To this the doctor replied, that the exclufion of a popish prince must be lawful, if we ought to fecure our property and religion, and, as in duty bound, oppofe his trampling upon the laws, and his own fo

lemn

lemn declarations. If the people have privileges and interefts, they may defend them, and as juftifiably oppofe notorious domeftic oppreffions, as foreign invasions. The head of the community, has no more a licence to destroy the moft momentous interefts of it, than any of the inferior members, or than any foreign invader. If a king has no paffion to indulge, incompatible with the welfare of his people, then, as protection and obedience are reciprocal, and cannot fubfift, the one without the other, it must be a crime in the people not to honour and obey, and affift the royal authority. It is not only the intereft, but the duty of the fubject to obey the prince, who is true to the important truft repofed in him, and has the welfare of the people at heart. But fuch a king cannot be a papift. The Romish prince will not only ftretch a limited. prerogative into lawlefs power, and grasp at abfolute monarchy; but will break through the most facred ties, and fubvert the rights he was fworn to guard, to re-establish popery in this kingdom. Could James the Second have kept the feat of government, and baffled all oppofition, we may conclude from what he did, from his trampling upon the laws, and his own folemn declarations from his new court of inquifition (the high commiffion court) to fubvert the

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conftitution of the church of England, and to lay waste all its fences against popery from that furious act of his power, which fell on Magdalen-college, and his two cruel alts of parliament in Ireland, (repeal of the act of fettlement, by which the proteftant gentlemen were deprived of their eftates; and the act of attainder, by which they were to be hanged, for going to beg their bread in another country, after they had been robbed of all in their own by their king, who had fworn to protect them ;) -from hence, I fay, it is plain, that if James could have fat firm upon the throne, his mifguided confcience would have induced him to the most inhuman acts of violence. He would have proceeded to the barbarities, and rekindled the flames of Mary. Had he continued to reign over these kingdoms, it is most certain, that instruction and perfuafion only would not have been the thing, but where inftruction and perfuafion failed, imprisonments, tortures, death, would have been used, to compel us to believe all the grofs abfurdities of Rome, their impieties to God, and contradictions to common-fenfe. We must throw away our reafon and our bibles, the - nobleft gifts of heaven, and neither think nor fpeak, but as we are bid by men no wifer than ourselves; or, we must expire i under

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