with schismatical rage, and her bishops with tyranny and cruelty; but I have no design to draw on a new controversy with this gentleman; what I have now said has been forced from me by a very vile accusation. As to Mr. Peirce, I would only, before I take leave, express to him my great concern to see in his late writings so much bitterness of spirit against the church after thirty years' indulgence to non-conformists. These are not the ways of peace, nor are they the fruits which were expected from the toleration.

I have now shown the reader what ground there was for this violent attack on me; and I very willingly submit it to every good and reasonable Christian to judge for whose sake he ought to blush. His lordship had reason, and therefore I join with him in leaving the modest, the blushing part to others; for such is either my crime, or such is his lordship's charge, that, whichever of us shall appear to be guilty, he must at the same time appear to be incapable of blushing for himself.

But to draw towards a conclusion.

His lordship in his introduction has given us four or five reasons to justify the practice of writing publicly against the laws of the country; and according to his wonted goodness, he has repeated them again towards the close of his book.

I question very much whether such liberty was ever allowed in any well settled government, or whether any can be safe and easy which does allow it. There are proper ways for men to seek redress against legal hardships, without complaining to the people from the press, of the iniquity and injustice of the laws; which is downright libelling the government. And if this liberty must be reckoned among the common rights of subjects, the case of governors is really to be pitied. As for his lordship, all the world knows that he has not wanted frequent opportunities of lodging any complaints of this nature in a proper place; and why he chose rather to appeal to the people, and to call the passions and the interests of the multitude to his assistance, is not yet accounted for in any of the reasons with which he has obliged us.

Besides, it is one thing to open the nature and the effects of any law, and in proper language to represent the inconveniences which experience has discovered; and another to charge

the legislature with violence, iniquity, and the oppression of the common rights of subjects; and to proclaim to the people that the legislature were so estranged from the consideration of justice and equity, that they proceeded on "the pleasing presumption that all preferments and places of trust and influence ought to be engrossed by those who feel themselves to have power enough to engross them."

case.

But farther; there is a difference likewise between writing against a particular law, as founded in a mistake, or liable to inconveniences, and writing against the very power and authority itself from which the law flows; and this is his lordship's He is not content with saying that the laws for the establishment of the church are improper, but with a high hand he declares to the world that all civil laws relating to the church are incroachments on Christ, and the product of an usurped authority; and that "no human laws can have a proper authority over men considered as creatures capable of religion."

Our first reformers did indeed mislike the laws made for the support of popery; but so far they were from disowning the authority of the state in religious matters, that restoring the supremacy to the crown was the first step, and the foundation of our reformation. But his lordship not only mislikes the laws now in being, but even the authority by which they are made: and whenever his reformation prevails, it must begin with divesting the legislature of their assumed authority, and in restoring to every man the supremacy in his own behalf ::-a wild conceit, which his lordship cherishes and is fond of as if it were the whole of his gospel.

This is his lordship's method of writing against the laws of the constitution; and if he means to justify it, he must find other reasons, for those already given come not up to the point.

I have nothing more to add, but to give the reader in few words an account of the following sheets.

The present controversy consists of three very distinct points.

1. To inquire what is the true meaning and intention of the laws which are the subject of this debate.

2. Whether the intention ascribed to them be in itself just and equitable.

3. Whether the means made use of to compass this intention are justifiable.

At present I examine the first point only, as that which is the foundation of the whole. The other parts will follow in a reasonable time, and probably both together; for though I have not gone through many pages of his lordship's book, yet I have answered the greatest part of it, the bulk of it being owing to frequent and almost endless repetitions of the same things; so that it may, I think, in this respect be very fitly compared to a multiplying glass, which though it seldom shows an object distinctly, yet it presents it to you over and over again.

AN ANSWER

ΤΟ THE LORD BISHOP OF BANGOR'S BOOK, INTitled, "THE COMMON RIGHTS OF SUBJECTS DEFENDED," &c.— THE TRUE MEANING AND INTENTION OF THE CORPORATION AND TEST ACTS ASSERTED, &c.

SECTION I.

THERE is nothing more necessary in every controversy to give light to the reader, and to preserve him from being imposed on by the low and mean arts of sophistry, than a clear state of the fact or case about which the dispute is; for this reason I endeavored in my late Vindication of the Corporation and Test Acts, to give, in the first place, the true sense and meaning of those laws; and for the same reason it is, I suppose, that the Bishop of Bangor resents my taking this method, and observes with an air of contempt, that before I come to the main questions I spend above twenty pages in what I call stating the fact of the case. His lordship thinks this so unedifying a way of writing, that he professes to enter into this part of the work merely because I seem to think much depends on it.

His lordship, I am persuaded, will be of my mind before he has done, and this much despised part of the work about the state of the case will haunt him in every part of the controversy, and will be a test (dreadful thing!) to distinguish in this debate between plain sense and a labored disguise, between reasoning and shuffling, between truth and falsehood.

After having given the sum of the corporation and test acts, as far as they relate to the present controversy, I observed :* "the latter of these acts is declared by the act of toleration

* Vindication, &c.-See Vol. iv. p. 433.

itself to extend to protestant dissenters. The former expressly relates to them; and both are declared, 10 Annæ, cap. 2. to be made for the security of the church of England as by law established.

"These acts then being made for the security of the church as by law established, that is, for the security of the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm; the intention plainly was to keep non-conformists of all sorts (whose principles and affection to their own ways cannot but lead them to use any power put into their hands to the hurt of the established church, from which they have separated) out of offices civil and military, and out of the government and direction of corporations; 'to the end that the succession in such corporations may be most probably perpetuated in the hands of persons well affected to his majesty and the established government,* and for preservation of the public peace both in church and state.””↑

In this part of the case his lordship finds several very visible mistakes, which he ranges under five heads. His first observation stands thus:

1. "When the corporation act was made, many of those ministers, who afterwards dissented, were in possession of their livings, and had been declared by King Charles II. himself but a few months before to have been found by him, when they waited on him in Holland, persons full of zeal for the peace of the church and state. Those particular non-conformists, who were followers of these men, could hardly be designed so soon to be excluded from any offices, merely in order to the preservation of the public peace, &c."

I find it very difficult to comprehend this reasoning: here are two things affirmed with respect to dissenting ministers, neither of which has any relation to the present case. 1. It is said that many of them were in possession of livings when the corporation act was made: 2. that a few months before that time King Charles had declared that he had found them to be persons full of zeal for the peace of the church and state. As to their being in possession of livings, it amounts to no proof of their zeal for the peace of church and state. A minister who + Ibid, p. 2.

* Preamble to Corporation Act.