Sure it must be a melancholly Reflection to these Gentlemen, in Point of Credit and Reputation (for I say nothing of Confcience) that, whilft they thus diftinguish themselves from LowChurchmen, whose great Crime confifts in not mocking God, and leaping over Confcience and Oaths; they do, at the fame time, diftinguish themselves from Chriftianity it felf, which, above all other Religions, disclaims Power, and more than all other Religions abhors Infincevity and falfe Swearing. Can you, Gentlemen, reconcile their Behaviour, fince the Revolution, to the Understanding of the People, or to any Man's Confcience but their own? If the Doctrine of Hereditary Right is true, as many of them eternally and fiercely contend, how could they swear to Princes made by Act of Parliament? And if the Doctrine of Paffive Obedience is true, 1 T true, how came they to swear to a Government founded upon open and evi dent Refiftance, and to be instrumental themselves in that Resistance? Their particular Behaviour to His present Majefty, cannot yet be forgot. Be fo good to let us know, what Security He found from their Oaths; or what Affiftance the High Clergy gave Him against the late Rebellion, in pursuance of these Oaths? Can Men, who shew, by glaring Actions, that they value not their own Souls, do any Good to the Souls of other Men? If you would clear your selves from the Imputation of fupporting or favouring fuch monftrous Principles, you must do it openly and avowedly, in full and exprefs Words, free from that Equivocation which some of your Order are much suspected of, upon the most so lemn and facred Occafions. You have b3 been : been ready enough to censure many good Books, and many worthy Propofitions: Be ingenuous for this once, Gentlemen; expose the Blafphemies of those of your own Body, and brand the Authors of them with those Names of Infamy which they deserve, and which you never want whenever you think fit to call Names. And if you fairly renounce ill Company, you will not be cenfur'd, as you have been, for not censuring their Impieties. The Convocation at Oxford, in the Days of Tyranny, were sufficiently forward and explicite in damning, by their deteftable Decree, fince worthily burnt by the proper Hand of the common Hangman, by Order of the Legislature; I say, that black Affembly were forward and clear enough in damning all those Principles of Liberty, which ever have been and ever will be the Principles of Wife Men and Free Men. Confult your own Reputation and the Welfare of Mankind, by treading Antipodes to that wicked Assembly. I cannot pass over in Silence, that shameful want of Charity found amongst too many of you, and every Day commany plain'd of to no purpose. Allowing Charity to be a Christian Grace (and the Apostle calls it the highest) I would be glad to know in what Instance you practise that Grace your selves, or promote it in others. As to such who deny the regular Means of Salvation to all Communions, except their own and that of Rome, they bring this Charge home to their own Door; fince their Courtesy to those of the same Spirit with themselves, and their good Opi nion of them, is not Charity, but Selflove and Faction. Highwaymen, no doubt, call one another honest Fellows, as frequently and habitually as other Men do; whereas their Honesty is only a wicked Fidelity to a Nest and Confederacy of Rogues, and they are only honeft to their Fellow-Thieves: But true Honesty is the fame to all Men, and to all Men alike. : The like may be said of Charity; it is tried and exercised upon those who are of a Perfuafion different from ours. But to flatter and be complaisant to those of the fame Imaginations, or the fame Craft with our selves, merely because they are of the fame Craft, is such a new-fangled Charity, as would beat the old Chriftian Charity of St. Paul quite out of the World: And yet that this is the true Cause, and the true State of modern Orthodox Charity, appears abundantly from hence, that the moft wicked good Churchman has more Complement paid him, and more Favour shewn him, than the most righte 1 ous |