THE

Independent Whig.

Nec ullum fatis validum Imperium erat coercendis Seditionibus Populi, flagitia Hominum ut Ceremonias Deum protegentis.

TACIT.

The SECOND EDITION.

B/K

LONDON:

Printed for J. PEELE, at Locke's Head, in Pater-nofter-Row. M,DCC,XXII.

per Patrons of a

Work, which treats

of Religion and the Clergy. It is written to promote Liberty, Virtue and

Piety; the Interefts of which, I hope, you will always espouse, and efteem as your own; and will confequently approve my Defign, and give me your Thanks, whatever may have been the Succefs of my Endeavours.

The many wild and unfcriptural Claims ftarted, and impetuously maintain'd, by very many of thofe you represent (and I wish I could fay denied, though but faintly, by any confiderable Number of others) gave Occafion to the following Sheets; and, having in them fhewn to my Brethren, the Laity, the Abfurdity and Impiety of those Claims, by Arguments fetch'd from Reason, the Gospel, and the Laws of our Country; I thall, in this Address to your felves, endeavour to convince you, that it is your Intereft to drop them; and if I can fucceed in this Point, I prefume, all other Arguments may be useless. Thefe

Thefe Gentlemen, in the Heat of their Demands and Contention for Power, have gone fo far towards Rome, and borrowed fo many of her Principles, that I fee no other Medium left for them, but either to proceed on in their Journey thither, (which, as they lave manag'd Matters, is now a very short one) or to turn back to the Principles of the Reformation (a very long Journey, I confefs!) and accept of the Bishop of Bangor's Scheme, as much as they hate it and him. That Scheme, tho' it may not be altogether fo toothfome, yet is a fafe Scheme: And tho' it does not entitle them to all the Power and Wealth of England, yet it fecures to them what they have.

Confider, Gentlemen, that you cannot take as much of Popery as you please, and leave the reft. Machiavel has long fince told us, that no GovernA 3

ment