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gaging your service of such as have been the authors of so much misinformation.

"But could we once obtain the favour of such debate, we doubt not to evince a clear consistency of our life and doctrine with the English Government; and that an indulging of Dissenters in the sense defended is not only most christian and rational, but prudent also; and the contrary, however plausibly insinuated, the most injurious to the peace, and destructive of that discreet balance, which the best and wisest states have ever carefully observed.

"But if this fair and equal offer find not a place with you on which to rest its foot, much less that it should bring us back the olive-branch of Toleration, we heartily embrace and bless the Providence of God, and in his strength resolve by patience to outweary persecution, and by our constant sufferings seek to obtain a victory more glorious than any our adversaries can achieve by all their cruelties."

This excellent address was followed by a preface. He began the latter by observing, that, if the friends of persecution were men of as much reason as they counted them

selves to be, it would be unnecessary for him to inform them, that no external coercive power could convince the understanding, neither could fines and imprisonments be judged fit and adequate penalties for faults purely intellectual. He maintained the folly of coercive measures on such occasions on another account; for the enaction of such laws as restrained persons from the free exercise of their consciences in matters of religion was but the knotting of whipcord on the part of the enactors to lash their own posterity, whom they could never promise to be conformed for ages to come to a national religion. He then defined liberty of conscience to be "the free and uninterrupted exercise of our consciences in that way of worship we were most clearly persuaded God required of us to serve him in, without endangering our undoubted birthright of English freedoms, which being matter of faith we sinned if we omitted, and they could not do less who should endeavour it." After this he showed how this liberty of conscience had been invaded by the plundering and oppressing of those who had used it; and concluded by pronouncing that, if such desolation were allowed to

continue,

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continue, the state must inevitably proceed to its own decay.

Having finished the preface, he went to the body of the work, which consisted of six chapters. But here I find it impossible

for want of room to detail the contents of these. The reader therefore must be satisfied with the following account. He coincided, he said, with many, in considering the union (for the oppressive bill in question) "to be very ominous and unhappy, which made the first discovery of itself by a John Baptist's head in a charger, by a feast to be made upon the liberties and properties of free-born Englishmen; for to cut off the entail of their undoubted hereditary rights, on account of matters purely relative to another world, was a severe beheading in the law." He then maintained that they, who imposed fetters upon the conscience and persecuted for conscience sake, defeated God's work of grace, or the invisible operation of his holy Spirit, which could alone beget faith; that they claimed infallibility, which all good Protestants rejected; and that they usurped the divine prerogative, assuming the judgement of the Great Tribunal,

Tribunal, and thereby robbing the Almighty of a right which belonged exclusively to himself that they overthrew the Christian religion in the very nature of it, for it was spiritual, and not of this world; in the very practice of it, for this consisted of meekness; in the promotion of it, for it was clear that they never designed to be better themselves, and they discouraged others in their religious growth; and in the rewards of it, for where men were religious out of fear, and this out of the fear of men, their religion was condemnation, and not peace

that they opposed the plainest testimonies of divine writ, which concurred in condemning all force upon the conscience that they waged war against the privileges of nature, by exalting themselves and enslaving their fellow-creatures; by rendering null and void the divine instinct or principle in man, which was so natural to him, that he could be no more without it and be, than he could be without the most essential part of himself (for where would be the use of this principle, if it were regulated by arbitrary power?), and by destroying all natural affection that they were enemies to the noble

noble principle of reason

that they acted

contrary to all true notions of government, first, as to the nature of it, which was justice; secondly, as to the execution of it, which was prudence; and, thirdly, as to the end of it, which was happiness.Having discussed these several points, he proceeded to answer certain objections, which he supposed might be made to some of the positions he had advanced, and concluded by attempting to show, by means of a copious appeal to history, that they who fettered the consciences of others and punished for conscience sake, reflected upon the sense and practice of the wisest, greatest, and best of men both of ancient and modern times.

1

When he had finished the above works the time for his liberation from prison approached. This having taken place, he travelled into Holland and Germany. His object was to spread the doctrines of his own religious society in these parts. Of the par

ticulars of his travels we have no detailed account. We know only that he was reported to have been successful, and that he continued employed on the same errand during the remainder of the year.

CHAP

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