THE

SHORTEST WAY WITH THE

DISSENTERS;

OR, PROPOSALS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH.

SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE tells us a story, in his collection of fables, of the cock and the horses. The cock was gotten to roost in the stable, among the horses, and there being no racks or other conveniences for him, it seems he was forced to roost upon the ground. The horses jostling about for room, and putting the cock in danger of his life, he gives them this grave advice: "Pray, gentlefolks, let us stand still, for fear we should tread upon one another."

There are some people in the world, who, now they are unperched, and reduced to an equality with other people, and under strong and very just apprehensions of being further treated as they deserve, begin, with Æsop's cock, to preach up peace

and union, and the Christian duties of moderation, forgetting that when they had the power in their hands those graces were strangers in their gates.

It is now near fourteen years that the glory and peace of the purest and most flourishing Church in the world has been eclipsed, buffeted, and disturbed by a sort of men whom God in his providence has suffered to insult over her, and bring her down. These have been the days of her humiliation and tribulation she has borne with an invincible patience the reproach of the wicked, and God has at last heard her prayers, and delivered her from the oppression of the stranger.

And, now they find their day is over, their power gone, and the throne of this nation possessed by a royal, English, true, and ever-constant member of and friend to the Church of England; now they find that they are in danger of the Church of England's just resentments; now they cry out peace, union, forbearance, and charity, as if the Church had not too long harboured her enemies under her wing, and nourished the viperous brood, till they hiss and fly in the face of the mother that cherished them.

No, gentlemen, the time of mercy is past, your day of grace is over; you should have practised peace, and moderation, and charity, if you expected any yourselves.

We have heard none of this lesson for fourteen years past we have been huffed and bullied with your Act of Toleration; you have told us that you are the Church established by law, as well as others; have set up your canting synagogues at our church-doors, and the Church and members have been loaded with reproaches, with oaths, associations, abjurations, and what not. Where has been the mercy, the forbearance, the charity you have shown to tender consciences of the Church of England, that could not take oaths as fast as you made them; that having sworn allegiance to their lawful and rightful King, could not dispense with that oath, their King being still alive, and swear to your new hodge-podge of a Dutch Government ? These have been turned out of their livings, and they and their families left to starve; their estates double taxed, to carry on a war they had no hand in, and you got nothing by. What account can you

give of the multitudes you have forced to comply, against their consciences, with your new sophistical politics, who, like new converts in France, sin because they cannot starve? And, now the tables are turned upon you, you must not be persecuted; it is not a Christian spirit!

You have butchered one king, deposed another king, and made a mock king of a third; and yet you could have the face to expect to be employed and trusted by the fourth. Anybody that did not

know the temper of your party, would stand amazed at the impudence as well as folly, to think of it.

Your management of your Dutch monarch, whom you reduced to a mere King of Cl—s, is enough to give any future princes such an idea of your principles as to warn them sufficiently from coming into your clutches; and, God be thanked! the Queen is out of your hands, knows you, and will have a care of you.

There is no doubt but the supreme authority of a nation has in itself a power, and a right to that power, to execute the laws upon any part of that nation it governs. The execution of the known laws of the land, and that with but a gentle hand neither, was all that the fanatical party of this land have ever called persecution; this they have magnified to a height, that the sufferings of the Huguenots in France were not to be compared with. Now, to execute the known laws of a nation upon those who transgress them, after voluntarily consenting to the making those laws, can never be called persecution, but justice. But justice is always violence to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes. The first execution of the laws against Dissenters in England was in the days of King James the First. And what did it amount to? Truly, the worst they suffered was, at their own request, to let them go to New England, and erect a new colony,