others or by their own infirmity of mind, they are to be reclaimed, not by severity, but by reason and admonition; accompanied with prayer to God, who alone can dispel every error, and impart to whom he pleases the heavenly light of truth. Of 'heresies,' justly so denominated, we approve none: we do not even tolerate all. We would gladly, indeed, have them extirpated, but extirpated by right methods; by instruction and the substitution of sounder doctrine, as best adapted to the ailments of the mind; not by the sword and the scourge, as if they were to be slashed and flogged out of the body.

Another, and not lighter, injury we have done (you allege) to what is called the temporal property' of the Church. the Church. Ask of the Dutch Protestants, or even of those of Upper Germany, whether they ever respected this species of property? Is not the general pretext adduced by the Austrian Sovereign, whenever he wages war against them, the restitution of the domains of the Church? These, however, were in fact the property not of the Church, but of churchmen; in this respect eminently the pillars, I mean the caterpillars, of the Church. Wolves, indeed, is an appellation most appropriate to the greater part of them; and, in applying to the exigencies of a war, occasioned by themselves, the property (or rather the accumulated prey) of those wolves, derived from the superstition and en

joyed through the ignorance of so many ages, there could not be any impiety: especially, as no other resources remained for the demands of such an expensive and protracted struggle.

But it was expected, that the income, thus violently torn from the Bishops, would be divided among the Presbyterian clergy. Yes, by themselves, I know, it was expected, and anxiously coveted; for they covet every thing. No whirlpool so insatiable as clerical avarice! In other places, the provision for the ministers of the Church was perhaps inadequate but ours had surely enough, and more than enough, for their support. The sheep rather than the shepherds, not so much the feeders as the fed,* they had every thing fat around them, without the exception even of their own heads. Gorging on tithes, a mode of maintenance disapproved by all other Protestant Churches, and with so little trust in God as to think it better to extort them through the intervention of the civil magistrate by force, than to owe their subsistence to divine providence or the affection and gratitude of their respective congregations; they still, notwithstanding all this, so frequently guttle at the houses of their male and female followers, that they scarcely know what it is to dine or sup at

*He had elsewhere said,

‹ The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.'

(Lycid. 125.)

home. Hence they are generally characterised less by want, than by superfluity: their wives and children vie with those of the opulent in parade and luxury; and to have fostered this prodigality by new accessions of income, would have been to infuse new poison (a taint bewailed, in the days of Constantine, by a voice from heaven) into the Reformed Church.

I proceed to reply to the charges respecting our offences against God, among which you particularly specify, our want of confidence in the divine assistance, our prayers, and our fasts. But "out of thine own mouth," thou most profligate of men, will I confute thee; and retort upon thee thine own question in the words of the Apostle, "Who art thou, that judgest

another man's servant?"* To our own master let us stand, or fall. I add also, in the language of David, "when I weep and chasten my soul with fasting, that is to my reproach."+

To go step by step over the rest of your delirious babblings upon this subject, which nobody will think of reading twice, would argue as much folly in me, as in yourself. Neither are your tedious prosings upon our successes less irrelevant. Take care, my friend, that you do not, in consequence of your Pontian efforts, catch cold with a stuffing in the head or a snuffling in the nose; so as, like your great

*Rom. xiv. 4.

+ Ps. lxix. 10.

With re

Saumaise of late, to chill a hot bath. gard to success in general, my opinion in few words is, that it proves nothing as to the goodness of the cause, one way or the other. We wish, not that our cause should be estimated from it's success, but our success from the

cause.

You now, though a mere toad-eater to professors and proctors, boldly assume to discuss political subjects-the injuries, forsooth, which we have done to all Kings and all people! What injuries?' We certainly did not mean to do any. Our sole object was, to regulate our own concerns, without interfering at all in those of others. If our neighbours derived any advantage from our example, we assuredly do not repine at it: if any mischief, that was not our fault; it arose out of the abuse of our principles. And pray, what Kings or what people appointed you, you miscreant, the herald of their injuries?' Their Envoys and Embassadors, most undoubtedly, both in parliament (as I have been informed by those, who heard them) and in the Council, where I heard them myself, far from complaining of any injuries,' anxiously solicited our friendship and alliance: nay, in the name of their respective Sovereigns congratulated us upon the state of our affairs, and zealously prayed for the continuance of our tranquillity, and the perpetuation of our successes. These are not the expressions of enmity,

or of hatred, as you represent them. The alternative then is, either that you must be convicted of a lie, a slight speck indeed in your character; or Kings, of deceit and dissimulation, which would be an indelible blot in theirs.

But you quote our own acknowledgement, that "we have held out an example salutary to all people, and formidable to all tyrants." Inexplicable crime! as heinous, in fact, as if any one had said;

Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere Divos.* Learn justice, warn'd, and not to slight the Gods. Could any thing worse have been said? This was the purport of Cromwell's letter to the Scots, after the battle of Dunbar and worthy was that letter of himself, and of his noble victory! With such like glozing and cant phrases are the infamous pages of Milton besprinkled: You always assign me an illustrious collegue, and here you make me his equal, and even occa sionally his superior: a circumstance, which I should consider as the highest honour you could confer, if any thing honourable could proceed from you. But those pages (you say) were burnt by the common hangman at Paris, under the orders of the parliament of that city. This was done, I have been informed, not by 'the parliament,' but by a Lieutenant de Police