These are the gentlemen, these their ways of treating the Church, both at home and abroad. Now let us examine the reasons they pretend to give why we should be favourable to them, why we should continue and tolerate them among us.

First, they are very numerous they say, they are a great part of the nation, and we cannot suppress them.

To this may be answered-1. They are not so numerous as the Protestants in France, and yet the French King effectually cleared the nation of them at once, and we do not find he misses them at home.

But I am not of the opinion they are so numerous as is pretended; their party is more numerous than their persons, and those mistaken people of the Church who are misled and deluded by their wheedling artifices to join with them, make their party the greater; but those will open their eyes when the Government shall set heartily about the work, and come off from them, as some animals, which, they say, always desert a house when it is likely to fall.

2. The more numerous the more dangerous, and therefore the more need to suppress them; and God has suffered us to bear them as goads in our sides, for not utterly extinguishing them long ago.

3. If we are to allow them only because we cannot suppress them, then it ought to be tried whether we can or no; and I am of opinion it is

easy to be done, and could prescribe ways and means, if it were proper; but I doubt not the Government will find effectual methods for the rooting the contagion from the face of this land.

Another argument they use, which is this, that it is a time of war, and we have need to unite against the common enemy.

We answer, this common enemy had been no enemy if they had not made him so; he was quiet, in peace, and no way disturbed or encroached upon us, and we know no reason we had to quarrel with him.

But further, we make no question but we are able to deal with this common enemy without their help; but why must we unite with them because of the enemy? Will they go over to the enemy if we do not prevent it by a union with them? We are very well contented they should, and make no question we shall be ready to deal with them and the common enemy too, and better without them than with them.

Besides, if we have a common enemy, there is the more need to be secure against our private enemies ; if there is one common enemy, we have the less need to have an enemy in our bowels.

It was a great argument some people used against suppressing the old money, that it was a time of war, and it was too great a risk for the nation to run; if we should not master it, we should

be undone; and yet the sequel proved the hazard was not so great but it might be mastered, and the success was answerable. The suppressing the Dissenters is not a harder work, nor a work of less necessity to the public: we can never enjoy a settled uninterrupted union and tranquillity in this nation till the spirit of Whiggism, faction, and schism is melted down like the old money.

To talk of the difficulty is to frighten ourselves with chimeras and notions of a powerful party, which are indeed a party without power; difficulties often appear greater at a distance than when they are searched into with judgment, and distinguished from the vapours and shadows that attend them.

We are not to be frightened with it; this age is wiser than that, by all our own experience, and theirs too. King Charles the First had early suppressed this party if he had taken more deliberate measures. In short, it is not worth arguing, to talk of their arms; their Monmouths, and Shaftesburys, and Argylls are gone; their Dutch Sanctuary is at an end; Heaven has made way for their destruction, and if we do not close with the divine occasion, we are to blame ourselves, and may remember that we had once an opportunity to serve the Church of England by extirpating her implacable enemies, and, having let slip the minute that Heaven presented, may experimentally complain, "Post est occasio calva."

Here are some popular objections in the way: As first, the Queen has promised them to continue them in their tolerated liberty, and has told us she will be a religious observer of her word.

What her Majesty will do we cannot help, but what, as the head of the Church, she ought to do, is another case. Her Majesty has promised to protect and defend the Church of England, and if she cannot effectually do that without the destruction of the Dissenters, she must of course dispense with one promise to comply with another. But to answer this cavil more effectually her Majesty did never promise to maintain the toleration to the destruction of the Church, but it is upon supposition that it may be compatible with the well-being and safety of the Church, which she had declared she would take especial care of. Now, if these two interests clash, it is plain her Majesty's intentions are to uphold, protect, defend, and establish the Church, and this we conceive is impossible.

Perhaps it may be said that the Church is in no immediate danger from the Dissenters, and therefore it is time enough; but this is a weak answer.

For first, if a danger be real, the distance of it is no argument against, but rather a spur to quicken us to prevention, lest it be too late hereafter.

And secondly, here is the opportunity, and the only one perhaps that ever the Church had, to secure herself and destroy her enemies.

The representatives of the nation have now an opportunity; the time is come which all good men have wished for, that the gentlemen of England may serve the Church of Engiand, now they are protected and encouraged by a Church of England Queen.

"What will you do for your sister in the day that she shall be spoken for?"

If ever you will establish the best Christian Church in the world;

If ever you will suppress the spirit of enthusiasm ;

If ever you will free the nation from the viperous brood that have so long sucked the blood of their mother;

If ever you will leave your posterity free from faction and rebellion, this is the time.

This is the time to pull up this heretical weed of sedition, that has so long disturbed the peace of our Church, and poisoned the good corn.

But, says another hot and cold objector, this is renewing fire and faggot, reviving the Act " De Heret. Comburendo;" this will be cruelty in its nature, and barbarous to all the world.

I answer, it is cruelty to kill a snake or a toad in cold blood, but the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our neighbours to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury received, but for prevention; not for the evil they have done, but the evil they may do.