6 that 'one of his parents asked him, when he was very young, Whether God could do every thing? He answered, Yes! He was asked again, Whether God could tell a lie? He answered, No! And he understood the question to suppose that this was the only thing that God could not do; nor durst he say, so young was he then, that he thought there was anything else which God could not do; while yet he well remembered, that he had even then a clear conviction in his own mind, that there was one thing which God could not do that he could not annihilate that space which was in the room where they were.' This opinion concerning the necessary existence of space became a leading feature in the mind of the future philosopher. At Caius' college, Cambridge, Clarke cultivated natural philosophy with such success, that in his twenty-second year he published an excellent translation of Rohault's Physics, with notes, in which he advocated the Newtonian system, although that of Descartes was taught by Rohault, whose work was at that time the text-book in the university. And this certainly,' says Bishop Hoadly, was a more prudent method of introducing truth unknown before, than to attempt to throw aside this treatise entirely, and write a new one instead of it. The success answered exceedingly well to his hopes; and he may justly be styled a great benefactor to the university in this attempt. For by this means the true philosophy has, without any noise, prevailed; and to this day the translation of Rohault is, generally speaking, the standard text for lectures, and his notes the first direction to those who are willing to receive the reality and truth of things in the place of invention and romance.' Four editions of Clarke's translation of Rohault were required before it ceased to be used in the university; but at length it was superseded by treatises in which the Newtonian philosophy was avowedly adopted. Having entered the church, Clarke found a patron and friend in Dr Moore, bishop of Norwich, and was appointed his chaplain. Between the years 1699 and 1702, he published several theological essays on baptism. repentanco, &o, and executed paraphrases of the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These tracts were afterwards published in two volumes. The bishop next gave him a living at Norwich; and his reputation stood so high, that in 1704 he was appointed to preach the Boyle lecture. His boyish musings on eternity and space were now revived. He selected as the subject of his first course of lectures, the Being and Attributes of God; and the second year he chose the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion. The lectures were published in two volumes, and attracted notice and controversy from their containing Clarke's celebrated argument a priori for the existence of God, the germ of which is comprised in a Scholium annexed to Newton's Principia. According to Sir Isaac and his scholar, as immensity and eternity are not substances, but attributes, the immense and eternal Being, whose attributes they are, must exist of necessity also. The existence of God, therefore, is a truth that follows with demonstrative evidence from those conceptions of space and time which are inseparable from the human mind. Professor Dugald Stewart, though considering that Clarke, in pursuing this lofty argument, soared into regions where he was lost in the clouds, admits the grandness of the conception, and its connexion with the principles of natural religion. For when once we have established, from the evidences of design everywhere manifested around us, the existence of an intelligent and powerful cause, we are unavoidably led to apply to this cause our conceptions of immensity and eternity, and to conceive Him as filling the infinite extent of both with his presence and with his power. Hence we associate with the idea of God those awful impressions which are naturally produced by the idea of infinite space, and perhaps still more by the idea of endless duration. Nor is this all. It is from the immensity of space that the notion of infinity is originally derived; and it is hence that we transfer the expression, by a sort of metaphor, to other subjects. When we speak, therefore, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, our notions, if not wholly borrowed from space, are at least greatly aided by this analogy; so that the conceptions of immensity and eternity, if they do not of themselves demonstrate the existence of God, yet necessarily enter into the ideas we form of his nature and attributes."* How beautifully has Pope clothed this magnificent conception in verse!— 'All are but parts of one stupendous whole, The followers of Spinoza built their pernicious theory upon the same argument of endless space; but Pope has spiritualised the idea by placing God as the soul of all, and Clarke's express object was to show that the subtleties they had advanced against religion, might be better employed in its favour. Such a mode of argument, however, is beyond the faculties of man; and Whiston only repeated a common and obvious truth, when he told Clarke that in the commonest weed in his garden were contained better arguments for the being and attributes of the Deity than in all his metaphysics. The next subject that engaged the studies of Clarke was a Defence of the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul, in reply to Mr Henry Dodwell and Collins. He also translated Newton's Optics into Latin, and was rewarded by his guide, philosopher, and friend, with a present of L.500. In 1709 he obtained the rectory of St James's, Westminster, took his degree of D.D., and was made chaplain in ordinary to the queen. In 1712 he edited a splendid edition of Cæsar's Commentaries, with corrections and emendations, and also gave to the world an elaborate treatise on the Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. The latter involved him in considerable trouble with the church authorities; for Clarke espoused the Arian doctrine, which he also advocated in a series of sermons. He next appeared as a controversialist with Leibnitz, the German philosopher, who had represented to the Princess of Wales, afterwards the queen consort of George II., that the Newtonian philosophy was not only physically false, but injurious to religion. Sir Isaac Newton, at the request of the princess, entered the lists on the mathematical part of the controversy, and left the philosophical part of it to Dr Clarke. The result was triumphant for the English system; and Clarke, in 1717, collected and published the papers which had passed between him and Leibnitz. In 1724, he put to press a series of sermons, seventeen in number. Many of them are excellent, but others are tinctured with his metaphysical predilections. He aimed at rendering scriptural principle a precept conformable to what he calls eternal reason and the fitness of things, and hence his sermons have failed in becoming popu * Stewart's Dissertation, Encyclopædia Britannica. Essay on Man.-Ep. L. · 6 tosh, that Dr Clarke was a man eminent at once as a divine, a mathematician, a metaphysical philosopher, and a philologer; and, as the interpreter of Homer and Cæsar, the scholar of Newton, and the antagonist of Leibnitz, approved himself not unworthy of correspondence with the highest order of human spirits.' [Natural and Essential Difference of Right and Wrong.] lar or useful. He who aspires,' says Robert Hall, to a reputation that shall survive the vicissitudes of opinion and of time, must aim at some other character than that of a metaphysician.' In his practical sermons, however, there is much sound and admirable precept. In 1727, Dr Clarke was offered, but declined, the appointment of Master of the Mint, vacant by the death of his illustrious friend, Newton. The situation was worth £1500 a-year, and the disinterestedness and integrity of Clarke were strikingly evinced by his declining to accept an office of The principal thing that can, with any colour of such honour and emoluments, because he could not reason, seem to countenance the opinion of those who reconcile himself to a secular employment. His deny the natural and eternal difference of good and conduct and character must have excited the admi- evil, is the difficulty there may sometimes be to deration of the queen, for we learn from a satirical fine exactly the bounds of right and wrong; the allusion in Pope's Moral Epistle on the Use of variety of opinions that have obtained even among Riches (first published in 1731), that her majesty understanding and learned men, concerning certain had placed a bust of Dr Clarke in her hermitage in questions of just and unjust, especially in political the royal grounds. 'The doctor duly frequented matters; and the many contrary laws that have been the court,' says Pope in a note; but he should made in divers ages and in different countries conBut as, in painting, two very have added,' rejoins Warburton, with the inno- cerning these matters. cence and disinterestedness of a hermit.' In 1729, different colours, by diluting each other very slowly Clarke published the first twelve books of the Iliad, and gradually, may, from the highest intenseness in with a Latin version and copious annotations; and either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and Homer has never had a more judicious or acute so run one into the other, that it shall not be possible commentator. The last literary efforts of this indeeven for a skilful eye to determine exactly where the fatigable scholar were devoted to drawing up an one ends and the other begins; and yet the colours may Exposition of the Church Catechism, and preparing really differ as much as can be, not in degree only, but several volumes of sermons for the press. These entirely in kind, as red and blue, or white and black: were not published till after his death, which took so, though it may perhaps be very difficult in some nice place on the 17th of May 1729. The various talents and perplexed cases (which yet are very far from ocand learning of Dr Clarke, and his easy cheerful curring frequently) to define exactly the bounds of disposition, earned for him the highest admiration right and wrong, just and unjust (and there may be and esteem of his contemporaries. As a metaphy-laws of divers nations), yet right and wrong are neversome latitude in the judgment of different men, and the sician, he was inferior to Locke in comprehensiveness and originality, but possessed more skill and logical foresight (the natural result of his habits of mathematical study); and he has been justly celebrated for the boldness and ability with which he placed himself in the breach against the Neces theless in themselves totally and essentially different; darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which permitted even altogether as much as white and black, light and their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no; because sitarians and Fatalists of his times. His moral every man, having an absolute right in his own goods, it may seem that the members of any doctrine (which supposes virtue to consist in the regulation of our conduct according to certain nt- society may agree to transfer or alter their own properties upon what conditious they shall think fit. But nesses which we perceive in things, or a peculiar if it could be supposed that a law had been made at congruity of certain relations to each other) being Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part inconsequential unless we have previously distin- of the world, whereby it had been commanded or guished the ends which are morally good from those allowed that every man might rob by violence, and that are evil, and limited the conformity to one of murder whomsoever he met with, or that no faith these classes, has been condemned by Dr Thomas should be kept with any man, nor any equitable comBrown and Sir James Mackintosh. His specula-pacts performed, no man, with any tolerable use of tions were over-refined, and seem to have been coloured by his fondness for mathematical studies, in forgetfulness that mental philosophy cannot, like physical, be demonstrated by axioms and definitions in the manner of the exact sciences. On the whole, we may say, in the emphatic language of Mackin-power to make falsehood be truth, though they may * See Brown's Philosophy and the Dissertations of Stewart and Mackintosh. Warburton, in his notes on Pope, thus sums up the moral doctrine: Dr Clarke and Wollaston considered moral obligation as arising from the essential differences and relations of things; Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, as arising from the moral sense; and the generality of divines, as arising solely from the will of God. On these three principles practical morality has been built by these different writers.' Thus has God been pleased,' adds Warburton, to give three differ ent excitements to the practice of virtue; that men of all ranks, constitutions, and educations, might find their account in one or other of them; something that would hit their palate, satisfy their reason, or subdue their will. But this admirable provision for the support of virtue hath been in some measure defeated by its pretended advocates, who have sacrilegiously untwisted this threefold cord, and each running away with the part he esteemed the strongest, hath affixed that to the throne of God, as the golden chain that is to unite and draw all to it.'-Divine Legation, book i his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be among them in other matters, would have thought that such a law could have authorised or excused, much less have justified such actions, and have made them become good: because 'tis plainly not in men's alter the property of their goods as they please. Now if, in flagrant cases, the natural and essential difference between good and evil, right and wrong, cannot but be confessed to be plainly and undeniably evident, the difference between them must be also essential and unalterable in all, even the smallest, and nicest and most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right concluded that just and unjust were not essentially and wrong in many perplexed cases, it could truly be and custom, it would follow equally, that they were different by nature, but only by positive constitution not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even in the most flagrant cases that can be supposed; which is an assertion so very absurd, that Mr Hobbes himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and discovering plainly, by his shifting expressions, his secret self-condemnation. There are therefore certain necessary and eternal differences of things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of different things, or different relations one to another, not depending on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the differences of the things themselves. DR WILLIAM LOWTH. took up Hoadly's works with warmth, and passed a censure upon them, as calculated to subvert the government and discipline of the church, and to impugn and impeach the regal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. The controversy was conducted with unbecoming violence, and several bishops and other grave divines (the excellent Sherlock among the number) forgot the dignity of their station and the spirit of Christian charity in the heat of party warfare. Pope alludes sarcastically to Hoadly's sermon in the Dunciad’— ments. He even admitted the usefulness of censures DR WILLIAM LOWTH (1661-1732) was distinguished for his classical and theological attainments, and the liberality with which he communicated his Toland and Tindal, prompt at priests to jeer, stores to others. He published a Vindication of the Yet silent bowed to Christ's no kingdom here. Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Old and New The truth, however, is, that there was nothing Testaments (1692), Directions for the Profitable Read-whatever in Hoadly's sermon injurious to the esta ing of the Holy Scriptures, Commentaries on the Prophets, &c. He furnished notes on Clemens Alex-blished endowments and privileges, nor to the disandrinus for Potter's edition of that ancient author, in theory. If this had been the case, he might have cipline and government of the English church, even remarks on Josephus for Hudson's edition, and annotations on the ecclesiastical historians for Read been reproached with some inconsistency in becom ing's Cambridge edition of those authors. He also ing so large a partaker of her honours and emoluassisted Dr Chandler in his Defence of Christianity for open immoralities, though denying all church from the Prophecies. His learning is said to have authority to oblige any one to external communion, been equally extensive and profound, and he accompanied all his reading with critical and philological condition of men with respect to the favour or disor to pass any sentence which should determine the remarks. Born in London, Dr Lowth took his depleasure of God. Another great question in this grees at Oxford, and experiencing the countenance and support of the bishop of Winchester, became controversy was that of religious liberty as a civil the chaplain of that prelate, a prebend of the another related to the much debated exercise of right, which the convocation explicitly denied. And cathedral of Winchester, and rector of Buriton. private judgment in religion, which, as one party meant virtually to take away, so the other perhaps unreasonably exaggerated."* The style of Hoadly's controversial treatises is strong and logical, but without any of the graces of composition, and hence they have fallen into comparative oblivion. He was author of several other works, as Terms of Acceptance, Reasonableness of Conformity, Treatise on the Sacrament, &c. A complete edition of his works was published by his son in three folio volumes; his sermons are now considered the most valuable portion of his writings. There can be no doubt that the independent and liberal mind of Hoadly, aided by his station in the church, tended materially DR BENJAMIN HOADLY. DR BENJAMIN HOADLY, successively bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, was a prelate of great controversial ability, who threw the weight of his talents and learning into the scale of Whig politics, at that time fiercely attacked by the Tory and Jacobite parties. Hoadly was born in 1676. In 1706,* while rector of St Peter's-le-Poor, London, he attacked a sermon by Atterbury, and thus incurred the enmity and ridicule of Swift and Pope. He defended the revolution of 1688, and attacked the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience with Duch vigour and perseverance, that, in 1709, the House of Commane rocommended him to the favour of the queen. Her majesty does not appear to have complied with this request; but her successor, George I., elevated him to the see of Bangor. Shortly after his elevation to the bench, Hoadly published a work against the nonjurors, and a sermon preached before the king at St James's, on the Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ. The latter excited a long and vehement dispute, known by the name of the Bangorian Controversy, in which forty or fifty tracts were published. The Lower House of Convocation Hoadly printed, in 1702, A Letter to the Rev. Mr Fleetwood, occasioned by his Essay on Miracles. In the preface to a volume of tracts published in 1715, in which that letter was reprinted, the eminent author speaks of Fleetwood in the following terms:- This contains some points, relating to the subject of miracles, in which I differed long ago from an excellent person, now advanced, by his merits, to one of the highest stations in the church. When it first appeared in the world, he had too great a soul to make the common return of resentment or contempt, or to esteem a difference of opinion, expressed with civility, to be an unpardonable affront. So far from it, that he not only was pleased to express some good liking of the manner of it, but laid hold on an opportunity, which then immediately offered itself, of doing the writer a very considerable piece of service. I think myself obliged, upon this occasion, to acknowledge this in a public manner, wishing that such a procedure may at length cease to be uncommon and singular.' to stem the torrent of slavish submission which then prevailed in the church of England. I ne urat cave in Indly's sermon on The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ, preached before the king on 31st March, 1717, and which, as already mentioned, gave rise to the celebrated Bangorian controversy. [The Kingdom of Christ not of this World.] If, therefore, the church of Christ be the kingdom of Christ, it is essential to it that Christ himself be the sole lawgiver and sole judge of his subjects, in all points relating to the favour or displeasure of Almighty God; and that all his subjects, in what station soever they may be, are equally subjects to him; and that no one of them, any more than another, hath authority either to make new laws for Christ's subjects, or to impose a sense upon the old ones, which is the same thing; or to judge, censure, or punish the servants of another master, in matters relating purely to conscience or salvation. If any person hath any other notion, either through a long use of words with inconsistent meanings, or through a negligence of thought, let him but ask himself whether the church of Christ this notion of it doth not absolutely exclude all other be the kingdom of Christ or not; and if it be, whether legislators and judges in matters relating to conscience or the favour of God, or whether it can be his king. * Hallam's Constitutional History of England. dom if any mortal men have such a power of legislation and judgment in it. This inquiry will bring us back to the first, which is the only true account of the church of Christ, or the kingdom of Christ, in the mouth of a Christian; that it is the number of men, whether small or great, whether dispersed or united, who truly and sincerely are subjects to Jesus Christ alone as their lawgiver and judge in matters relating to the favour of God and their eternal salvation. contrary to the interests of true religion, as it is plainly opposite to the maxims upon which Christ founded his kingdom; who chose the motives which are not of this world, to support a kingdom which is not of this world. And indeed it is too visible to be hid, that wherever the rewards and punishments are changed from future to present, from the world to come to the world now in possession, there the kingdom founded by our Saviour is, in the nature of it, so far changed, that it is become, in such a degree, what he professed his kingdom was not that is, of this world; of the same sort with other common earthly kingdoms, in which the rewards are worldly honours, posts, offices, pomp, attendance, dominion; and the punishments are prisons, fines, banishments, galleys and racks, or something less of the same sort. [Ironical View of Protestant Infallibility.] [From the Dedication to Pope Clement XI., prefixed to Sir ligion throughout the World."] The next principal point is, that, if the church be the kingdom of Christ, and this kingdom be not of this world,' this must appear from the nature and end of the laws of Christ, and of those rewards and punishments which are the sanctions of his laws. Now, his laws are declarations relating to the favour of God in another state after this. They are declarations of those conditions to be performed in this world on our part, without which God will not make us happy in that to come. And they are almost all general appeals to the will of that God; to his nature, known by the common reason of mankind, and to the imita- R. Steele's Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Retion of that nature, which must be our perfection. The keeping his commandments is declared the way to life, and the doing his will the entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The being subjects to Christ, is to this very end, that we may the better and more effectually perform the will of God. The laws of this kingdom, therefore, as Christ left them, have nothing of this world in their view; no tendency either to the exaltation of some in worldly pomp and dignity, or to their absolute dominion over the faith and religious conduct of others of his subjects, or to the erecting of any sort of temporal kingdom under the covert and name of a spiritual one. Your holiness is not perhaps aware how near the churches of us Protestants have at length come to those privileges and perfections which you boast of as peculiar to your own so near, that many of the most quick-sighted and sagacious persons have not been able to discover any other difference between us, as to the main principle of all doctrine, government, worship, and discipline, but this one, namely, that you cannot err in anything you determine, and we never do that is, in other words, that you are infallible, and we always in the right. We cannot but esteem the advantage to be exceedingly on our side in this case; because we have all the benefits of infallibility without the absurdity of pretending to it, and without the uneasy task of maintaining a point so shocking to the understanding of mankind. And you must pardon us if we cannot help thinking it to be as great and as glorious a privilege in us to be always in the right, without the pretence to infallibility, as it can be in you to be always in the wrong, with it. The sanctions of Christ's law are rewards and punishments. But of what sort? Not the rewards of this world; not the offices or glories of this state; not the pains of prisons, banishments, fines, or any lesser and more moderate penalties; nay, not the much lesser negative discouragements that belong to human society. He was far from thinking that these could be the instruments of such a persuasion as he thought acceptable to God. But, as the great end of his kingdom was to guide men to happiness after the short Thus, the synod of Dort (for whose unerring deciimages of it woro over hore below, so he took hissions public thanks to Almighty God are every three motives from that place where his kingdom first be- years offered up with the greatest solemnity by the gan, and where it was at last to end; from those re- magistrates in that country), the councils of the rewards and punish has to future state, which had formed in France, the assembly of the kirk of Scotno relation to this world; and to show that his king- land, and (if I may presume to name it) the convocadom was not of this world,' all the sanctions which he tion of England, have been all found to have the very thought fit to give to his laws were not of this world same unquestionable authority which your church at all. claims, solely upon the infallibility which resides in it; and the people to be under the very same strict obligation of obedience to their determinations, which with you is the consequence only of an absolute infallibility. The reason, therefore, why we do not openly set up an infallibility is, because we can do without it. Authority results as well from power as from right, and a majority of votes is as strong a foundation for it as infallibility itself. Councils that may err, never do: and besides, being composed of men whose peculiar business it is to be in the right, it is very immodest for any private person to think them not so; because this is to set up a private corrupted understanding above a public uncorrupted judgment. · St Paul understood this so well, that he gives an account of his own conduct, and that of others in the same station, in these words: Knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men:' whereas, in too many Christian countries since his days, if some who profess to succeed him were to give an account of their own conduct, it must be in a quite contrary strain: 'Knowing the terrors of this world, and having them in our power, we do not persuade men, but force their outward profession against their inward persuasion.' Now, wherever this is practised, whether in a great degree or a small, in that place there is so far a change from a kingdom which is not of this world, to a kingdom which is of this world. As soon as ever you hear of any of the engines of this world, whether of the greater or the lesser sort, you must immediately think that then, and so far, the kingdom of this world takes place. For, if the very essence of God's worship be spirit and truth, if religion be virtue and charity, under the belief of a Supreme Governor and Judge, if true real faith cannot be the effect of force, and if there can be no reward where there is no willing choice then, in all or any of these cases, to apply force or flattery, worldly pleasure or pain, is to act Thus it is in the north, as well as the south; abroad, as well as at home. All maintain the exercise of the same authority in themselves, which yet they know not how so much as to speak of without ridicule in others. In England it stands thus: The synod of Dort is of no weight; it determined many doctrines wrong. The assembly of Scotland hath nothing of a true authority; and is very much out in its scheme of doctrines, worship, and government. But the church of England is vested with all authority, and justly challengeth all obedience. If one crosses a river in the north, there it stands thus: The church of England is not enough reformed; its doctrines, worship, and government, have too much of antichristian Rome in them. But the kirk of Scotland hath a divine right from its only head, Jesus Christ, to meet and to enact what to it shall seem fit, for the good of his church. Thus, we left you for your enormous unjustifiable claim to an unerring spirit, and have found out a way, unknown to your holiness and your predecessors, of claiming all the rights that belong to infallibility, even whilst we disclaim and abjure the thing itself. As for us of the church of England, if we will believe many of its greatest advocates, we have bishops in a succession as certainly uninterrupted from the apostles, as your church could communicate it to us. And upon this bottom, which makes us a true church, we have a right to separate from you; but no persons living have a right to differ or separate from us. And they, again, who differ from us, value themselves upon something or other in which we are supposed defective, or upon being free from some superfluities which we enjoy; and think it hard, that any will be still going further, and refine upon their scheme of worship and discipline. Thus we have indeed left you; but we have fixed ourselves in your seat, and make no scruple to resemble you in our defences of ourselves and censures of others whenever we think it proper. We have all sufficiently felt the load of the two topics of heresy and schism. We have been persecuted, hanged, burned, massacred (as your holiness well knows) for heretics and schismatics. But all this hath not made us sick of those two words. We can still throw them about us, and play them off upon others, as plentifully and as fiercely as they are dispensed to us from your quarter. It often puts me in mind (your holiness must allow me to be a little ludicrous, if you admit me to your conversation), it often, I say, puts me in mind of a play which I have seen amongst cretics or which, above all others, a difference of opinion is most allowable; such as are acknowledged to be very abstruse and unintelligible, and to have been in all ages thought of and judged of with the same difference and variety. CHARLES LESLIE. CHARLES LESLIE (1650-1722), author of a work still popular, A Short and Easy Method with the Deists, was a son of a bishop of Clogher, who is said to have been of a Scottish family. Educated at Trinity college, Dublin, Charles Leslie studied the rom Charles Leslie. some merry people: a man strikes his next neigh-law in London, but afterwards turned his attention to bour with all his force, and he, instead of returning it to the man who gave it, communicates it, with equal zeal and strength, to another; and this to another; and so it circulates, till it returns perhaps to him who set the sport agoing. Thus your holiness begins the attack. You call us heretics and schismatics, and burn and destroy us as such; though, God know there is no starously, than those who think and speak as their superiors bid them. But so it is. You thunder out the sentence against us. We think it ill manners to give it you back again; but we throw it out upon the next brethren that come in our way; and they upon others: and so it goes round, till some perhaps have sense and courage enough to throw it back upon those who first began the disturbance by pretending to authority where there can be none. We have not indeed now the power of burning heretics, as our forefathers of the Reformation had. The civil power hath taken away the act which continued that glorious privilege to them, upon the remonstrance of several persons that they could not sleep whilst that act was awake. But then, everything on this side death still remains untouched to us: we can molest, harass, imprison, and ruin any man who pretends to be wiser than his betters. And the more unspotted the man's character is, the more necessary we think it to take such crushing methods. Since the toleration hath been authorised in these nations, the legal zeal of men hath fallen the heavier upon heretics (for it must always, it seems, be exercised upon some sort of persons or other); and amongst these, chiefly upon such as differ from us in points in divinity, and in 1680 took orders. As chancellor of |