their obedience. For though a rule of right may direct the Philosopher to a principle of action; and the point of honour may keep up the thing called Manners amongst Gentlemen; yet nothing but Religion can ever fix a sober standard of behaviour amongst the common People.

But those bad effects not immediately appearing, our Politicians were so little apprehensive that the matter had already gone too far, that they thought of nothing but how to improve some cOLLATERAL advantages they had procured by the bargain; which, amongst other uses, they saw likewise, would be sure to keep things in the condition to which they were reduced. For now Religion having lost its hold on the People; the Ministers of Religion were of no further consequence to the State; nor were Statesmen any longer under the hard necessity of seeking out the most eminent, for the honours of their Profession: And without necessity, how few would submit to such a drudgery! For Statesmen of a certain pitch are naturally apprehensive of a little sense, and not easily brought, whether from experience or conviction, to form ideas of a great deal of gratitude, in those they have to deal with. All went now according to their wishes. They could now employ Church-honours more directly to the use of Government, that is, of their own, by conferring them on such subjects as most gratified their taste or humour, or served best to strengthen their connexions with the Great. This would of course give the finishing stroke to their System. For though stripping the Church of all power and authority, and exposing it naked and defenceless to its enemies, had abated men's reverence for it; and the detecting Revelation of imposture, serving only for a State-engine, had destroyed all love for Religion; yet they were the INTRIGUES OF CHURCH-PROMOTION which would make the People despise the whole Ordi

nance.

Nor did the hopes of a better generation give much relief to good men's present fears or feelings. The People had been reasoned out of their Religion, by such Logic as it was: and if ever they were to be brought back to a sober sense of their condition, it was evident they must be reasoned into it again. Little thought and less

E3

less learning were sufficient to persuade men of what their vices inclined them to believe; but it must be no common share of both, which, in opposition to those vices, shall be able to bring them to themselves. And where is that to be expected, or likely to be found? In the course of forty or fifty years (for I am not speaking of present transactions) a new Generation or two are sprung up: And those, whom their Profession has dedicated to this service, Experience has taught, that the talents requisite for pushing their fortune lie very remote from such as enable men to figure in a rational defence of Religion. And it is very natural to think that, in general, they will be chiefly disposed to cultivate those qualities on which they see their Patrons lay the greatest weight.

I have, my Lord, been the longer and the plainer in deducing the causes of a recent evil, for the sake of doing justice to the ENGLISH CLERGY; who in this instance, as in many others, have been forced to bear the blame of their Betters. How common is it to hear the irreligion of the times ascribed to the vices or the indiscretions of Churchmen! Yet how provoking is such an insult! when every child knows that this accusation is only an Echo from the lewd clamours of those very Scribblers whose flagitious writings have been the principal cause of these disorders.

In this disastrous state of things, it was my evil stars which inclined me to write. I began, as these Politicians had done, with the CHURCH. My purpose, I am not ashamed to own, was to repel the cruel inroads made upon its Rights and Privileges; but, I thank God, on honester principles than those which have been employed to prop up, with Gothic buttresses, a Jacobite or High-Church Hierarchy. The success was what I might expect. I was read; and by a few indifferent and intelligent Judges, perhaps, approved. But as I made the CHURCH neither a Slave nor a Tyrant (and under one or other of these ideas of it, almost all men had now taken party) The Alliance between Church and State, though formed upon a Model actually existing before our eyes, was considered as an Utopian refinement. It is true, that so far as my own private satis

faction

faction went, I had no great reason to complain. I had the honour to be told by the heads of one Party, that they allowed ny principles*; and by the heads of the other, that they espoused my conclusion; which however amounted only to this, that the One was for LIBERTY, however they would chuse to employ it; and the Other for POWER, however they could come at it.

I had another important view in writing this book.Though nobody had been so shameless to deny the use of Religion to civil Government, yet certain friends of Liberty, under the terror of the mischiefs done to Society by Fanaticism, or Religion run mad, had, by a strange preposterous policy, encouraged a clamour against ESTABLISHMENTS: the only mode of Religion which can prevent what they pretended to fear; that is, its degenerating into Fanaticism. It is true, had these Clamourers not found more enemies to the Establishment than they had made, (enemies on solider grounds, to wit, the sense of their exclusion from the emoluments of a national Church) an Establishment had hardly given umbrage to the appointed Protectors of it. But these had the Sectaries to caress: and a private and pressing interest will often get the better of the most indispensable maxims of good policy.

It was for this reason, my Lord, that so much of the book is employed in the defence of a national or an established Religion; since, under such a Form, FANATICISM can never greatly spread: and that little there will always be of this critical eruption of our diseased Nature, may have the same good effect on the Established Religion which weak Factions are observed to have on the administration of Government; it may keep men more decent, alert, and attentive to the duties of their Charge.

Where then was the wonder, that a subject so managed, and at such a juncture, should be violently opposed, or, to speak more truly, be grossly misrepresented? Those in the new system accused me of making the State a slave to the Church; those in the old, of making the Church a slave to the State: and one passionate Declaimer, as I remember, who cared equally * Bishop Ho. + Bishop Sh.

for Church and State, was pleased to say, that, the better to inter mankind, I had done both *.

Having thus, in the foolish confidence of Youth, cast in my Goosequill, to stem a torrent that in a little time. was to bear down all before it; I proceeded, with the same good faith, in another romantic effort, The support of RELIGION itself.

You, my Lord, who feel so humanely for the Injured, on whomsoever POPULAR INJUSTICE may chance to fall, have hardly forgotten the strange reception with which this my fair endeavour was entertained; and principally by Those whose interests I was defending. It awaked a thousand black passions and idiot prejudices. The Zealots inflamed the Bigots.

-'Twas the Time's plague,

When madmen led the blind.

For, the noble prosecution of real Impiety was now over; or, at least, no longer serious. What remained, to belie a zeal for Religion, was a ridiculous Tartuffism; ridiculous, because without the power to persecute: otherwise, sufficiently serious, as it was encouraged by men, at that time, in eminence of placet. For false Zeal and unbelieving Politics always concur, and often find their account in suppressing NOVELTIES.

But things, unnaturally kept up in a state of violence, in a little time subside: And though the first Writers, let loose against me, came on as if they would devour; yet the design of those who, at spring and fall, have ever since annually succeeded them, has been, I think, only to eat. The imputation that yet sticks to my notions, amongst many well-meaning men, is, that they are PARADOXICAL. And though this be now made the characteristic of my Writings, yet, whether from the amusement which Paradoxes afford, or from whatever other cause of malice or curiosity, the Public seem still sufficiently eager to see what, in spite of the Argument, and perhaps in spite to it, they arc pleased to call my CONCLUSION. And as in your Lordship's progress through your high Stations (for I will not take my comparison lower while my subject is public favour) men no + Archbishop P...

* Lord B.

sooner

sooner found you in one than they saw you necessary for a higher; so every preceding Volume seemed to excite a stronger appetite for the following; till, as I am told, it came to a kind of impatience for the last: which must have been strangely obstinate if in all this time it has not subsided. And yet it is very possible it may not: For, the good-natured pleasure of seeing an Author fill up the measure of his Paradoxes, is worth waiting for. Of all men, I would not appear vain before your Lordship; since, of all men, You best know how ill it would become my pride. Nor am I indeed in much danger to have my head turned by this flattering circumstance, while I remember that RABELAIS tells us, and I dare say he tells us truth, that the Public of his times were full as impatient for the conclusion of the unfinished story of the giant Gargantua and his son Pantagruel.

I have now, both leisure and inclination to gratify this Public fancy, after having put my last hand to these two Volumes: A work of reasoning; and though fairly pursued, and, as I thought, brought home to its CONCLUSION, yet interspersed with variety of Philologic dissertations For I had to do with a sort of Readers not less delicate than the fastidious Frenchman, who tells us in so many words, that-La RAISON a tort des qu'elle ENNUYE. As my purpose therefore was to bring Reason into good Company, I saw it proper now and then, to make her wait without, lest by her constant presence she should happen to be thought tiresome. Yet still I was careful not to betray her rights: and the Dissertations brought in to relieve the oppressed attention of the Reader, was not more for his sake than for hers. If I was large in my discourse concerning the nature and end of the Grecian MYSTERIES, it was to shew the sense the antient Lawgivers had of the use of Religion to Society and if I expatiated on the origin and use of the Egyptian HIEROGLYPHICS, it was to vindicate the logical propriety of the Prophetic language and sentiment. For I should have been ashamed to waste so much time in classical amusements, and at last to join them to your Lordship's Name, had they not had an intimate relation to the things most connected with Man and his interests.