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when severe laws were rigorously executed against Dissenters. No tumults or disorders had been heard of in any part of the kingdom these eleven years, since that act passed and yet the much greater part of the clergy studied to blow up this fire again, which seemed to be now, as it were, covered over with ashes." Vol. iv. p. 474.

"The clergy continued to be much divided; all moderate divines were looked upon by some hot men with an ill eye, as persons who were cold and indifferent in the matters of the church: that which flowed from a gentleness, both of temper and principle, was represented as an inclination to favour dissenters, which passed among many, for a more heinous thing than leaning to popery itself. Those men, who began now to be called the high-church party, had all along expressed a coldness, if not an opposition to the present settlement. Soon after the Revolution, some great preferments had been given among them, to try if it was possible to bring them to be hearty for the governinent: but it appearing, that they were soured with a leaven, that had gone too deep to be wrought out, a stop was put to the courting them any more. When they saw preferments went in another channel, they set up a complaint over England of the want of convocations, that they were not allowed to sit nor act with a free liberty, to consider of the grievances of the clergy, and of the danger the church was in. This was a new pretension, never thought of since the Reformation: some books were writ to justify it, with great acrimony of style, and a strain of insolence, that was peculiar to one Atterbury, who had indeed very good parts, great learning, and was an excellent preacher, and had many extraordinary things in him; but was both ambitious and virulent out of measure; and had a singular talent in asserting paradoxes with a great air of assurance, shewing no shame when he was detected in them, though this was done in many instances; but he let all these pass, without either confessing his errore, or pretending to justify himself: he went on still venting new falsehoods in so barefaced a manner, that he seemed to have outdone the Jesuits themselves. He thought the government had so little strength or credit, that any claim against it would be well received. He attacked the supremacy of the Crown, with relation to ecclesiastical matters, which had been hitherto maintained by all our divines with great zeal. But now the hot men of the clergy did so readily entertain his notions, that in them it appeared those who are the most earnest in the defence of certain points, when these seem to be for them, can very nimbly change their minds upon a change of circumstances."-Vol. iv. P. 478.

In 1701, he says, The greater part of the clergy were in no good temper; they hated the toleration, and were heavily charged with the taxes, which made them very uneasy; and this disposed them to be soon inflamed by those, who were seeking out all

possible methods to disorder our affairs. They hoped to have engaged them against the supremacy, and reckoned, that in the feeble state to which the government was now brought, they might hope either to wrest it quite from the Crown, and then it would fall into the management of the House of Commons; or if the king should proceed against them according to the statute, and sue them in a premunire, this might unite the clergy into such an opposition to the government, as would probably throw us into great convulsions. But many aspiring men among them, had no other design but to force themselves into preferment, by the opposition they made."--Vol. v. p. 545.

In this year began the memorable contests about the bill against -occasional conformity. Accordingly in this bill, which was brought into parliament by the church party, and in favour of which the clergy exerted themselves to raise the greatest fermeut in the nation, it was to be enacted that," all those who took the sacrament and test (which by the Act passed in the year 1673, was made necessary to those who held offices of trust, or were magistrates in corporations, but was only to be taken once by them) and did, after that, go to the meetings of dissenters, or any meeting for religious worship, that was not according to the Liturgy or practice of the Church of England, where five persons were present, more than the family, were disabled from holding their employments, and were to be fined in an hundred pounds, and in five pounds a day for every day, in which they continued to act in their employments, after their having been at any such meeting. They were also made incapable to hold any other employment, till after one whole year's conformity to the church, which was to be proved at the Quarter session. Upon a relapse, the penalty and the time of incapacity were doubted; no limitation of time was put in the bill, nor of the way in which the offence was to be proved. But whereas, the Act of Test only included the magistrates in corporations, all the inferior officers or freemen in corporations, who were found to have some interest in the elections, were now comprehended within this bill,”—Vol. v., p. 652.

The question was re-agitated in 1703. Bishop Burnett says, "I was desired to print what I said upon that occasion, which drew many virulent pamphlets upon me, but I answered none of them. I saw the Jacobites designed to raise such a flame among us, as might make it scarcely possible to carry on the war; those who went not so deep, yet designed to make a breach on the toleration by gaining this point: and I was resolved never to be silent, when that should be brought into debate; for I have long looked on liberty of conscience as one of the rights of human nature, antecedent to society, which no man could give up, because it was not in his own power: and our Saviour's rule, of doing as we would be done by, seemed to be a

very express decision to all men, who would lay the matter home to their own conscience, and judge as they would willingly Le judged by others.

"The clergy over England, who were generally inflamed with this matter, could hardly forgive the queen and the prince the coldness that they expressed on this occasion: the lord Godolphin did so positively declare, that he thought the bill unseasonable, and that he had done all he could to hinder its being brought in, that though he voted to give the bill a secoud reading, that did not reconcile the party to him. They set up the Earl of Rochester as the only man to be depended on, who deserved to be the chief minister."-Vol. v. p. 719.

The following is a remarkable passage:-" With this the ses sion of parliament was brought to a quiet conclusion, after much heat and a great deal of contention between the two Houses. The queen, as she thanked them for the supplies, so she again recommended union and moderation to them. These words, which had hitherto carried so good a sound, that all sides pretended to them, were now become so odious to violent men, that even in sermons, chiefly at Oxford, they were arraigned as importing somewhat that was unkind to the church, and that favoured the dissenters. The House of Commons had, during this session, lost much of their reputation, not only with fair and impartial judges, but even with those who were most inclined to favour them. It is true, the body of the freeholders began to be uneasy under the taxes, and to cry out for a peace; and most of the capital gentry of England, who had the most to lose, seemed to be ill-turned, and not to apprehend the dangers we were in, if we should fall under the power of France, and into the hands of the pretended Prince of Wales; or else they were so fatally blinded, as not to see that these must be the consequences of those measures, into which they were engaged.

"The universities, Oxford especially, have been very unhappily successful in corrupting the principles of those who were sent to be bred among them; so that few of them escaped the taint of it, and the generality of the clergy were not only ill-principled but ill-tempered. They exclaimed against all moderation as endangering the church, though it is visible that the church is in no sort of danger, from either the numbers or the interest that the dissenters have among us, who by reason of the toleration are now so quieted, that nothing can keep up any heat in those matters, but the folly and bad humour that the clergy are possessed with, and which they infuse into all those with whom they have credit. But at the same time, though the great and visible danger that hangs over us is from popery, which a miscarriage in the present war must let in upon us, with an inundation not to be either resisted or recovered, they seem to be blind on that side,

and to apprehend and fear nothing from that quarter."-Vol. v., p. 752-54.

The following is a slight instance, but yielding evidence which

is not so.

In 1709 an act passed, "which" says the bishop " was much desired, and had been often attempted, but had been laid aside in so many former parliaments, that there was scarce any hopes left to encourage a new attempt. It was for naturalizing all foreign Protestants, upon their taking the oaths to the government, and their receiving the sacrament in any Protestant church. Those who were against the act, soon perceived that they could have no strength, if they should set themselves directly to oppose it so they studied to limit strangers in the receiving the sacrament to the way of the church of England. . . . . . It was thought best to cast the door as wide open as possible for encouraging strangers. . . . . . But all those who appeared for this large and comprehensive way, were reproached for their coldness and indifference in the concerns of the church; and in that I had a large share; as I spoke copiously for it when it was brought up to the Lords."

Something not less instructive than this passage is the comment of Swift npon the last sentence. It consists of the word "DoG." We shall add the words which immediately follow in the same paragraph. "The bishop of Chester spoke as zealously against it, for he seemed resolved to distinguish himself as a zealot for that which was called high church."

Burnett speaking of the clerical proceedings in the same year, (1709), and the hopes begun to be founded upon the sentiments of the queen, says, "Indeed it was but too visible, that the much greater part of the clergy were in a very ill temper, and under very bad influences; enemies to the toleration, and soured against the dissenters."

(To be continued.)

Subscriptions for Messrs. Perry, Clarke, and Campion, still basely confined in Giltspur-street Compter, in the third year of an imprisonment, for having sold certain books, which are now openly sold, and for selling which, the Ministers and Fanatics have grown so wise, or have been beaten into such good manners, as not to molest the venders.

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Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street.-All Correspondences for "The Republican," to be left at the place of publication.

The Republican.

No. 18. Vol. 14.] LONDON, Friday, Nov. 10, 1826. [Price 6d.

"ON THE DUTIES WHICH GOVERNMENTS OWE TO THE GOVERNED."

FIFTEENTH DISCOURSE,

Delivered before the SOCIETY of UNIVERSAL BENEVOLENCE, in their Chapel, Lothbury, on Sunday, the 5th of November, 1826-By the REV. ROBERT TAYLOR, A. B. and M. R. C, S. Chaplain of the Society, and Orator of the Christian Evidence Society.

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MEN AND BRETHREN,

We have treated of the duties which a man owes to society in general; and to his country in particular: we come now to the consideration of the correlative obligations, in which society in general, and his country in particular, is bound to each individual member of that general society, and subject of that particular

country.

These obligations, like all others, in turn become duties: that is, they are of the nature of those eternal and immutable proprieties and fitnesses of which the failure and defalcation must necessarily involve disorder, mischief, and ruin.

The wise and good man, therefore, is bound to look as much to that which is owed to himself, as to that which he owes; and to be as strict and punctual in claiming what is his due, as in paying what is his debt. It is a wrong to suffer a wrong! And, here again, as in every other instance through which we have pursued this noble science, we find morality and religion utterly irreconcileable with each other, in pitted conflict, in diametrical contradiction. The religious man may be any thing else you please; but, a moral man he never can be: for this sufficient reason, that religion and morality can never exist together; their principles are heterogeneous; their precepts are in every respect, the positive inhibition of each other: that which the one commands, the other forbids. So surely, as the language of religion hath said, "This is praiseworthy if a man endure wrong, suffer

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 62, Fleet-street.

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