entertained by their pious auditors of both fexes, that they hardly know what it is to dine or fup at home. Hence they luxuriate in fuperfluities, rather than languish in want; their wives and children vie with the wives and children of the rich in luxury and refinement; and to have increased this tendency to prodigality, by an addition to their revenue, would have been the fame as to infufe new poifon into the church; a fort of peftilential malady, the introduction of which a voice from heaven lamented under Conftantine. We have next to give an account of our enormities towards God, which principally concern our truft in the divine affiftance, our prayers and fasts. But, vile mifcreant! I will refute you out of your own mouth; and retort upon you that text of the Apostle, "Who art thou that judgeft another man's fervant?" Before our own master let us ftand or fall. I will add alfo that faying of the prophet, "When I afflict my foul with fafting, this is turned to my reproach." The reft of your delirious effufions on this fubject, which no one will take the trouble to read twice, I should do wrong to detail. Nor are those things more to the purpose, which you brawl out concerning our fucceffes. Beware, fir, beware, left, after your Pontian toils, you should fwell into a polypus of corpulency; and we need be under apprehenfions, left as the great Salamafius lately did, you fhould chill the baths. On the nature of fuccefs I will fay a few words. Success neither proves a caufe to be good, nor indicates it to be bad; and we demand that our caufe fhould not be judged by the event, but the event by the caufe. You now enter on political difcuffions, the injuries which we have done to all kings, and to all people. What injuries? for we never intended any; the affairs of our own government alone occupied our attention, we neglected those of others; we do not envy the good that may have accrued from our example, and we can afcribe the evil only to the abuse or mifapplication of our principles. But, what kings or people ever appointed you to proclaim their injuries? Indeed others have heard their orators and ambaffadors in the fenate, and I have often heard them in the council, not only not complaining of any grievances, but voluntarily

fuing for our friendfhip and alliance. In the name of their kings and princes, they have often congratulated us on the state of our affairs, praying for the ftability of our government and the continuance of our profperity. This was not the language of hoftility or hatred, as you affert; and you must either neceffarily be convicted of falsehood, at which you never ftick, or kings themfelves of an infincerity and diffimulation, the moft humiliating and most bafe. But you object to our confeffion, that we had fet a falutary example to all people, and a formidable one to all tyrants. This is furely as heinous a crime as if any one were to say,

Advis'd, learn juftice, and revere the gods.

Could any thing be uttered more pernicious? This was the language of Cromwell to the Scots after the battle of Dunbar. And worthy indeed was it of him and of that noble victory. "The infamous pages of Milton abound with the fame noisome ingredients." You always affociate me with fome illustrious colleague; and, on this occafion, you make me his equal, if not his fuperior; fo that I might on this account think myself moft honoured by you, if any thing honourable could proceed from you. "But those pages," you fay, "were burnt at Paris by the hands of the common hangman, and by the orders of the parliament." I find that this was by no means done by the fenate, but by one of the city officers, of what description I know not, but at the inftigation of the clergy, those indolent vermin, who faw at a distance the fate which menaced, and which, I pray, may one day overtake their gluttony and extravagance. Do you imagine that we, in our turn, could not have burnt Salamafius's defence of the king? I could myself easily have obtained this permiffion from the magiftrates, if I had thought that it merited any thing but contempt. You, in your endeavours to extinguish one fire by another, have only erected an Herculean pile, from which I fhall rife with more luftre and renown; we with more difcretion, did not think it right to communicate any animating heat to the icy chilliness of the royal vindication. But I wonder that the Thouloufians fhould have become fo degenerate, that Ee 4

a de.

a defence of religion and of liberty fhould be burnt in a city, in which, under the Counts of Raymond, religion and liberty were formerly fo nobly defended. "And I wifh," you fay, "that the writer had been burned as well." Is this your difpofition, flave? But you have taken good care that I fhould not indulge a fimilar wish towards you; for you have been long wafting in blacker flames. Your confcience is fcorched by the flames of adultery and rape, and of thofe perjuries, by the help of which you debauched an unfufpecting girl, to whom you promised marriage, and then abandoned to defpair. You are writhing under the flames of that mercenary paffion, which impelled you, though covered with crimes, to lust after the functions of the priesthood, and to pollute the confecrated elements with your inceftuous touch. While you are acting the hypocrite, you utter the most horrid imprecations against hypocrify; and every fentence of condemnation only ferves to condemn yourself. Such are the attrocities, fuch the infamy, with which you are all on fire; thefe are the infuriated flames, by which you are tormented night and day; and you fuffer a punishment, than which even your bitterest foe, could not invoke one more fevere. In the mean time, not one hair of my head is finged by the conflagrations which you kiindle; but thofe affronts are ballanced by much delight, and many sweets. One tribunal perhaps, or a single Parifian executioner, under fome unlucky biafs, burnt my book; but nevertheless, how many good and wife men through all France read it, cherished and admired it? How many, through the spacious tracts of Germany, the domicile of freedom, and wherever any traces of freedom yet remain ? Moreover Greece itself, and Athens, the eye of Greece, mingles its applaufe in the voice of its noble Philyras. And this I can truly say that, as foon as my defence appeared, and had begun to excite the public curiosity, there was no public functionary of any prince or ftate then in the city, who did not congratulate me when we accidentally met, who did not defire my company at his house or visit me at mine. But it would be wrong not to mention you, O Adrian Paul, the honour and the ornament of Holland, who, dispatched on a fplendid embaffy to us,

though

though I had never the pleasure of feeing you, fent me frequent affurances of your extraordinary predilection and regard. This it often delights me to recollect, and which could never have happened without the fpecial appointment of the Deity, that royalty itself courteously favoured me, who had apparently written against kings; and afforded to my integrity and veracity, a teftimony next to the divine. For, why fhould I fear to say this, when I confider how zealously and how highly all perfons extol that illuftrious queen? Nor do I think, that he who was the wifest of the Athenians, and with whom I by no means wish to compare myself, was more honoured by the teftimony of the Phythian oracle, than I am by the approbation of fuch a queen. If this had happened to me, when a young man, and orators might have taken the fame liberties as poets, I fhould not have hesitated to prefer my fate to that of fome of the gods themselves; for, while they contended for the prize of beauty or harmony before a human judge, I, in the most glorious of all contests, had the palm of victory adjudged to me by the voice of an immortal. Thus honoured and careffed, no one but a common hangman would dare to treat me with difrefpect; and fuch an one has both done it and caused it to be done. Here you take great pains, as Salamafius had done before, to prevent us from juftifying our ftruggles for liberty by the example of the Dutch; but the fame answer will ferve for both. They are mistaken who think that we want any example to direct us. We often found it neceffary to cherish and fupport, but never to rival the Dutch in their struggles for liberty. If any extraordinary courage in the defence of liberty be requifite, we are wont, not to follow others, but to go before them and to lead the way. But you also employ the most paltry oratory, and the most flimfy arguments, to induce the French to go to war with us. "The fpirit of the French," you fay, "will never deign to receive our ambaffadors." It has deigned, which is much more, voluntarily to fend ambaffadors three or four times The French therefore are as noble minded as ufual; but you are degenerate and fpurious, and your politics betray as much ignorance as falfehood. Hence,

to us,

you

you attempt to demonftrate that "the negotiation of the United States was purpofely protracted, because they wifhed neither to treat with us, nor to go to war with us." But it certainly behoves their High Mightineffes not to fuffer their counfels to be thus expofed, and, I may fay, traduced by a Genevefe fugitive; who, if they fuffer him any longer to remain among them, will not only debauch their women but their counfels. For they profefs the most unfeigned amity; and have lately renewed a peace with us, of which it is the wifh of all good men that it may be perpetual. "It was pleafant," he fays, "to fee how thofe ruffian ambaffadors," he means the English, "had to contend with the mockery and the menace of the English royalists, but chiefly of the Dutch." If we had not thoroughly known to whom the murder of our former ambaffador, Doriflaus, and the affronts which were offered to our two other ambaffadors are to be ascribed, we might well exclaim, lo! a flanderous informant, who falfely accufes the very persons, by whofe bounty he is fed! Will you any longer, O Batavians! cherish and fupport a man, who, not contented with practising the moft infamous debaucheries in the church, wifhes to introduce the most fanguinary butchery into the state; who, not only expofes you to violate the laws of nations, but falfely imputes to you the guilt of fuch violations?

The laft head of his accufations is, "our injuries to the reformed churches." But how our injuries towards them, rather than theirs towards us? For if you recur to examples, and turn over the annals of history from the Waldenfes and the Thouloufians to the famine of Rochelle, you will find that we, of all churches, have been the last to take up arms against tyranny; but the firft" to bring the tyrant to a fcaffold." Truly, because we were the firft who had it in our power; and I think that they hardly know what they would have done if they had experienced fimilar opportunities. Indeed I am of opinion, that he against whom we wage war, muft neceffarily, and as long as we have any use of reason, be judged an enemy; but it has always been as lawful to put an enemy to death, as to attack him with the fword. Since then a tyrant is not only our enemy, but the public enemy

of