the least; even the eating of fish and forbidding flesh in Lent. So that it is faith they regard more than charity, a right belief more than a holy life; and for this you shall be with them upon terms easy enough, provided you go not a hair's breadth from any thing of her belief. For if you do, they have provided for you two deaths and two fires, both inevitable and one eternal. And this certainly is one of the greatest evils, of which the church of Rome is guilty: for this in itself is the greatest and unworthiest uncharitableness. But the procedure is of great use to their ends. For the greatest part of Christians are those that can not consider things leisurely and wisely, searching their bottoms and discovering their causes, or foreseeing events which are to come after; but are carried away by fear and hope, by affection and prepossession: and therefore the Roman doctors are careful to govern them as they will be governed. If you dispute, you gain, it may be, one, and lose five; but if you threaten them with damnation, you keep them in fetters; for they that are in fear of death, are all their lifetime in bondage,* saith the apostle and there is in the world nothing so potent as fear of the two deaths which are the two arms and grapples of iron by which the church of Rome takes and keeps her timorous or conscientious proselytes. The easy protestant calls upon you from Scripture to do your duty, to build a holy life upon a holy faith, the faith of the apostles and first disciples of our Lord: he tells you if you err, and teaches ye the truth; and if ye will obey, it is well; if not, he tells you of your sin, and that all sin deserves the wrath of God; but judges no man's person, much less any states of men. He knows that God's judgments are righteous and true; but he knows also, that his mercy absolves many persons, who, in his just judgment, were condemned: and if he had a warrant from God to say, that he should destroy all the papists, as Jonas had concerning the Ninevites; yet he remembers that every repentance, if it be sincere, will do more, and prevail greater, and last longer than God's anger will. Besides these things, there is a strange spring, and secret principle in every man's understanding, that it is oftentimes turned about by such impulses, of which no man can give an account. But we all remember a most wonderful instance of it in the disputation between the two Reynoldses, John and William; the former of

*Heb. ii. 15.

which being a papist, and the latter a protestant, met and disputed, with a purpose to confute and to convert each other. And so they did for those arguments which were used, prevailed fully against their adversary, and yet did not prevail with themselves. The papist turned protestant, and the protestant became a papist, and so remained to their dying day. Of which some ingenious person gave a most handsome account in the following excellent epigram:

Bella inter geminos plusquam civilia fratres
Traxerat ambiguus religionis apex.

Ille reformatæ fidei pro partibus instat;
Iste reformandam denegat esse fidem.
Propositis causæ rationibus, alter utrinque
Concurrere pares, et cecidere pares.

Quod fuit in votis, fratrem capit alter uterque;
Quod fuit in fatis, perdit uterque fidem.
Captivi gemini sine captivante fuerunt,

Et victor victi transfuga castra petit.

Quod genus hoc pugnæ est, ubi victus gaudet uterque,
Et tamen alteruter se superasse dolet?

But further yet, he considers the natural and regular infirmities of mankind; and God considers them much more; he knows that in man there is nothing admirable but his ignorance and weakness; his prejudice, and the infallible certainty of being deceived in many things: he sees that wicked men oftentimes know much more than many very good men; and that the understanding is not of itself considerable in morality, and effects nothing in rewards and punishments; it is the will only that rules man and can obey God. He sees and deplores it, that many men study hard and understand little; that they dispute earnestly and understand not one another at all; that affections creep so certainly, and mingle with their arguing, that the argument is lost, and nothing remains but the conflict of two adversaries' affections; that a man is so willing, so easy, so ready to believe what makes for his opinion, so hard to understand an argument against himself, that it is plain it is the principle within, not the argument without, that determines him. He observes also that all the world (a few individuals excepted) are unalterably determined to the religion of their country, of their family, of their society; that there is never any considerable change made, but what is made by war and empire, by fear and hope. He re

members that it is a rare thing to see a Jesuit of the Dominican opinion, or a Dominican (until of late) of the Jesuit; but every order gives laws to the understanding of their novices, and they never change. He considers there is such ambiguity in words, by which all lawgivers express their meaning; that there is such abstruseness in mysteries of religion, that some things are so much too high for us, that we can not understand them rightly; and yet they are so sacred, and concerning, that men will think they are bound to look into them, as far as they can; that it is no wonder if they quickly go too far, where no understanding, if it were fitted for it, could go far enough; but in these things it will be hard not to be deceived, since our words can not rightly express those things; that there is such variety of human understandings, that men's faces differ not so much as their souls; and that if there were not so much difficulty in things, yet they could not but be variously apprehended by several men. And hereto he considers, that in twenty opinions, it may be that not one of them is true; nay, whereas Varro reckoned that among the old philosophers there were eight hundred opinions concerning the summum bonum, that yet not one of them hit the right. He sees also that in all religions, in all societies, in all families, and in all things, opinions differ; and since opinions are too often begot by passion, by passions and violence they are kept; and every man is too apt to overvalue his own opinion; and out of a desire that every man should conform his judgment to his that teaches, men are apt to be earnest in their persuasion, and overact the proposition; and from being true as he supposes, he will think it profitable; and if you warm him either with confidence or opposition, he quickly tells you it is necessary; and as he loves those that think as he does, so he is ready to hate them that do not ; and then secretly from wishing evil to him, he is apt to believe evil will come to him; and that it is just it should; and by this time the opinion is troublesome, and puts other men upon their guard against it; and then while passion reigns, and reason is modest and patient, and talks not loud like a storm, victory is more regarded than truth, and men call God into the party, and his judgments are used for arguments, and the threatenings of the Scripture are snatched up in haste, and men throw arrows, firebrands, and death, and by this time all the world is in an uproar, All this, and a thousand things more the English protestants con

sidering deny not their communion to any Christian who desires it, and believes the apostles' creed, and is of the religion of the first four general councils; they hope well of all that live well ; they receive into their bosom all true believers of what church soever; and for them that err, they instruct them, and then leave them to their liberty, to stand or fall before their own master."

have

2. A doctrine not the less safe for being the more charitable. "Christ our Lord hath given us, amongst others, two infallible notes to know the church. My sheep, saith he, hear my voice:t and again, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.‡—What! shall we stand upon conjectural arguments from that which men say? We are partial to ourselves, malignant to our opposites. Let Christ be heard who be his, who not. And for the hearing of his voice-O that it might be the issue! But I see you decline it, therefore I leave it also for the present. That other is that which now I stand upon, the badge of Christ's sheep.' Not a likelihood, but a certain token whereby every man may know them by this, saith he, shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye charity one towards another.--Thanks be to God, this mark of our Saviour is in us, which you with our schismatics and other enemies want. As Solomon found the true mother by her natural affection, that chose rather to yield to her adversary's plea, claiming her child, than endure that it should be cut in pieces; so may it soon be found at this day whether is the true mother. Ours, that faith, give her the living child and kill him not; or yours, that if she may not have it, is content it be killed rather than want of her will. 'Alas!' (saith ours even of those that leave her) these be my children! I have borne them to Christ in baptism I have nourished them as I could with mine own breasts, his testaments. I would have brought them up to man's estate, as their free birth and parentage deserves. Whether it be their lightness or discontent, or her enticing words and gay shows, they leave me they have found a better mother. Let them live yet, though in bondage. I shall have patience; I I permit the care of them to their father; I beseech him to keep them that they do no evil. If they make their peace with him,

* Dissuasive from Popery. Part II.—B. i. s. 7.—Ed.

John x. 27.-Ed.

Ib. xiii. 35.-Ed.

I am satisfied they have not hurt me at all.' Nay,' but saith yours, 'I sit alone as queen and mistress of Christ's family, he that hath not me for his mother, can not have God for his father. Mine, therefore, are these, either born or adopted; and if they will not be mine, they shall be none. So without expecting Christ's sentence she cuts with the temporal sword, hangs, burns, draws, those that she perceives inclined to leave her, or have left her already. So she kills with the spiritual sword those that are subject not to her, yea, thousands of souls that not only have no means so to do, but many which never so much as have heard whether there be a pope of Rome or no. Let our Solomon be judge between them, yea, judge you, Mr. Waddesworth! more seriously and maturely, not by guesses, but by the very mark of Christ, which wanting yourselves, you have unawares discovered in us judge, I say, without passion and partiality, according to Christ's word, which is his flock, which is his church."*

ESSAY XIII.

ON THE LAW OF NATIONS.

Πρὸς πόλεως εὐδαιμονίαν καὶ δικαιοσύνην πάντα ἰδιώτον ἔμπροσθεν τέτακται φύσει τούτων δὲ τὰ μὲν ἀνθρώπινα εἰς τὰ θεῖα, τὰ δὲ θεῖα εἰς τὸν ἡγεμόνα νοῦν ξύμπαντα δεῖ βλέπειν, οὐχ ὡς πρὸς ἀρετῆς τὶ μόριον, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἀρετὴν ἐν ἀρεταῖς ἀεὶ ὑπομενοῦσαν, ὡς πρὸς νόμον τίνα νομοθετοῦντα.

PLATO.

For all things that regard the well-being and justice of a state are pre-ordained and established in the nature of the individual. Of these it behooves that the merely human (the temporal and fluxional) should be referred and subordinated to the divine in man, and the divine in like manner to the Supreme Mind, so however that the state is not to regulate its actions by reference to any particular form and fragments of virtue, but must fix its eye on that virtue, which is the abiding spirit and (as it were) substratum in all the virtues, as on a law that is itself legislative.

Ir were absurd to suppose, that individuals should be under a law of moral obligation, and yet that a million of the same in* Letter to a friend who had deserted the Church of England for that of Rome.-Ed.