ally; befides bringing up, and educating yourself, trife and family, free-coft; as I can prove, fave Seventeen fhillings Nine-pence Three-farthings to the indigent every Christmas, have all my incomes bringing daily increase in our funds, I have, through the efficacy of this divine book, three, flocks, who, by their daily free-offerings, fupport my family, whom I from their infancy bring up to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. Hoft. I find you intend playing the like miferly trick, that I whilft abroad fhall provide you freecoft, as your poor déluded flocks are compelled to do at home; true it is, that you parfons tie up the mouth of the ox that tread your corn. your corn. You put heavy burdens on the poor flocks, whilft yourselves fwell like porpoifes, or fea-hogs, with fqueezing them to the laft mite. SIXTH CONFERENCE. His Reverence Mr. Luther to his dearly beloved in God, the Reverend Rabbi Mofes, full Health, and Apoftolick Benediction, Greeting. I wail and lament the blind and lukewarm flate of my fellow-creatures, and am anxious for Fearned and zealous gospel-labourers; as fuch I hold you; to be placed in the vineyard of our Sion. I therefore confider it faithful to prepare you for this noble work; you will accordingly attend at the ufual hour, and please to finifh the great work of falvation; and, as another Mathias, fupply the place of Calvin, as he did Judas, who fell by tranfgreffion: fo Calvin; my Dear Reverend Brother has fell; he has really reconciled himself to the Catholic Church, and is fet out for Bruffels to become Religious in a Convent of Friars. I regret the lofs of fo noble a companion, who was at all times a jovial friend. Rabbi Mofes will attend the Reverend Mr. Luther to-morrow, as defired; begs the presence of the Catholick boy as before; he seemingly have some knowledge to fatisfy in his own tenets. Adieu. Enter Mofes, Luther, Boy and Notaries. Luth. Hi ho! poor unhappy man. Boy. Has any tidings from England disturbed you, Sir!ura Mof. Your flocks are well, we hope. Luth. Calvin! Calvin! Calvin! how treacheFous? to quit and lay the reckoning on me. I have hitherto discharged my bills without expence, and brought up my family free-coft; but I am at laft catched by a Papift-Calvinist, the two that I hate. Boy. Pray, Sir, do not furmife that you will fuffer by Mr. Calvin's departure. Mof. If Calvin's change be diffimulation, I become upon the spot a milanthrope. Luth. A contrivance betwixt two Calvinifts, my hoft and pot-compánion, to get at my gool. per annum, which I have preferved, feeding myfelf and family on the benefactions of my dear flocks, my three milch-cows. If I am kidnapped, I am ruined; to die is far more defireable, than to break even one mite into my darling, the uprifing and down laying, my first and laft thoughts, the Bishopric of Canterbury excepted. No, if I cannot get off, I am refolved, rather of the two evils, to rot in gaol, with my darling fpoufe, than pine and die afkeleton with grief. Mof. Mof. pray, the you are. fhort, my purse bill amount to? if Sir, is at your command; make use of me, as you please. Boy. Mr. Calvin, who is joint-debtor in this matter, has given orders by me to his Banker, to fatisfy to the amount of one hundred guineas on his account. Luth: You fpeak as the Herald or laft trump, Arife you dead; you have quickened me without mercy; you have his letter? his account with our hoft is about 25. I have charges against him to the amount of the furplus. Mof. We will call up the hoft to know his de.. mand, as I love juftice; as you arrived together, and were pot-companions, I fuppose you are at equal expences. Luth. Provided he had remained as he was; but becoming Papist, he has fubjected himself to the penal statutes and, as the Scripture well obferves, There is no peace to the wicked, faith, the Lord. So that as a parfon, I am, according to my cloth, being bound tooth and nail, against Papifts, to demand his money wherever it is forth coming. I therefore demand, Boy, his order to his Banker. It is an old faying, that it is an ill wind that blows no one good. Mof. Your boaft is, that your Proteftant reli gion is founded on principles of universal toleration and benevolence. If you have penal acts, your boasting bears the face in this, as in the reft or other parts, of your reformed fyftem: but take this with you, that you are in a strange land, and do not expose your avarice and contemptible fpirit; fpirit; the account betwixt you fhall be adjusted; Calvin will discharge his part, and you the remainder. Boy. What are the errors of Popery? Luth. Numberless; in fhort the whole fyftem; to enumerate, we must begin, if you will, at either end and take peg by peg, and piece by piece, until we have fapped, deftroyed, undermined, and taken away, both root and branch, fo that not a veltige or footftep may appear, and then dig and wash the earth, as that groveling worm there before us bathes the floor with his crocodile tears. Boy. The ground, or foundation, of the chriftian covenant, in communion with the Chair of Peter, is CHRIST; if you reject the foundation, you reject christianity. Luth Proteftants reject the evil and retain the good: this is a mystery known to none but our felves, that if there be two principles in the Creator, one good, the other evil, which laft Peter's Chair has embraced, is no detriment to the infal libility, it being equal in both Boy. What you advance as the principle and ground of the Proteftant, religion, that Almighty good and evil, implies a God is infallible, bot futes itself, and gravels contradiction, which in the same absurdity, repugnant and ridiculous in the extreme, as is let forth by others of the fame family; That the infallibility, according to the Scripture-promiles and Chrift to his Church, which are comprised in the Creeds, remained always, at all times, through every age from her elta |