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• To the Lower House of Convocation.
• To the Publisher of the Independent Whig.
• Lib. Causarum Per Ann. Dom. 1721.
• To the Reverend Mr. Woods, Episcopal Register, to Be Communicated to the Clergy of This Diocese, 30 Januarii 1721.
• To the Honourable Alexander Horne, Esq; Governor of This Isle: the Remonstrance of Tho. Bp. of Sodor & Mann.
• At Castle Rushen, the 2d of February 1721.
• The Preface.
• The Independent Whig.
• Number I.: The Introduction.
• Number II.: The Design of This Paper.
• Number III.: Of the Contempt of the Clergy.
• Number IV.: Of the Explication of the Scripture.
• Number V.: The Unfitness of the Clergy to Teach Others.
• Number VI.: Of Creeds and Confessions of Faith.
• Number VII.: Of Uninterrupted Succession.
• Number VIII.: Of Uninterrupted Succession. P T . II.
• Number IX.: Of the Clearness of Scripture.
• Number X.: Of Ordination.
• Number XI.: The Advantageous Situation of the Clergy, Strangely Inconsistent With Their Common Cry of Danger.
• Number XII.: The Enmity of the High Clergy to the Reformation, and Their Arts to Defeat the End of It.
• Number XIII.: The Church Proved a Creature of the Civil Power, By Acts of Parliament, and the Oaths of the Clergy.
• Number XIV.: The Clergy Proved to Be Creatures of the Civil Power, By the Canons, and Their Own Public Acts.
• Number XV.: The Absurdity and Impossibility of Church-power, As Independent On the State.
• Number XVI.: The Inconsistency of the Principles and Practices of High-church; With Some Advice to the Clergy.
• Number XVII.: Reasons Why the High-church Priests Are the Most Wicked of All Men.
• Number XVIII.: A General Idea of Priestcraft.
• Number XIX.: Ecclesiastical Authority, As Claimed By the High Clergy, an Enemy to Religion.
• The Following Queries, and Letters to a Clergyman, Written By the Author of the Foregoing Paper, and Never Before Printed, Are Thought Proper to Be Here Inserted.
• A Letter to a Clergyman, Shewing the Impossibility of Assenting to What We Do Not Understand.
• Number XX.: Of Chaplains.
• Number XXI.: A Comparison Between the High-church and the Quakers.
• Number XXII.: Priestcraft Corrupts Every Thing, and Perverts the Use of Words.
• Number XXIII.: Of Zeal.
• Number XXIV.: Of Persecution.
• Number XXV.: Of Consecration.
• Number XXVI.: Of Faith and Morality.
• Number XXVII.: Of Fasting.
• Number XVIII.: Of Authority.
• Number XXIX.: Of Education.
• Number XXX.: Of Education. Part II.
• Number XXXI.: Of Ceremonies.
• Number XXXII.: Of Ceremonies. Part II.

THE PREFACE.

I AM to acquaint the Reader, that I have carefully looked over and corrected this Edition of theIndependent Whig,and made many necessary Additions and Amendments. It has been a general, indeed a just Complaint, that Books in England are shamefully and incorrectly printed. I think it great Dishonesty to publish any Book in a careless and faulty Manner; but such Dishonesty is grown so common, that few Booksellers are ashamed of it. Gain got this way is scandalously got, though some have prospered exceedingly by it. Books badly and incorrectlyprinted, like sophisticated Goods, ought to be forfeited and burned. I know some considerable Booksellers who have shewn such manifest want of common Honesty in this Matter, and even in publishing some of our best Authors, Authors by whom they have got infinite Profit; that they ought to be restrained by a particular Law from publishing any more Books for ever. What would you say of a Goldsmith, who, in selling you a Quantity of Plate, defrauded you in the Weight, or sold you Silver ill wrought and full of Dross?

TO gratify the usual Curiosity of Readers, I have, at the End of each Paper, put the initial Letter of the Name of the Gentleman who wrote it. As there were only Three Gentlemen concerned in the Undertaking, and as their Names are well known, it will be easy to distinguish them by this Mark.

THE Craftsmen, a Sermon published at the same time, under the Name, and in the Style, of the late Daniel Burgess, was, for the Conformity of the Subject, andthe Occasion of writing it, (which in the Advertisement prefixed to it I have explained) thought proper to be added to this Impression, and to all that shall follow; as was also the Bishop ofMann’s Bull, or his Curse and Misrepresentation of theIndependent Whig,addressed to the Clergy of his Diocese, and solemnly registred amongst the Ecclesiastical Archives there. It is therefore preserved here as a great Singularity, which shews the Spirit and Rage of the Man, and what such a Spirit would produce, were it let loose. His Performance, I thought, deserved no other Answer than this, and I designed to have bestowed none upon it: Yet I find, that the Letter to the Publisher has paid it a Distinction which I never should, and exposed at length his Nonsense, Fury and ill Names, with masterly Reasoning and Style.

THE Inscription upon Mr. Trenchard’s Tomb is likewise inserted, with an English Translation of it, out of Respect to his Memory, and to the Share which he hadin the following Work. There is also added to this Edition, A Letter to a Gentleman at Edinburgh, concerning the busy and assuming Spirit of the Ecclesiastics, and their extravagant Demands upon the Laity: Written some Years ago, and never before printed.

AMONGST the many Invectives against theIndependent Whig,there came forth one about eight Years ago, under the Name of a certain Clergyman, whom for his own Sake I bring not upon the public Stage, full of Declamation, personal Railing, and miserable Cavilling; of all which I should have taken no notice, but that I hear he boasts what a deadly Shock he gave by it to Mr. Trenchard. What his own Vanity may suggest to him, I know not; but this I know, that Mr. Trenchard, though then upon his Death-bed, and past all Hopes of Recovery, having read some Pages in it, laughed very heartily at it. He said, That he had always taken the Author to have been an honest and a grateful Man (for he owed muchto Mr. Trenchard’s Family): But since I was mistaken, I am glad, says he, to be undeceived, and I rejoice, yea, I rejoice. This was his Behaviour, these his Words. To all this I was Witness. The Author calls his Book, An Answer to the several Papers publish’d by the Name of theIndependent Whig.But after much Boasting, Threatening, and Inveighing, he confines himself intirely to the last Paper. Against that he rants and cavils, in such Language as I should be sorry to repeat, and yet has the Candor to call his Declamation an Answer to the Whole; though, as far as I remember, (for I happened to look into it at that time) he meddles with none but that one Paper, which he has still left unanswered.

December 21. 1731.