The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• To the Earl of S———-, &c. &c.
• Preface.
• The Independent Whig.
• Number I.: A View of the Romish Church, In Her Heads, Theology, Canons, Miracles, and Saints; Taken Chiefly From Her Own Writers and Champions.
• Number II.: An Idea of the French Government. the Spirit of Popery, How Terrible to Protestants.
• Number III.: Further Observations Upon the French Government. the Excellence of Our Own, Confess’d By French Writers.
• Number IV.: Persecution and Cruelty, Marks of Apostasy From Christianity. the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, How Impious and Impossible. the Inconsistency, Impotence, and Absurdity of All Popish Miracles.
• Number V.: The Natural and Dreadful Consequences Attending the Success of the Rebellion.
• Number VI.: The Views of the Pretender Not to Be Disguised. His Defence an Insult.
• Number VII.: The Norman Invasion, How Sanguinary and Fatal to England. the Invader How Faithless and Barbarous to Englishmen.
• Number VIII.: The Curious Speech of a Fugitive Protestant - Popish - Jacobite Priest to Lewis the Well-beloved.
• Number IX.: The Loyalty of Papists Never to Be Trusted By Protestants. Religion and Liberty Inevitable Sacrifices to a Popish Revolution.
• Number X.: Remarks Upon the Appeal of the Pretender (young Or Old) to the People.
• Number XI.: Popery Tried By Christianity and Reason, and Proved an Enemy to Both.
• Number XII.: Warning to Britons, Upon the Present Rebellion Supported By France.
• Number XIII.: The Shocking Antipathy of Popery to Common Sense and Christian Charity.
• Number XIV.: Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XV.: Continuation of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVI.: Continuation of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVII.: Remainder of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVIII.: King James II. His Disgraceful Reign. His Impotence and Cruelty. He Exposes and Deposes Himself.
• Number XIX.: How Boldly the Popish Clergy Abuse Their Followers, By Teaching Them to Deny With a Curse, the Most Obvious Impieties of Their Church.
• Number XX.: The Same Subject Continued.
• Number XXI.: The Following Quotation Is Taken From One of the Political Discourses Upon Sallust the Roman Historian: It Is the Fourth Section of the Discourse, of the Mutability of Government. the Passage Is Extremely Curious, And, I Think, Seasona
• Number XXII.: The Quaker’ S Advice to the Young Pretender.
• Number XXIII.: The Intimate Resemblance Between the Popish Clergy, and Those of Modern Paganism In the East.
• Number XXIV.: Of the Many Good Sermons Preached and Published Against the Rebellion. a Sermon of Singular Tendency, By an Eminent Hand: the Strange Doctrines Advanced, and the Observable Omissions, In It.
• Number XXV.: Our National Sins No Wise Analogous to Those of the Jews, Nor Meriting Equal Punishment. the Rashness and Danger of Ascertaining and Applying Divine Judgments.
• Number XXVI.: The Free Use of Reason the Best Cure For Bigotry, and the Violence of Enthusiasm.
• Number XXVII.: To What I Have Said Above Upon the Excesses and Unchristian Spirit of the Clergy In the Reign of King Charles I. I Shall Add the Following Observations Upon Their Incredible Canon, Injoining an Oath to an Et Cætera.
• Number XXVIII.: Considerations Upon the Mischievous Tendency of Libels; Chiefly Public Libels.
• Number XXIX.: The Subject of Libels Continued.
• Number XXX.: The Subject of Libels Continued and Concluded.
• Number XXXI.: The Absurdity of Jacobitism, the Impiety of Popery, and the Enthusiasm of Party.
• Number XXXII.: The Letter of Monsieur D’argenson to Mynheer Van Hoey, and That of the Mynheer to the Duke of Newcastle, Paraphrased.

Number V.

The natural and dreadful Consequences attending the Success of the Rebellion.

IN the Midst of all our public Difficulties, and the Evils that threaten us (I hope only for a short Time) it must give high Joy, and equal Hopes, to all Britons and Protestants, to behold such an universal, such an ardent Spirit in Protestants and Britons, upon the present Trial and Exigency; with such a glorious Abhorrence of the desperate Attempts, and bloody Designs, of our Enemies abroad and at home.

The very Attempt to change the Government, is a Proof of the Excellence and Freedom of the Government. If our Government were wretched and weak, and the Subjects oppressed and miserable, France would be the first to support an oppressive Government, and strengthen the Oppression. As the Administration is just, and the People free, France will never cease plotting and labouring the Destruction of Government and People. If in our present Situation we are dreadful to France; if we thwart her persidious Counsels, and cripple her Tyranny, will not France strive to disable, to enslave, and to ruin, her capital and most formidable Foe?

This is her present Scheme; she is pursuing her Interest, let us pursue ours; if she succeed, we are undone; if we prevail, she is sunk; she must truckle to Terms of our imposing; and thus humbling herself to her Neighbours, whom she has long insulted, against all Shame, and contrary to all Faith, she must accept such a Peace as they will grant her.

To carry her Point, she chuses a Person very proper for her Purposes, if they succeed; but very proper likewise to mar their Success, by letting us see our notorious and alarming Danger, in imposing upon us for our King a Nursling of the Pope, a Pupil of her own, bred in Romish blind Bigotry, nurtured in all the Principles of lawless Sway; one destitute of all Property, subsisting by Food and Raiment from France, taught by his Father, and his own Fate, to hate us; and now armed to punish us, or rather to destroy us.

It hath been truly observed, that whoever comes from Banishment to Sovereignty, will exercise it with infinite Havock and Cruelty: He hath suffered supreme Injury, and must be satisfied with equal Vengeance. Whoever forced him out, or kept him out, is his rightful Victim: Life and Property are claimed together. Great Property is always certain Guilt in the Eye of a Tyrant; and it is easy to prove it forfeited, by calling the Owner a Traitor: What numberless Sacrifices, what copious Forfeitures, must this devoted Nation furnish out? A Nation almost all Heretics; all Enemies to the Tyranny of France, thence all proper Objects of Slaughter and Bondage; all accursed by Rome, therefore worthy of Fire and Extirpation.

We must even pay France for keeping this our Enemy, for his Education, and for all the Efforts made for him against us; for her Expence and Supplies in the last Rebellion, in the present Rebellion, and ever since the Revolution; pay her for establishing him our Tyrant, and ever afterwards as the Deputy of France: For, if he do not enslave us, he cannot reign over us; and as he cannot enslave us, without the Power of France, we must be Slaves, in Reality, to France; in Name, to her Viceroy, who will have the Honour to be the chief Slave, and consequently the most contemptible, as all are who wear a Crown by foreign Permission, and reign by Command.

To answer all the Demands of France, all his own Demands (which will still be as great and real, as if he were a real King) together with the Demands of his needy and craving Followers, who will plead their Wants of Wealth and Land, as abundant Titles to both, especially when forfeited to the Usurper by Resistance and Heresy; all the Estates and Treasure of Heretics and Rebels, will hardly suffice. Even the Bank of England, and all the public Funds, are all justly liable to Forfeiture, as they were established to keep him out, and to secure Rebels and Heretics against his coming in. What can be more obvious, what more tempting, to be so seized, and so distributed? What more agreeable to the Maxims of France and Rome in particular, and to the Maxims of Popish and Arbitrary Sway in general? The Church Preferments, so long possess’d by an heretical Clergy, the Church-Lands, so sacrilegiously usurped by the heretical Laity, Gentry and Nobility, will be hardly sufficient to gratify the Hopes, and to compensate the Merits of an Army of Confessors, holyMen, who have laboured incessantly, wrote and railed, cursed the Heretics, and starved for above half a Century, in the blessed View of seeing an obstinate Nation ruined, as well as damn’d Protestants in the Flames, and the Holy Church in Triumph.

The old Laws must likewise succumb and bend to new Masters. Who will dare to hold up an Act of Parliament against the Mass? What Heretic venture to plead for Heretics? What Protestant Lawyer (if any Protestants be left, or one Protestant Law) will venture to affront the Pope, or a popish Sovereign, by defending Liberty, Law, and Conscience, in Opposition to Powers who hold Liberty to be Rebellion, Law to be Treason, and Conscience to be Schismatical and Damnable; all to be punish’d with a high Hand, and instantly rooted out, or crushed by Fire and Sword?

A Bloody Host of Robbers from the Woods and Bogs of Ireland, Droves of Savages from the Rocks and Caverns of the Highlands, void of Letters, and even of Humanity, armed with Ignorance, Brutality, and barbarous Zeal, must be turned into an Army, to secure a violent Establishment by Acts of Violence; crazy Monks, without Mercy or Knowledge, must be our Teachers, to instruct us in the Guilt of Christian Charity, and the Danger of Human Reason: A new Nobility of Upstarts, Fugitives, and Outlaws, raised from Obscurity, chiefly known for their Barbarity, original Macs and O’s, shall swagger (I had almost said wallow) in the highest Stations and Dignities, bear the grandest Titles, without being able to read them, and sink and defile them by wearing them. The old Nobility must be extinguished, or beg, or perish; or, which is worse, be Converts, and feed upon the Bounty of an Usurper, at least subsist at his Mercy.

Such wide and wasting Violence, and these dreadful Changes, are rather certain than improbable. The Invader knows, that all able, all wealthy, all discerning Men; all sober and religious Men; all who love Liberty Sacred and Civil, their Property, their Bible, and their Conscience, must necessarily hate his Person, and abhor his Education, his Principles and Dependencies. They can never be safe till he be defeated: He can never thoroughly succeed till they be thoroughly destroyed.

Confusion, Extirpation, and Massacre, are the known, the approved, the tried Measures of Popery, and of popish Tyrants. They think that by Cruelty to Heretics, they do Service to God and themselves: The more Cruelty the more Service. This Principle justifies all Rigour and Acts of Rage and Perfidy, and even consecrates them all as holy and meritorious.Charles the IXth of France, in Obedience to the Dictates of his Faith, by a long Train of fair Usage, kind Words, and a thousand Caresses to the Hugonots, deluded the Heads of them to Paris; where he renewed and enlarged all his friendly Professions, distinguished them as his most welcome Guests at the Wedding of his Sister, betrothed to their Chief, the King of Navarre; granted them many Favours, and pretended to be guided by the Counsels of their favourite Leader, the celebrated Admiral de Coligni. When he had thus drawn the Principals of the Religion together, and lulled them into due Security (for when they were prepared and armed, a small Number of them was dreadful to any Number of their Enemies) he ordered them all to be massacred at once, upon a Signal given: He was himself a keen Instrument in the Massacre. The Tyrant, as cruel as faithless, not only animated and applauded the most eager Murderers, but shot from his Window such of the innocent betrayed Victims as were like to escape their Butchers, the raging Catholics. The Carnage was pursued at the same Hour all over France. An Hundred thousand Protestants fell Sacrifices to the Moloch of Popery, and to the Maxims of French Tyranny. The Pope, one of the ablest that ever filled the papal Chair, but still a Pope, approved all the bloody Guilt, all the infernal Slaughter, and particularly the Murder of Coligni, one of the first Heads in Christendom for War and Counsel, but unpardonably zealous for the Gospel of Christ, and the Rights of Men.

In one of the Croisades against the Waldenses, Two hundred thousand Souls in one City were doomed at once to Sword and Fire, though many of them were Papists. The Lay-Commander, a Man of great Quality, was for saving those of his own Communion; but a Monk, commission’d by the Pope, insisted that the Slaughter should be general, and left to God the Care of his own.

What was the Irish Massacre, but an Effort of Irish Papists, to restore Popery? Popery, and the Spirit of Popery, is still the same. King James, in Ireland, enabled the wild bigotted Irish, the old Murderers in the Year 1641, or their murdering Descendants, universally to plunder the Protestants there, to divest them of Land, Dwelling, and daily Bread, and to force Numbers of them to starve, or to beg their Bread in England and Scotland. It was natural to fear that the worst was not past, that the Lives of Protestants would soon follow their Property, and another Carnage would complete the Restoration of Popery. The King, who had Weakness enough to go such dreadful Lengths, had Bigotry enough (the most mischievous Weakness of all!) to have gone Lengths still more dreadful, mad as he was for Popery and lawless Power; since he was persuaded, that they supported each other: The only sound Judgment which he seems ever to have made.