usually call by that name, they only style the religion of the magistrate. Since the dissenters and we agree in the main, why should the difference of a few speculative points, or modes of dress, incapacitate them from serving their prince and country, in a juncture, when we ought to have all hands up against the common enemy? and why should they be forced to take the sacrament from our clergy's hands, and in our posture; or indeed why compelled to receive it at all, when they take an employment which has nothing to do with religion?
These are the notions which most of that party avow, and which they do not endeavour to disguise or set off with false colours, or complain of being misrepresented about. I have here placed them on purpose in the same light, which themselves do in the very apologies they make for what we accuse them of; and how inviting even these doctrines are for such a monarch to close with, as our law both statute and common understands a king of England to be, let others decide. But then, if to these we should add other opinions, which most of their own writers justify, and which their universal practice has given a sanction to; they are no more than what a prince might reasonably expect, as the natural consequence of those avowed principles. For, when such persons are at the head of affairs, the low opinion they have of princes will certainly lead them to violate that respect they ought to bear[1]; and at the same time their own want of duty to their sovereign, is largely made up, by exacting greater submissions to themselves, from their fellow-subjects;
- ↑ It should be 'they ought to bear them.'
