never seen either the book or the publisher; however, I would fain ask one single person[1] in the world a question; why he has so often drank the abdicated king's health upon his knees? But the transition is natural and frequent, and I shall not trouble him for an answer.
It is the hardest case in the world, that Mr. Steele should take up the artificial reports of his own faction, and then put them off upon the world, as additional fears of a popish successor. I can assure him, that no good subject of the queen's is under the least concern, whether the pretender be converted or not, farther than their wishes that all men would embrace the true religion. But reporting backward and forward upon this point, helps to keep up the noise, and is a topick for Mr. Steele to enlarge himself upon, by showing how little we can depend upon such conversions, by collecting a list of popish cruelties, and repeating after himself and the bishop of Sarum, the dismal effects likely to follow upon the return of that superstition among us.
But, as this writer is reported by those who know him, to be what the French call journalier, his fear and courage operating according to the weather in our uncertain climate; I am apt to believe the two last pages of his Crisis, were written on a sunshiny day. This I guess from the general tenour of them, and particularly from an unwary assertion, which, if he believes as firmly as I do, will at once overthrow all his foreign and domestick fears of a popish successor. " As divided a people as we are, those
- ↑ Parker, afterward lord chancellor.
