Always keep up solid piety, and those fundamental ( truths which mend both hearts and lives of men, (with impartial favour and justice. Your prerogative • is beft shewn and exercised in remitting, rather than • exacting the rigour of laws; there being nothing (worse than legal tyranny.'

Now upon

the whole, we ask, what can be more equal, what more reasonable, than Liberty of Conscience; so correspondent with the reverence due to God, and respect to the nature, practice, promotion, and rewards of the Christian religion, the sense of Divine Writ, the great privilege of nature, and noble principle of reason, the justice, prudence, and felicity of government, and, lastly, to the judgment and authority of a whole cloud of famous witnesses, whose harmony in opinion as much detects the unreasonableness and incharity of persecutors, as their savage cruelties imply an high contempt of folid determinations: of which number I cannot forbear the mention of two, whose actions are so near of kin to one another, and both to inhumanity, as the same thing can be to itself.

The first is a great lord of Buckinghamshire, but so hearty a persecutor of the poor Quakers, that rather than they should peaceably enjoy the liberty of worshipping God, (and to supply the county-defect of informers) he has encouraged a pair of such wretches, that it had been a disgrace for the meanest farmer to converse with; one having been prisoner in Aylesbury, for theft, and said to have been burnt in the hand and the other of a complexion not much less seandalous and irnmoral.

To give an undeniable testimony of their merit, once for all, I shall briefly relate a most notorious piece of perjury. They, suspecting a religious assembly to be at a certain place in the same county, came; and find. ing one in reality, repaired to one they call Sir Thomas Clayton, and a justice; where they deposed, “That not only a meeting was at such an house, but one

• Tho

« Tho. Zachery and his wife were there;' who at the same time, as at the trial upon indictment for perjury at Aylesbury was proved by fufficient witnesses from London, were then at that city ; yet fined not only for being there, but for the speaker also, though none spoke that day.

Upon the prosecution of these men, as perjured men, and by the law disprivileged of all employ, and never to be credited more in evidence, several delays were made, much time spent, and not a little pains bestowed, all in hopes of an exemplary success, which proved so, but the wrong way; for the very last feffions, when the matter should have received an absolute decision, and the attendants have been dismissed (especially on the score of the witnesses, that came from London the second time, upon no other account) a letter was reported to have been writ from the aforesaid lord, in favour of those informers, to this purpose, « That since Sir Tho. Clayton was not present, the < business could not well be determined; but if the

court would undertake the ending of it, he besought ( them to be favourable to those HONEST Men,' If this be true, as said, it is a most aggravated shame to nobility! What! to protect them from the lash of the law, who went about to destroy truth, the life of it! it is a dishonour to the government, a scandal to the country, and a manifest injury to an inoffensive and useful inhabitant.

The other is as well known by his cruelty, as by his name, and he scarce deserves another ; however, he is understood by that of the Reading knight-errant, and always in armour for the devil; a man whose life feems to be whole BONNER revived. Hogestrant, the Popish Inquisitor, could not hate Martin Luther more, than he does a poor Diffenter; and wants but as much power, as he has will, to hang more than he has imprisoned. The laws made against Papists, he inflicts upon the Quakers; and makes it crime enough for a premunire, to have an estate to lose.

The

The single question is not, • Were you at such a • meeting?' (which the act intends) but, “Will you

'swear?' (which it intends not). And women escape him as little for this, 'as those of his own tribe do for fome things else. But what of all things most aggravates the man's impiety, is the making a devilish snare of a Christian duty ; since such as have come to visit the imprisoned, have been imprisoned themselves for their charity. So that with him it seems a current maxim, that those must not come to see prisoners, and not be such themselves, who will not take the oath of allegiance to do it,

To relate the whole tragedy, would render him as bad, as the discourse big; and the latter not less voluminous, than the former odious. But three things I shall observe:

First, that he has crouded seventy-two persons (of those called Quakers) men and women, immodestly into jail, not suffering them to enjoy common conveniences. And for his diversion, and the punishment of little children, he pours cold water down their necks.

Secondly, His imprisonments are almost perpetual. First, he premunires them, without any just cause of suspicion; then imprisons them; and lastly plunders them, and that by a law enacted against Romanists : which, if all be true that is said, is more his concern than theirs, if, without offence, it may be supposed he has any religion at all.

Thirdly, Some have been there about eight years; and should be eighteen more, were he as sure to live (being more than seventy) and enjoy his power, as doubtless he hopes to die before those good laws overtake him that would make an example of such an oppressor. In short, wives, widows, poor and fatherless, are all fish for his net; and whether over or under age, he casts none away, but seems to make it his privilege to correct law, by out-doing it. When we have said all we can (and we can never say too much, if enough) he is still his own best character.

Such

Such are the passions, follies, and prejudices, men devoted to a spirit of imposition and persecution are attended with.

Non enim poffumus quæ vidimus, & audivimus, non loqui.

In short, what religious, what wise, what prudent, what good-natured person, would be a persecutor? Certainly it is an office only fit for those, who being void of all reason, to evidence the verity of their own religion, fancy it to be true, from that strong propensity and greedy inclination they find in themselves to persecute the contrary. A weakness of so ill a consequence to all civil societies, that the admission of it ever was, and ever will prove their utter ruin, as well as their great infelicity, who pursue it.

And though we could not more effectually express our revenge, than by leaving such persons to the scope of their own humours; yet being taught to love and pray for our persecutors, we heartily wish their better information, that (if it be possible) they may act more suitably to the good pleasure of the eternal just God, and beneficially to these nations.

To conclude; Liberty of Conscience, as thus stated and defended, we ask, as our undoubted right by the law of God, of nature, and of our own country. It has been often promised; we have long waited for it; we have wric much, and suffered in its defence, and have made many true complaints, but found little or no redress.

However, we take the righteous holy God to record, against all objections that are ignorantly or designedly raised against us, That

Ift. We hold no principle destructive of the English government.

2d. That we plead for no such Diffenter (if such a one there be.)

3d. That we desire the temporal and eternal happiness of all persons in submission to the divine will of God); heartily forgiving our cruel persecutors.

to God, rather than hunt after revenge upon one ano. ther: therefore we assert, we have not done one thing that may be proved Seditious, in the sense above-mentioned.

2. That we are strangers to Conventicles is most evident; for where the parts that render it such are wanting, there can be no conventicle : but that they are in our assemblies, appears ; first, . Because our < meetings are not small.

2. Neither are they private or clandestine; but in the view of all people. Nor « are they riotous, licentious, or otherwise immodeft,

or immoral; but on purpose to dissuade persons from « such impieties.' So that we are clear in the interpretation of the law, 13 H. 5. cap. 8. 19, and 19 H. 7. cap. 13, and in the sense of the famous father Tertullian.

3. Sectaries, is a word, that whosoever has but confidence enough to conceit himself in the right, by consequence wants none to suppose the contrary in the wrong, and so to call him a Sečtary. But this is but a mere begging of the question ; for to say those are Seetaries, does not include them such; nor does the act speak so plainly of Dissenters. But granting it did, yet they must be Seditious ones, or else all will be in vain. Where we may observe, that purely to be a Seetary is not what the act strikes at, but to be a Seditious one: for a man may differ in judgment about matters of faith, from the national religion, and yet correspond with the government in matters civil, So that the act upon the whole aims not at Se&taries fimply, but they must be such as are enemies to the civil conftitution to be rendered Seditious ones, from which we have sufficiently cleared ourselves.

4. “ That we meet under colour and pretence, and « not really, to worship God,” we deny, and none can prove. It were high incharity to affirm positively, < this or that people meet only under a colour of reli

gion. Yet unless the act had so expressed itself, we conceive their authority lame and imperfect that persecute us by it. It will help but little to say, the