Hypothesis especially for that it was Re-printed and is magnified by the Factors for the Popish Plot. And first I will draw it out shortly in all its strength and make it more argumentative than he hath left it for he hath left his willing Readers to find out the Argument and to make the Conclusion Adam saith he was the Father of Mankind that to him as Father belonged an Absolute dominion over all his descendents that all Men being so born are born under subjection to such an Authority This Authority so reserved upon us by God and the condition of our birth and the manner of coming into the World is to be submitted to in the person of the present King who by becoming King is for that reason vested with this Absolute Authority This power and the duty of our subjection to it results from our being Born and coming into the World after the manner of men This power of Kings is grounded by him meerly upon this natural resultance and not from any positive and express Revelation from God for such neither we nor he yet ever heard of We will now then consider what there is of weight in this fictitious Reason of Government in which the World is so lately illuminated by this Speculator what force there is in it to unravel all Models of Government that are framed in the World to confound Kingdoms and Nations and to give Warranty to the bringing upon us all the miseries that are designed by the Papists for us which we are to be prepared to suffer with most conscientiuos patience from the comforts and supports of this insolent and vain pretence I appeal to the Reader of him whether in thus stating his Doctrine I have not made it more Argumentative and concluding to his purpose than he left it I will take this method of remonstrating the futility of his Hypothesis By considering what a Father is and what his Duty towards and Power over his Children in which it will be found that nothing of Empire belongs to him as Father that no more belonged to Adam over his Children than did to any of his Children over their own That the Authority of Parents over their Children continues together with Soveraign power and is not at all abated by it and that it cannot be the same because it continues entire with it That there is no footsteps in the Records of the Old Testament to verifie his Hypothesis that we could not have wanted some Declarations about it from God if true it being a matter so necessary for us to know That no claims were made that we know of to any such authority in the earliest times when the Right was unprejudiced and must have been best understood and could not have been forgotten as now it is utterly Besides that it was never used The first Histories Recorded in the Bible make every Child of the common Ancestor alike independent and absolute and so it would for ever have continued And to this day we should have been in the state of Nature and not United in any Government and so no King yet in the world notwithstanding the Paternal Authority That his Instances of exercising Soveraign power by the Fathers of Families are not concluding and to his purpose That admitting Adam had while he lived been Universal Monarch yet if there be no other reason and Foundation of Monarchy in the World but this of Sir Robert Filmer Adams right Heir not being known and if he were might perhaps be an Ideot or Lunatick some Cobler or Botcher under a Stall or mean Person unfit to govern we can have no rightful King in the World for certain it is that there is nothing in the World so personal as Relations and the duties and Rights that do result from them For they are neither assignable to nor can be exercised or exacted by and between any persons but the Relatives themselves So that this power of Sir R. F. hath no foundation of reason in the nature of things was in Fact never exercised and is now utterly fallen to the ground and all Government with it A more puzled vain sensless and unlearned Paradox was never yet offer'd to the world nor a thing more mischievous ever received For first the absolute Power of a Prince over his Subjects is not at all connatural to the dutiful Care of a Father over his Children It was the good pleasure of God that this part of the immense world should be planted with men endowed with a Capacity to admire his Power Wisdom and Goodness and therefore to render him praise and worship He design'd that we should be happy in our own enjoyments and promote the happiness of each other which is not to be performed but by a mind serene beneficent and loving He provided that the disseminations of Love should run parallel and be under alike necessity with the propagation of our kind For the planting Love in our Nature he instituted Marriage for Procreation that we might owe our Being to the state of the greatest and most agreeable friendship and tenderest affection That for many years we should be educated by a pure single and undesigning love of our Parents and the friendship of that conjugal State should be maintained by and principally exercised in their common care of their Issue Every Act of Love of either of the Parents to the Child being the best instance of love to the other of them an endearment of a reciprocal love and a provocation to the like love and care of the Child And for this love the Children naturally pay a return of an affectionate honour to their Parents and by that honour which we so naturally render our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our Earthly gods we are initiated trained up and instructed devoutly to worship our heavenly Father God did likewise ordain and so it was that all Mankind should derive from one stock be made of one blood and every Man every Mans Brother of the same Family and cognation By this it was provided by the Father of us all that we should be born into the World under the tenderest care for our preservation and improvement of our Nature be powerfully enclined to love and beneficence whereby we may be pleased with our selves and at Peace and Amity with our whole kind and disposed to celebrate the infinite Wisdom and Goodness of our almighty Creator with most affectionate Praises That the Generations of Mankind might certainly proceed God planted in our Natures powerful and irresistible instincts to procreation which the Jews call a Precept tho after this no Precept seem'd necessary for encrease and multiply they make a Command But we follow our own propensions and have no conscience of obedience to a Law when we observe and follow them which are so strong pleasurable and entertaining that if God had not planted a restraint of Modesty in our Natures and a sense of decency we should over-do the business and degrade our selves
that purpose is as much belonging to them and incumbent upon them as upon the Protoplast The duty is so personal consisting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it cannot be transferred or permitted absolutely to any other person by the Parents nor can any man challenge a right to it or discharge the Father from it or require the same affection submission and reverence that is due from a Child to his Father To expect relative duties without Relation is most unnatural it is as impossible as incongruous We may as well love and hate rejoyce and grieve without the proper object and incitements of those passions The fundamental Rule of all morality is that of Epictetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say by the State and Condition in which we stand the relations and respects under which we are considered our duties are determined measured and adjusted upon which see Simplicius his Excellent Discourse wherein many things are said agreeable to our purpose This moral Aphorism is as certain as any proposition in Euclid as the Doctrine of proportional Triangles and received as such by all the Masters of Moral Philosophy There is no other foundation of our duty to God or Man or towards our selves This Rule whatever it is must declare it Whatever is measured and allowed by this Rule is commonly called which is comprehensive of all that is honest just and fit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The application of this Rule is called by St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which when a man observes he is perfectly moral A man may as well pay his debts by giving away his Money be grateful to his benefactor by being beneficent to strangers as perform that duty he owes his Father to any but he that is so It is as impossible to separate the shadow from the Substance as to make that subsist by it self which grows by resultance from the state and condition of the person or that without that state of the person from which it doth arise it should ever accrew 3ly Admitting Adam had a Soveraign Authority over all his descendents which must grow if there was any such thing from some positive institution and not from his paternity yet the natural Authority and Duty of Parents towards their Children continues entire together with Soveraign Power and is not at all abated by it and therefore cannot be the same No Soveraign Power can extort the Children from their Fathers Authority and Care This is a duty in Nature before Governments They cannot belong to the Government before they are filii praecepti and capable of the Conscience of a Law It is a duty in Parents to educate their Children and a right they have in consequence to govern them that cannot be taken from them It is the Parents duty to form their Consciences They are appointed by God the great Ministers of his Providence and Grace to the Children That they perform this Office he hath tyed them to it by the sweetest constraints and almost violences of Nature by an irresistable love and tyes of Endearment that cannot be broken This declares their Right of Authority over their Children against any interposings of Soveraign Authority to its prejudice let or hinderance Thomas Aquinas positively determines that it is not lawful for Christian Kings to baptize the Children of the Jews against the will of their Parents for that saith he it is against the course of natural justice 4ly Thereis no footsteps in the Records of the old world to verifie this Hypothesis That such Authority was so much as pretended to used or exercised by Adam but we find instances against it in the short History before the Flood Cain received no sentence from Adam his Prince and Soveraign Judge but from God himself or rather from his Shecinah or some visible Representation of his presence Thence he obtained some degree of impunity and his life protected No mention here at all of Adam his taking the Tribunal or Cains arraignment or of any pardon or indulgence granted by King Adam Lamech that had killed a man by mischance did not alledge his case at his Father Adams Court and the matter of extenuation of the Man-killing we hear of no pardon of Course to be allowed when the circumstances of fact had been first judicially considered How could a thing of such importance be omitted in the story of the old World though so short It was of more concernment than to know that Tubal Cain was the first Smith and Jubal the first man that made a Musical instrument to know the original nature and reason of Government Besides we find all the grand-Children of Noah becoming Princes of Countries and the Sons and grand-Sons of Esau alike Dukes and Princes that is at least absolute Fathers of their own Families and ruling over such as were their slaves and dependants And the 12 Sons of Jacob are all called Patriarchs When Nimrod plaid the Tyrant we find nothing said for his justification upon any Patriarchal right But if we consult the Traditions of the Jews they will inform us of another original of Government and that is this They say that God gave several Precepts to Adam and his Sons and Noah and his Sons and one amongst the rest that they should erect Governments which his Sons could not have performed without Rebellion against their King-Father if Adam had been so as Sir Robert Filmer first dreamt Also besides that of making Governments there was a Precept given them of honouring their Parents Selden de jure Naturae secundum Hebraeos fol. 792. And therefore the Precept of honouring Parents is a distinct duty from that of obedience to Governments By this Precept they had Authority in general to establish Governments amongst themselves in the specification of which they were left to their own liberty and discretion and therefore were not obliged to any single form of Government It must be understood that the Precept which required the Sons of Adam and Noah to establish Governments required also every mans Submission to their Orders Laws and Decrees when established Lastly We will consider of the instances he gives of the Exercise of Soveraign Power by Fathers of Families which are as impertinent to his purpose as his Doctrine is groundless and precarious But they are these Abraham's War and Judahs Judgment upon Thamar As to the first of Abraham's making War We say we cannot allow that making War doth argue any Soveraign Authority It is sufficient that he who makes it is under none to make a vindicative War lawful For an injured Person may in the State of Nature vindicate wrongs by an Authority derived from God and Nature to a just satisfaction Because there is no competent Judicature to appeal to for right and redress But see how unhappy the Gentleman is This very instance of his production is clearly against him For if Soveraign Power had been Patriarchal Abraham had been guilty of Treason in making War without a Commission
from the dignity of our Natures Thus far the Parents are fulfilling Gods appointments and gratifying their own Natures What from all this can give them a right over their Child All men coming into the world this way are no less free than if they had been form'd in Lucretius his Bottles and drop't out of his imaginary matrixes and we were all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aborigines In this they are onely executing the appointment of God are but his Instruments to bring us into this World and are all along rewarded and entertained and caressed by the order of Nature Adam ow'd this duty to God his Father and so ordered it was that he ow'd it to himself and to his own natural propensions pleasures and satisfactions to propagate The several succeeding generations of men as soon as they are men have as much Right to the enjoyment of themselves to the freedom of their own Will and to live by their own measures as Adam himself had Our Parents do not give us life but hand it to us from the Fountain of being the Universal Father of all things Vitai Lampada tradunt And this is allowed acknowledged by all Mankind for assoon as Children can Govern themselves we declare them free that they are sui juris they are extra familiated and become themselves Fathers and acquire to themselves The Jews who had a Kabala of the truest and most antient Theology and Morality best understood their own Laws and were furnished with the knowledg of what Power and Authority Fathers had over their Children whether by nature or by vertue of the fifth Commandment did take their Sons to be ipso jure Emancipated and suoe potestatis as soon as they were pubertatis plenoe The time of which they reckoned at the farthest when they were 13 years 3 months and one day old And therefore whereas it was one of the Laws of Moses Deut. 21. v. 18 19 20 21. That the stubborn and Rebellious Son at the Complaint and prosecution of the Father and Mother was to be judg'd to be ston'd to death They say a Son was not under this Law until he was 13 years and one day old for until that time he was not Filius proecepti not bound to any Laws As not until that time presum'd of competent discretion consideration or conscience to make him a Transgressor or Breaker of a Law But three Months after they reckoned him compleatly adult upon a general Presumption when and sooner if he were sooner adult he was free from the Power of his Father and could not incur the mentioned Law which condemns the rebellious and stubborn Son to be stoned to death Maimonides Tract Memarim But the Father who struck the Son after he was adult the Jews tell us incurred Excommunication for that he offended therein against the Law Levit. 19.14 Thou shalt not put a Stumbling-block before the Blind By which Precept they understand all things indecent and dishonest to be forbidden By which it doth appear that the Jews did not take their Children to be longer under the authority of their Fathers than until they commenced in the soonest account Men. Besides that Law of Deut. Chap. 21. seems to be onely a permission of an unnatural kind of severity to the offended Parents at whose suit onely the punishment of that Law could be inflicted such a sort of permission and liberty it was as was indulg'd to them in the matter of Divorce But that which hath imposed upon this Gentleman I believe is for that while they are to be educated Parents exercise an Authority over their Children which a sower Father may imagine to be Power This I believe gave the Gentleman his mistake because he saith a Child and a Slave doth not differ which is a shrewd indication that he was something too masterly over his Children But all equal parents know and understand that the Education of their Children is duty and care and it may not improperly be called a Sort of Generation-Work For I pray let it be considered That the foetus is not perfected assoon as it is extruded the Matrix no not until it be able to perform unassisted all the Actions of its proper life That the life of a man is a life of Reason That he cannot do the Acts of a man until he hath it in the exercise of it He is not a perfect foetus so as to be neglected by his parents as soon as he can feed himself the man after this may miscarry and after this if exposed by his parents and not continued under their care be abortivated Education is a kind of Incubation Our faculties are to be formed and drawn out into use as well as our body to be organized before we can be denominated men While this is accomplishing the parents are but executing the natural instinct of propagating their like until they have made them men they are not begotten in their own likeness They therefore with an easie propension and a natural care do apply themselves to offer things to their observation to furnish their Memories to try their judgments in little Essays to render them discoursive to draw out their faculties into use until by little and little they arrive at discretion and a power to form true judgments of what belongs to them and to govern themselves in such Affairs and businesses that are to employ them But while this is a doing they are under a Government of love and care by the Arts of Discipline to be trained up to perfection Several freakishnesses and caprices are to be cured and the strength and luxuriancies of several natural Appetites are to be abated and restrained and they are to be held to attention and observation and made patient of instruction Correction is to be administred to these purposes and by these measures But this duty of Correction doth not participate any thing of the Nature of Civil Government It hath nothing of the Nature of punishment exemplarity or vindicative Justice It is not for the gratifying of the Parents displeasure to secure him against wrong or injury to deter others but to amend improve and better the Child and always terminated to and directed to that end and by those measures it is tenderly and affectionately administred It will not be impertinent to observe that our Common Law had no opinion of any Soveraign Authority in a Father And also that the Statute of 25 E. 3. which declares petty Treasons as well as high Treasons doth not declare the Sons killing the Father to be Treason tho Treason it is for a Servant to kill his Master In which we have the Authority of our Parliament and of the constant opinion of our Judges That the nature and relation of a Father and a Son doth not favour any thing of Government or of a servile or Political subjection For that they have not made Parricide Treason though it is the most unnatural and most detestable Crime and a far
greater sin than that of killing a Master But further to clear the true notion of a Fathers Authority that it is duty and care not Empire and absolute will Let it be considered that God by his right of Creation hath an absolute plenary and direct dominion over us we are more his than we are our own or than any thing can be ours Yet when he was pleased of his gracious condescention to our capacity to quiet our fears of his power and to invite our love and assure our hope he did declare himself our Father thereby to assure us that he would not rule us pro imperio and according to his absolute right he had over us That stile he himself delights to use and gives us leave to call him our Father by which we all understand that he will not proceed with us according to his Right of absolute domination no not in the terms of strict Right and Political Justice But that he will consider our frame pity our infirmity correct us as his Children but not punish us with an exterminating Justice Amongst the Romans antiently no man was admitted a Judge in Criminal Causes but he that was a Father of Children that the severities of a Judge might be abated by the tenderness of a Father that he who had Children of his own might have the more pity to those of others so different is the Office of a Judge from the natural duty and tenderness of a Father It is the greatest violence that can be done to Nature to compel a Father to sit in Judgment upon his Son Next to that of obliging and compelling a man to execute himself to make it the Fathers duty to pronounce a capital Sentence upon the Son is the most unnatural thing in the World The Father and the Son in this consideration are conjunctae personae and when the Sin of the Father is visited upon the Son the Son is afflicted but the Father is punished and when the Son hath the Question the Father is taken to be confessed in tormentis silii But for a further instance to make it appear how incompetent the duty of a Magistrate is with the Nature of a Father I will observe that notwithstanding a Law was given to Adam and all his Sons to establish Judicatures according to the Tradition of the Jews as may be seen in Mr. Selden his Book de jure Gentium secundum Hebraeos which Law by the way had been supervacaneous if the Power of a Prince did belong to Adam in the right of his Paternity and a Government had been provided for them by their Birth Yet I say notwithstanding that there was such a Relaxation of Justice in the World before the Flood because it could be only administred by a Father or such who participated of the stock of love lodg'd in the common Father from whom his Children did derive their tenderness one to another as they themselves sprang from him That the World was grown so wicked within two ages as men then liv'd from the Creation that a Universal deluge was brought upon the World by the just Judgment of God for the outragious and insufferable Wickedness that had spread it self universally over mankind 8 persons only excepted The overflowing deluge of Wickedness that caus'd the deluge of waters can't be imputed to a more probable cause than to the indulgence and impunity that the observed and understood nearness of Kindred that all men stood then in to one another must naturally occasion This is a sad consequence of that natural Love in Parents towards their Children which was intended for the propagation and advancement of Mankind But since that now we are estranged one from another in remote and unknown degrees and that prejudice is over here is a Gentleman to destroy the World another wâ—… and to undo us by unreasonable and unâ—…d power which is alike apt to make 〈…〉 fit for another Universal destruction if it be not without more destroyed by it doth endeavour to turn the exercise of such power into a Right and to give it warranty from the Reason and way of our propagation and by this means to destroy us faster than we can be born and bred and impair the Generations of Mankind to render them extreamly miserable or wicked which is much worse extinguish the light of the World which is Love and Amity and destroy the encouragement and reason of almost all relative Morality What a Saturnine Father have we got to make a golden Age who ever would have thought that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most moving kindest most tender pleasing and beneficent instinct in Nature planted by God the Father of us all for the propagating educating and improving humane Nature should ever be made use of to found a right of Tyranny and Arbitrary domination the greatest destroyer and depraver of Mankind What Monster hath this last Age produced a Christian a Father seriously endeavouring to perswade all Mankind to offer up their Children to Moloch the Saturn of the Easterlings who was but the Devil of Tyranny as the name imports This 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the true Origine and Fountain of Love and Amity and the social Virtues which render men humane from whence flows all the happiness of Mankind will by this Doctrine be corrupted and rendred unsincere and self-designing For when a Father performs an Act of Generation it seems now he designs to add a slave to his Retinue and when a Child is born there is another Item added to the Inventory of his Estate If this Fountain be corrupted there can be nothing sincerely kind after it in Humane Nature The Leviathan is out-done by this Gentleman and hath not performed half so renownedly in the great Work of depraving Humane Nature as our Patriarchal Knight will do if his Admirers can bring him into vogue and esteem For the Author of the Leviathan allowed something good in Humane Nature several equal propensions which he terms her Counsels and sometimes adventures to call the Laws of Nature But he concludes they are not practicable and they are only fools who govern themselves by them But this Gentlemen will not allow Nature to be good in her first institution and designment though in this I think they are near agreeable that Mr. Hobbs made the Pourtraicture of Humane Nature in an agreeableness to his own evil Ingeny and this Knight did set himself when he made this his draught of a Father he could have no other Original but himself or the Idea of the morose and sowr Dr. P. H. his admired friend but by his Character he had at least misfigured his understanding and made it his own Nature by liking it 2ly No more of authority belong'd to Adam over his Children than does to any of his Children over his for that this Authority proceeds from Nature and Nature is alike in all men The duty of their education and the Authority over them that is competent to
intendments How unreasonable therefore are the Tragical Exaggerations of the considerer making it the most heinous wickedness and the most crying Injustice to alter that which in its own nature is alterable and by an Act of the Government to exclude the D. from the Succession as a person unfit and unsafe to be entrusted with the Government though in the general order thereof he was thereto designed besides that he hath forfeited that kind of right that he had by that general appointment Is this saith he the way of establishing the Protestant Religion he saith this is exactly to follow the footsteps of that Monster of Ingratitude the wicked Jeroboam who after God of his infinite goodness had raised him from nothing and established him Monarch of the ten Tribes of Israel yet was he so mistrustful of Gods Power in preserving his Kingdom for the future that he thought nothing could secure it but his own accursed Policy Our Considerer seems to have a high value for Rule and Domination otherwise he would not have called the advancement of Jeroboam to rule by Usurpation an effect of the infinite goodness of God But these words were put in to make that story of Jeroboam parallel to our case and he intends thereby to remember us of the little power that the reformed Religion sometimes had perhaps in the time of Queen Mary and to charge upon the Protestant Religion and reproach it with a Revolt and unjustifiable Schismatical departure from the Church of Rome in the time of Queen Elizabeth and the acquiring and possessing it self of the Government And now behold the man now you know him and his Religion and how fit he is to offer Considerations for the D. against the Bill But shortly to destroy his parallel he may know that the Reformation did only assert and reassume the Rights of the Crown usurp'd by the Bishop of Rome We did reform the Religion of our Church to primitive Christianity from which the Church of Rome had seduced us but therein we used no other Power than what belongs to every Church to reform it self we were never of right and duty subject to the Church of Rome she never rightfully had any Authority over us and therefore we could not Schismatically revolt from her nor are parallel at all in this to Jeroboam though this man will compare us to him and thereby slily charge us with monstrous Ingratitude to God and accursed Policies because we will not again give up our Civil Rights to the Tyranny of Rome nor lose again the true Christian Religion in the Superstitions and corrupt Doctrines of that Church and because we will not forbear to use that power which is lawful to every Government Except this be his meaning and he himself a Papist he might with as much pertinency have told any other story of Jeroboam or of any other of the Kings of Israel and Judah in the Books of the Kings or Chronicles or of Belteshazzar or Nebuchadonozor Zenacherib Ahasuerus or Holofernes or Antiochus or any other King or Name in story Sacred or Prophane Of all these he could not have found out any thing more unlike to have compared with us to have remarked himself for a man of great Considerations For Jeroboam corrupted the true Worship of God to support an Usurped Crown but the design of the Bill against which he declaims is to support a Lawful Government and the best Religion by a legal Act of that Government So that we will invert that Wo which he pronounceth against us out of the Prophet Wo unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong into a Wo against himself Wo unto him that putteth evil for good and darkness for light and casteth a stumbling-block before his neighbour But in what follows of this Writer of Considerations I doubt me whether he doth not act the part of a scorning Atheist for that he would perswade the World from all care and regard of Religion by telling us it is able to shift for it self it being the work of Gods own hand His Atheistical scorn and low valuation of the true Christian Religion is further very notorious and remarkable for that he makes the establishment thereof amongst us to be such a like work of the Almighty Hand of God that establish'd Jeroboam in the Kingdom of Israel O thou Insensatus Galata to return thy own Exclamation which thou usest against thy own honest and discerning Country-men upon thy stupid self For who I pray you but a senseless man would compare a providential permission of the revolt of the ten Tribes for the sins of David and the sins and oppressions of Solomon to which the People were prepared by the exactions oppressions and riotous Reign of Solomon and his Successor Rehoboam to the work of the Reformation which was the delivery and restoring to it self the Gospel of Christ and his true Religion which was spoiled and depraved by the Church of Rome for the benefit I doubt not of all the Ages of Mankind to the end of the World against which the Gates of Hell shall not prevail and which we in despight of the Roman Successor shall see yet flourish in this Land But we must not expect though God did first plant his Church by Miracles in Nature and demonstrations of the Spirit of Power by the wonderful Gifts of the Holy Ghost and by the Spirit of Glory resting upon the Primitive Martyrs of the Holy Faith and did restore the purity of the Christian Faith by a Miraculous Providence and the Spirit of Martyrdom which we are now peacefully and Legally possessed of I say we have no reason to expect Wonders for our preservation when it seems to be in our own hands Nor ought we to subject the Professors of the True Religion again to Slaughters Fire and Faggot Tortures Inquisitions and Massacres Let us not think that our Government as it lies in History and our Laws in Books and Parliament-Rolls which will easily suffer an Index expurgatorius and make no complaint can defend us and it against the Instruments and Engines designed for its subversion in the Plot and the powers that have been long addressing to that purpose and are now at leisure to execute what we know is designed against us better than we can make out and discover This Expression I know would scarce pass for sense in any other Age or Matter but we live in an Age of Mystery and Prodigy producing things Monstrous and unnatural and our Language must be agreeable to the things we speak of The True Patriot proceeds and affirms That it is an unwarrantable Attempt and a point without example or president to Depose a Prince for not complying with his People in Religion I appeal to all that shall read him whether he appears to be a man of Reading enough to warrant him to pronounce a general Negative in this matter But by this time there is nothing so extravagant but