(as the logicians speak) by accident; nor doth he appear through his whole reign to have had any other views than those of gratifying his insatiable love of power, cruelty, oppression, and other irregular appetites.  But this kingdom as well as many other parts of Europe, was, at that time, generally weary of the corruptions and impositions of the Roman court and church, and disposed to receive those doctrines which Luther and his followers had universally spread.  Cranmer the archbishop, Cromwell, and others of the court, did secretly embrace the Reformation; and the King’s abrogating the Pope’s supremacy, made the people in general run into the new doctrines with greater freedom, because they hoped to be supported in it by the authority and example of their prince, who disappointed them so far that he made no other step than rejecting the Pope’s supremacy as a clog upon his own power and passions, but retained every corruption beside, and became a cruel persecutor, as well of those who denied his own supremacy, as of all others who professed any Protestant doctrine.  Neither hath any thing disgusted me more in reading the histories of those times, than to see one of the worst princes of any age or country, celebrated as an instrument in that glorious work of the Reformation.

The Bishop having gone over all the matters that properly fall within his Introduction, proceeds to expostulate with several sorts of people;[47] First with Protestants who are no Christians, such as atheists, deists, freethinkers, and the like enemies to Christianity.  But these he treats with the tenderness of a friend, because they are all of them of sound Whig principles in church and state.  However, to do him justice, he lightly touches some old topics for the truth of the Gospel; and concludes by wishing that the freethinkers would consider well, if (Anglice, whether) they think it possible to bring a nation to be without any religion at all, and what the consequences of that may prove; [48] and in case they allow the negative, he gives it clearly for Christianity.

[Footnote 47:  Page 56.]

[Footnote 48:  Page 59.]

Secondly, he applies himself (if I take his meaning right) to Christian papists “who have a taste of liberty,” and desires them to “compare the absurdities of their own religion with the reasonableness of the reformed:”  [49] Against which, as good luck would have it, I have nothing to object.

[Footnote 49:  Page 59.]

Thirdly, he is somewhat rough against his own party, “who having tasted the sweets of Protestant liberty, can look back so tamely on Popery coming on them; it looks as if they were bewitched, or that the devil were in them, to be so negligent.  It is not enough that they resolve not to turn papists themselves:  They ought to awaken all about them, even the most ignorant and stupid, to apprehend their danger, and to exert themselves with their utmost industry to guard against it, and to resist it.  If after all their endeavours to prevent it, the corruption of the age, and the art and power of our enemies, prove too hard for us, then, and not until then, we must submit to the will of God, and be silent, and prepare ourselves for all the extremity of suffering and of misery:"[50] with a great deal more of the same strain.