[Footnote 50:  Pages 60, 61.]

With due submission to the profound sagacity of this prelate, who can smell Popery at 500 miles distance, better than fanaticism just under his nose; I take leave to tell him, that this reproof to his friends, for want of zeal and clamour against Popery, slavery, and the Pretender, is what they have not deserved.  Are the pamphlets and papers, daily published by the sublime authors of his party full of any thing else?  Are not the Queen, the ministers, the majority of Lords and Commons, loudly taxed in print with this charge against them at full length?  Is it not the perpetual echo of every Whig coffeehouse and club?  Have they not quartered Popery and the Pretender upon the peace, and treaty of commerce; upon the possessing, and quieting, and keeping, and demolishing of Dunkirk?  Have they not clamoured because the Pretender continued in France, and because he left it?  Have they not reported, that the town swarmed with many thousand papists, when upon search there were never found so few of that religion in it before?  If a clergyman preaches obedience to the higher powers, is he not immediately traduced as a papist?  Can mortal man do more?  To deal plainly, my Lord, your friends are not strong enough yet to make an insurrection, and it is unreasonable to expect it from them, until their neighbours are ready.

My Lord, I have a little seriousness at heart upon this point, where your Lordship affects to show so much.  When you can prove, that one single word has ever dropped from any minister of state, in public or private, in favour of the Pretender, or his cause; when you can make it appear, that in the course of this administration, since the Queen thought fit to change her servants, there hath one step been made toward weakening the Hanover title, or giving the least countenance to any other whatsoever; then, and not until then, go dry your chaff and stubble, give fire to the zeal of your faction, and reproach them with lukewarmness.

Fourthly, the Bishop applies himself to the Tories in general.  Taking it for granted, after his charitable manner, that they are all ready prepared to introduce Popery, he puts an excuse into their mouths, by which they would endeavour to justify their change of religion.  That “Popery is not what it was before the Reformation:  Things are now much mended; and further corrections might be expected, if we would enter into a treaty with them:  In particular, they see the error of proceeding severely with heretics; so that there is no reason to apprehend the returns of such cruelties as were practised an age and a half ago."[51]

[Footnote 51:  Page 62.]

This, he assures us, is a plea offered by the Tories in defence of themselves, for going about at this juncture to establish the Popish religion among us:  What argument does he bring to prove the fact itself?

      “Quibus indiciis, quo teste, probavit? 
  Nil horum:  verbosa et grandis epistola venit” [52]