There may have been another motive, although it be hardly credible, both for publishing this work, and threatening a second part:  It is not soon conceived how far the sense of a man’s vanity will transport him.  This man must have somewhere heard, that dangerous enemies have been often bribed to silence with money or preferment:  And, therefore, to shew how formidable he is, he hath published his first essay; and, in hopes of hire to be quiet, hath frighted us with his design of another.  What must the clergy do in these unhappy circumstances?  If they should bestow this man bread enough to stop his mouth, it will but open those of a hundred more, who are every whit as well qualified to rail as he.  And truly, when I compare the former enemies to Christianity, such as Socinus,[5] Hobbes, and Spinosa,[6] with such of their successors, as Toland, Asgil, Coward, Gildon,[7] this author of the “Rights,” and some others; the church appeareth to me like the sick old lion in the fable, who, after having his person outraged by the bull, the elephant, the horse, and the bear, took nothing so much to heart, as to find himself at last insulted by the spurn of an ass.

[Footnote 5:  Laelius Socinus (1525-1562), born at Siena.  He studied at Bologna, and in 1546 became a member of a secret freethinking society in Venice.  The society, however, was broken up, and Socinus left Italy for Switzerland and Poland.  He died at Zurich.  His papers were published by his nephew, Faustus Socinus, who founded a sect on the tenets they taught.]

[Footnote 6:  Benedict or Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), born at Amsterdam, of a Portuguese Jewish family.  He was excommunicated by his people for atheism.  He retired to the Hague and took to making lenses, and the study of philosophy.  His “Ethics” and “Tractatus Theologico-Politicus” constitute a system of philosophy which has had no little influence on modern thought.  See Pollock’s “Spinoza.”]

[Footnote 7:  Charles Gildon (1665-1723-4) was educated at Douay.  He printed a book called “The Deist’s Manual.”  For accounts of Coward, Toland, and Asgil, see note, p. 9.] I will now add a few words to give the reader some general notion of the nature and tendency of the work itself.

I think I may assert, without the least partiality, that it is a treatise wholly devoid of wit or learning, under the most violent and weak endeavours and pretences to both.  That it is replenished throughout with bold, rude, improbable falsehoods, and gross misinterpretations; and supported by the most impudent sophistry and false logic I have anywhere observed.  To this he hath added a paltry, traditional cant of “priestrid” and “priestcraft,” without reason or pretext as he applyeth it.  And when he raileth at those doctrines in Popery (which no Protestant was ever supposed to believe) he leads the reader, however, by the hand, to make applications against the English clergy, and then he never faileth to triumph, as if