When we accuse the Papists of the horrid doctrine, “that no faith ought to be kept with heretics,” they deny it to a man; and yet we justly think it dangerous to trust them, because we know their actions have been sometimes suitable to that opinion.  But the followers of those who beheaded the Martyr have not yet renounced their principles; and, till they do, they may be justly suspected.  Neither will the bare name of Protestants set them right.  For surely Christ requires more from us than a profession of hating Popery, which a Turk or an atheist may do as well as a Protestant.

If an enslaved people should recover their liberty from a tyrannical power of any sort, who could blame them for commemorating their deliverance by a day of joy and thanksgiving?  And doth not the destruction of a Church, a King, and three kingdoms, by the artifices, hypocrisy, and cruelty of a wicked race of soldiers and preachers, and other sons of Belial, equally require a solemn time of humiliation?  Especially since the consequences of that bloody scene still continue, as I have already shewn, in their effects upon us.

Thus I have done with the three heads I proposed to discourse on.  But before I conclude, I must give a caution to those who hear me, that they may not think I am pleading for absolute unlimited power in any one man.  It is true, all power is from God, and, as the apostle says, “the powers that be are ordained of God;” but this is in the same sense that all we have is from God, our food and raiment, and whatever possessions we hold by lawful means.  Nothing can be meant in those, or any other words of Scripture, to justify tyrannical power, or the savage cruelties of those heathen emperors who lived in the time of the apostles.  And so St Paul concludes, “The powers that be are ordained of God:”  For what?  Why, “for the punishment of evil doers, and the praise, the reward, of them that do well.”  There is no more inward value in the greatest emperor, than in the meanest of his subjects:  His body is composed of the same substance, the same parts, and with the same or greater, infirmities:  His education is generally worse, by flattery, and idleness, and luxury, and those evil dispositions that early power is apt to give.  It is therefore against common sense, that his private personal interest, or pleasure, should be put in the balance with the safety of millions, every one of which is his equal by nature, equal in the sight of God, equally capable of salvation; and it is for their sakes, not his own, that he is entrusted with the government over them.  He hath as high trust as can safely be reposed in one man, and, if he discharge it as he ought, he deserves all the honour and duty that a mortal may be allowed to receive.  His personal failings we have nothing to do with, and errors in government are to be imputed to his ministers in the state.  To what height those errors may be suffered to proceed, is not the business of this day, or this place, or of my function,