[Footnote 21: 
“He who profaned thy body by a wound
Must pay the penalty of death.”
[T.S.]]

NUMB. 34.[1]

FROM THURSDAY MARCH 15, TO THURSDAY MARCH 22, 1710-11.

De Libertate retinenda, qua certe nihil est dulcius, tibi assentior.[2]

The apologies of the ancient Fathers are reckoned to have been the most useful parts of their writings, and to have done greatest service to the Christian religion, because they removed those misrepresentations which had done it most injury.  The methods these writers took, was openly and freely to discover every point of their faith, to detect the falsehood of their accusers, and to charge nothing upon their adversaries but what they were sure to make good.  This example has been ill followed of later times; the Papists since the Reformation using all arts to palliate the absurdities of their tenets, and loading the Reformers with a thousand calumnies; the consequence of which has been only a more various, wide, and inveterate separation.  It is the same thing in civil schisms:  a Whig forms an image of a Tory, just after the thing he most abhors, and that image serves to represent the whole body.

I am not sensible of any material difference there is between those who call themselves the Old Whigs, and a great majority of the present Tories; at least by all I could ever find, from examining several persons of each denomination.  But it must be confessed that the present body of Whigs, as they now constitute that party, is a very odd mixture of mankind, being forced to enlarge their bottom by taking in every heterodox professor either in religion or government, whose opinions they were obliged to encourage for fear of lessening their number; while the bulk of the landed men and people were entirely of the old sentiments.  However, they still pretended a due regard to the monarchy and the Church, even at the time when they were making the largest steps towards the ruin of both:  but not being able to wipe off the many accusations laid to their charge, they endeavoured, by throwing of scandal, to make the Tories appear blacker than themselves, that so the people might join with them, as the smaller evil of the two.

But among all the reproaches which the Whigs have flung upon their adversaries, there is none hath done them more service than that of passive obedience, as they represent it, with the consequences of non-resistance, arbitrary power, indefeasible right, tyranny, popery, and what not?  There is no accusation which has passed with more plausibility than this, nor any that is supported with less justice.  In order therefore to undeceive those who have been misled by false representations, I thought it would be no improper undertaking to set this matter in a fair light, which I think has not yet been done.  A Whig asks whether you hold passive obedience? you affirm it:  he then immediately