Suppose the matter were now entire; the Qu[een] to make her choice, and for that end, should order the principles on both sides to be fairly laid before her.  First, I conceive the Whigs would grant, that they have naturally no very great veneration for crowned heads; that they allow, the person of the prince may, upon many occasions, be resisted by arms; and that they do not condemn the war raised against King Charles the First, or own it to be a rebellion, though they would be thought to blame his murder.  They do not think the prerogative to be yet sufficiently limited, and have therefore taken care (as a particular mark of their veneration for the illustrious house of Hanover) to clip it closer against next reign; which, consequently, they would be glad to see done in the present:  not to mention, that the majority of them, if it were put to the vote, would allow, that they prefer a commonwealth before a monarchy.  As to religion; their universal, undisputed maxim is, that it ought to make no distinction at all among Protestants; and in the word Protestant they include every body who is not a Papist, and who will, by an oath, give security to the government.  Union in discipline and doctrine, the offensive sin of schism, the notion of a Church and a hierarchy, they laugh at as foppery, cant and priestcraft.  They see no necessity at all that there should be a national faith; and what we usually call by that name, they only style the “religion of the magistrate."[3] Since the Dissenters and we agree in the main, why should the difference of a few speculative points, or modes of dress, incapacitate them from serving their prince and country, in a juncture when we ought to have all hands up against the common enemy?  And why should they be forced to take the sacrament from our clergy’s hands, and in our posture, or indeed why compelled to receive it at all, when they take an employment which has nothing to do with religion?

These are the notions which most of that party avow, and which they do not endeavour to disguise or set off with false colours, or complain of being misrepresented about, I have here placed them on purpose, in the same light which themselves do, in the very apologies they make for what we accuse them of; and how inviting even these doctrines are, for such a monarch to close with, as our law, both statute and common, understands a King of England to be, let others decide.  But then, if to these we should add other opinions, which most of their own writers justify, and which their universal practice has given a sanction to, they are no more than what a prince might reasonably expect, as the natural consequence of those avowed principles.  For when such persons are at the head of affairs, the low opinion they have of princes, will certainly tempt them to violate that respect they ought to bear; and at the same time, their own want of duty to their sovereign is largely made up, by exacting greater submissions to themselves from their fellow-subjects:  it being indisputably true, that the same principle of pride and ambition makes a man treat his equals with insolence, in the same proportion as he affronts his superiors; as both Prince and people have sufficiently felt from the late m[inist]ry.