Another great objection with me against the late party, was the cruel tyranny they put upon conscience, by a barbarous inquisition, refusing to admit the least toleration or indulgence.  They imposed a hundred tests, but could never be prevailed with to dispense with, or take off the smallest, nor even admit of occasional conformity;[18] but went on daily (as their apostle Tindal expresseth it) narrowing their terms of communion; pronouncing nine parts in ten of the kingdom heretics, and shutting them out of the pale of their Church.  These very men, who talk so much of a comprehension in religion among us, how came they to allow so little of it in politics, which is their sole religion? You shall hear them pretending to bewail the animosities kept up between the Church of England and Dissenters, where the differences in opinion are so few and inconsiderable; yet these very sons of moderation were pleased to excommunicate every man who disagreed with them in the smallest article of their political creed, or who refused to receive any new article, how difficult soever to digest, which the leaders imposed at pleasure to serve their own interest.

I will quit this subject for the present, when I have told one story.[19] “There was a great king in Scythia, whose dominions were bounded to the north, by the poor, mountainous territories of a petty lord, who paid homage as the king’s vassal.  The Scythian prime minister being largely bribed, indirectly obtained his master’s consent to suffer this lord to build forts, and provide himself with arms, under pretence of preventing the inroads of the Tartars.  This little depending sovereign, finding he was now in a condition to be troublesome, began to insist upon terms, and threatened upon every occasion to unite with the Tartars:  upon which, the prime minister, who began to be in pain about his head, proposed a match betwixt his master, and the only daughter of this tributary lord, which he had the good luck to bring to pass:  and from that time, valued himself as author of a most glorious union, which indeed was grown of absolute necessity by his corruption.”  This passage, cited literally from an old history of Sarmatia, I thought fit to set down, on purpose to perplex little smattering remarkers, and put them upon the hunt for an application.

[Footnote 1:  No. 19 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  Horace, “Satires,” II. i. 1-3: 

“There are, to whom too poignant I appear; Beyond the laws of satire too severe.  My lines are weak, unsinewed, others say.”—­P.  FRANCIS. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  One of these papers was “The Observator.”  The issue for December 6th (vol. ix., No. 93) dealt largely with “The Examiner’s” attack on Verres (No. 18, ante), and the following number returned to the charge, criticizing the attacks made in Nos. 17 and 18 of “The Examiner” on the Duke of Marlborough. [T.S.]]