accusers, that they have severally owned to me, that all men, who espouse a party, must expect to be blackened by the contrary side; that themselves knew nothing of it, nor of the authors of the “Reflections.”  It remains, therefore, to be considered, whether, if I were as much a knave as they would make me, I am fool enough to be guilty of this charge; and whether they, who raised it, would have made it public, if they had thought I was theirs inwardly.  For it is plain, they are glad of worse scribblers than I am, and maintain them too, as I could prove, if I envied them their miserable subsistence.  I say no more, but let my actions speak for me:  Spectemur agendo,—­that is the trial.

Much less am I concerned at the noble name of Bayes; that is a brat so like his own father, that he cannot be mistaken for any other body[27].  They might as reasonably have called Tom Sternhold, Virgil, and the resemblance would have held as well.

As for knave, and sycophant, and rascal, and impudent, and devil, and old serpent, and a thousand such good morrows, I take them to be only names of parties; and could return murderer, and cheat, and whig-napper, and sodomite; and, in short, the goodly number of the seven deadly sins, with all their kindred and relations, which are names of parties too; but saints will be saints, in spite of villainy.  I believe they would pass themselves upon us for such a compound as mithridate, or Venice-treacle; as if whiggism were an admirable cordial in the mass, though the several ingredients are rank poisons.

But if I think either Mr Hunt a villain, or know any of my Reflectors to be ungrateful rogues, I do not owe them so much kindness as to call them so; for I am satisfied that to prove them either, would but recommend them to their own party.  Yet if some will needs make a merit of their infamy, and provoke a legend of their sordid lives, I think they must be gratified at last; and though I will not take the scavenger’s employment from him, yet I may be persuaded to point at some men’s doors, who have heaps of filth before them.  But this must be when they have a little angered me; for hitherto I am provoked no further than to smile at them.  And indeed, to look upon the whole faction in a lump, never was a more pleasant sight than to behold these builders of a new Babel, how ridiculously they are mixed, and what a rare confusion there is amongst them.  One part of them is carrying stone and mortar for the building of a meeting-house; another sort understand not that language; they are for snatching away their work-fellows’ materials to set up a bawdy-house:  some of them blaspheme, and others pray; and both, I believe, with equal godliness at bottom:  some of them are atheists, some sectaries, yet all true protestants.  Most of them love all whores, but her of Babylon.  In few words, any man may be what he will, so he be one of them.  It is enough to despise the King, to hate the Duke,