treated by the Rules of Civility, when they themselves break through those of Society, and common Humanity:  How they can expect any fairer Quarter than Wolves or Tygers; or what Reason they can give why a Price should not be sett upon their Heads, as well as on the Others; or at least why they should not be securely hamper’d and muzzled, and led about for a Sight, like other Monsters. ’Tis the fatal and spreading Poyson of these Mens Examples and Principles which has extorted these warm Expressions from me; I cannot with Patience see my Countrey ruin’d by the prodigious increase of Infidelity and Immorality, nor forbear crying out with some Vehemence, when I am giving Warning to all honest Men to stand up in the Defence of it, when it is in greater and more eminent danger than it wou’d have been formerly, if the Spanish Armada had made a Descent amongst us:  I don’t speak of these things by distant Hear-say, or only from our publick Prints, but from my own Knowledg and little Acquaintance in the World, and therefore others must have observ’d much more, and cannot but fear, that if things go on as they now are, without a greater Check, and more severe Laws against these wide and contagious Mischiefs, at least without a more general united Endeavour to put those Laws already made in strict Execution, we are in a fair way to become a Nation of Atheists. ’Tis now no difficult matter to meet with those who pretend to be lewd upon Principles; They’ll talk very gravely, look as if they were in earnest, and come sobrii ad perdendam Rempublicam:  they wou’d be Criticks too, and Philosophers:  They attack Religion in Form and batter it from every Quarter; they wou’d turn the very Scriptures against themselves, and labour hard to remove a Supreme Being out of the World; or if they do vouchsafe him any room in it, ’tis only that they may find Fault with his Works, which they think, with that Blasphemer of old, might have been much better order’d, had they themselves stood by and directed the Architect. They’ll tell you the Errors of Nature are every where plain and visible, all monstrous, here too much and there too little; or, as one of their own Poets,

  Here she’s too sparing, there profusely vain.