have argued with them otherwise than he does? or, if I should write a grave letter to his lordship with the same advice, taking it for granted that he was half an atheist and half a papist, and conjuring him by all he held dear to have compassion upon all those who believed a God; not to revive the fires in Smithfield; that he must either forfeit his bishoprick, or not marry a fourth wife; I ask, whether he would not think I intended him the highest injury and affront?
But as to the tory laity, he gives them up in a lump for abandoned atheists: they are a set of men so impiously corrupted in the point of religion, that no scene of cruelty can fright them from leaping into it, [popery] and perhaps acting such a part in it as may he assigned them. He therefore despairs of influencing them by any topicks drawn from religion or compassion, and advances the consideration of interest, as the only powerful argument to persuade them against popery.
What he offers upon this head is so very amazing from a christian, a clergyman, and a prelate of the church of England, that I must, in my own imagination, strip him of those three capacities, and put him among the number of that set of men he mentions in the paragraph before; or else it will be impossible to shape out an answer.
His lordship, in order to dissuade the tories from their design of bringing in popery, tells them, how valuable a part of the whole soil of England the abbey lands, the estates of the bishops, of the cathedrals, and the tithes are: how difficult such a resumption would be to many families; yet all these must be thrown up; for sacrilege, in the church of Rome, is a mortal sin. I desire it may be observed, what a jumble here is
made
