estates which the catholicks lost in defence of the ancient constitution, many of which estates are at this day possessed by the posterity of those schismaticks: and thus they gained by their rebellion, what the catholicks lost by their loyalty.
We allow the catholicks to be brethren of the dissenters; some people indeed (which we cannot allow) would have them to be our children, because we both dissent from the church established, and both agree in abolishing this persecuting sacramental test; by which negative discouragement, we are both rendered incapable of civil and military employments. However, we cannot but wonder at the bold familiarity of these schismaticks, in calling the members of the national church, their brethren and fellow protestants. It is true that all these sects (except the catholicks) are brethren to each other in faction, ignorance, iniquity, perverseness, pride, and (if we except the quakers) in rebellion. But, how the churchmen can be styled their fellow protestants, we cannot comprehend: because, when the whole Babel of sectaries joined against the church, the king and the nobility, for twenty years, in a match at football, where the proverb expressly tells us, that all are fellows; while the three kingdoms were tossed to and fro, the churches and cities and royal palaces shattered to pieces by their balls, their buffets, and their kicks; the victors would allow no more fellows at football; but murdered, sequestered, plundered, deprived, banished to the plantations, or enslaved all their opposers, who had lost the game.
It is said the world is governed by opinion; and politicians assure us, that all power is founded
thereupon.
