secret guile; better is it to talk openly, and profess openly, for popery, that you may see the shape and real picture of it, than pretend strong opposition of it, and be all at the same time putting your hands to the work, and pulling it down upon yourselves with all your might.

But here comes an objection in our way, which, however weighty, we must endeavour to get over, and this is, what becomes of the abjuration? If the pretender comes in we are all perjured, and we ought to be all unanimous for the house of Hanover, because we are all perjured if we are for the pretender. Perjured, say ye! Ha! why, do all these people say we are perjured already? Nay, one, two, three, or four times? What signify oaths and abjurations in a nation where the parliament can make an oath to-day, and punish a man for keeping it to-morrow! Besides, taking oaths without examination, and breaking them without consideration, hath been so much a practice, and the date of its original is so far back, that none, or but very few, know where to look for it; nay, have we not been called in the vulgar dialect of foreign countries "the swearing nation"? Note, we do not say the forsworn nation; for whatever other countries say of us, it is not meet we should say so of ourselves; but as to swearing and forswearing, associating and abjuring, there are very few without sin to throw the first stone, and therefore we may be the less careful to answer in this matter: it is evident that the friends of the pretender cannot blame us; for have not the most professed jacobites all over the nation taken this abjuration? Nay, when even in their hearts they have all the while resolved to be for the pretender? Not to instance in the swearing in all ages to and against governments, just as they were or were not, in condition to protect us, or keep others out of possession; but we have a much better way to come off this than that, and we doubt not to clear the nation of perjury, by declaring the design, true intent, and meaning of the thing itself; for the good or evil of every action is said to lie in the intention; if then we can prove the bringing in the pretender to be done with a real intention and sincere desire to keep him out, or, as before, to spew him out; if we bring in popery with an intention and a sincere design to establish the protestant religion; if we bring in a popish prince with a single design the firmer and better to fix and introduce the protestant Hanover succession; if, I say, these things are the true intent and meaning, and are at the bottom of all our actions in this matter, pray how shall we be said to be perjured, or to break in upon the abjuration, whose meaning we keep, whatever becomes of the literal part of it. Thus we are abundantly defended from the guilt of perjury, because we preserve the design and intention upright and entire for the house of Hanover; though as the best means to bring it to pass we think fit to bring in popery and the pretender: but yet farther, to justify the lawfulness and usefulness of such kind of methods, we may go back to former experiments of the same case, or like cases, for nothing can illustrate such a thing so aptly, as the example of eminent men who have practised the very same things in the same or like cases, and more especially when that practice has been made use of by honest men in an honest cause, and the end been crowned with success. This eminent example was first put in practice by the late famous Earl of Sunderland, in the time of King James II., and that too in the case of bringing popery into England, which is the very individual article before us. This famous politician, if fame lies not, turned papist himself, went publicly to mass, advised and directed all the forward rash steps that King James afterwards took towards the introducing of popery into the nation; if he is not slandered, it was he advised the setting up of popish chapels and mass-houses in the city of London, and in the several principal towns of this nation; the invading the right of corporations, courts of justice, universities, and, at last, the erecting the high commission court, to sap the foundations of the church; and many more of the arbitrary steps which that monarch took for the ruin of the protestant religion, as he thought, were brought about by this politic earl, purely with design, and as the only effectual means to ruin the popish schemes, and bring about the establishment of the protestant religion by the revolution; and, as experience after made it good, he alone was in the right, and it was the only way left, the only step that could be taken, though at first it made us all of the opinion the man was going the ready way to ruin his country, and that he was selling us to popery and Rome. This was exactly our case; the nation being sick of a deadly, and otherwise incurable disease, this wise physician knew that nothing but a medicine made up of deadly poison, that should put the whole body into convulsions, and make it cast up the dregs of the malady, would have any effect; and so he applied himself accordingly to such a cure; he brought on popery to the very door; he caused the nation to swallow as much of it as he thought was enough to make her as sick as a horse, and then he foresaw she would spew up the disease and the medicine together; the potion of popery he saw would come up with it, and so it did. If this be our case now, then it may be true that bringing the pretender is the only way to establish the protestant succession; and upon such terms, and such only, I declare myself for the pretender. If any sort of people are against the succession of the house of Hanover on any other accounts, and for other reasons, it may not be amiss to know some of them, and a little to recommend them to those who have a mind to be for him, but well know not wherefore or why they are so inclined. 1. Some being instructed to have an aversion to all foreign princes or families, are against the succession of the princes of Hanover, because, as they are taught to say, they are Dutchmen; now, though it might as well be said of the pretender that he is a Frenchman, yet that having upon many accounts been made more familiar to them of late, and the name of a Dutch king having a peculiar odium left upon it, by the grievances of the late King William's reign, they can by no means think of another Dutch succession without abhorrence; nay, the aversion is so much greater than their aversions to popery, that they can with much more satisfaction entertain the notion of a popish French pretender than of the best protestant in the world, if he hath anything belonging to him that sounds like a Dutchman; and this is some people's reason against the Hanover succession; a reason which has produced various effects in the world since the death of that prince, even to creating national antipathies in some people to the whole people of Holland, and to wish us involved in a war with the Dutch without any foundation of a quarrel with them, or any reason for those aversions; but these things opening a scene which relates to things farther back than the subject we are now upon, we omit them here for brevity sake, and to keep more closely to the thing in hand at this time. Others have aversions to the Hanover succession as it is the effect of the revolution, and as it may reasonably be supposed to favour such principles as the revolution was brought about by, and has been the support of, viz., principles of liberty, justice, rights of parliaments, the people's liberties, free possession of property, and such like; these doctrines, a certain party in this nation have always to their utmost opposed, and have given us reason to believe they hate and abhor them, and for this reason they cannot be supposed to appear forward for the Hanover succession; to these principles have been opposed the more famous doctrines of passive obedience, absolute will, indefeasible right, the jus divinum of the line of princes, hereditary right, and such like; these, as preached up by that eminent divine, Dr. Henry Sacheverell, are so much preferable to the pretences of