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LETTER III.

Observations on the origin of power-on the high republican spirit-on the manner in which Cromwell overthrew both Church and state with this dreadful engine-on the republican enthusiasm of many of the first Protestants on the articles of religion by which the latter reformers struck at that enthusiasm-on tyranny-on slavery and on the peculiar liberty of the subjects of Great Britain-The author's wishes with respect to a speedy reconciliation with the colonists—the happy conséquences of such a reconciliation.

REV. SIR,-My wishes for your happiness, and my concern for the public peace, prompt me to try all the means in my power to remove your prejudices, and to stop the ferment raised by your mistakes. Having therefore addressed you as a man, a Christian, and a Briton, I shall now expostulate with you as a Protestant, and a friend to liberty.

The distinguishing character of a Protestant is to rest his doctrine upon reason and Scripture. But upon which of these foundations, sir, do you rest your doctrine of power? You insinuate that the power of kings ascends from the people: you blame your opponent for having intimated, that it descends from God; and you recommend a levelling scheme of equal representation, founded upon a natural, equal right of sharing in the legislative power; a scheme this, which presupposes that one man in society has naturally as much right to make and repeal laws as another. Whence it evidently follows, that subjects have a right to rise against their sovereign whenever they think proper to make (in connection with their neighbours) a decree or law of insurrection; and that every individual, in conjunction with other individuals, has a supreme right to dispose of property and royal honours, whether it be by equaliz ing ranks and fortunes, or by putting down one king and setting up another.

I own to you, sir, that although this scheme would give me a significancy in life which I never dreamed of, I dare not embrace it. The vanity of considering myself as a member of the body, which your doctrine represents as the supreme lawgiver, the judge of legislators, and the maker of kings; this flattering vanity, I say, cannot induce me to renounce the dictates of reason, and the declarations of Scripture.

Reason informs me that the first man was endued with a power to protect and rule mankind: that all men are born in a state of civil society, because no child was ever his own father, his own mother, his own nurse, or his own protector; and that, of consequence, all men were under as strong an obligation of submitting to the first man, (in all things agreeable to God's supreme dominion,) as the first man was of submitting to God. If Adam had not sinned and died, to this day he would have been, under God, the monarch of all the earth; and all kings would have been bound to acknowledge his supreme authority. This Divine right of dominion Adam received from God. At his death he left it behind him; and even before his death it began to subdivide itself into every branch of family government, and national administration. Hence it is, that "the powers that be," are said to be "ordained of God;" and that magistrates and governors are called gods in the Old and New Testa

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ment. It appears to me, therefore, as irrational to say that the power of sovereigns comes originally from the people, as to say that the sanc tion of the fifth commandment comes originally from man. Nor dare I any more assert, that the people have a natural right to enthrone and dethrone kings, than I dare maintain that children and scholars have a natural right to bestow or take away paternal and magisterial authority; or that the hands and feet have a natural right to rule the head and heart, I grant, that if all the people will rebel against their rightful sovereign, they are able to depose and destroy him. But arguing from might to right is the logic of a tyrant, a robber, and a mob; not that of a man, a Christian, and a Protestant. If all the sons of Adam had plotted his destruction, they probably could have effected it but their having a power to sin would have been no proof that they had a license so to do. You may call this a "Jacobite doctrine," sir, but such a name does no more make it unreasonable, than your calling Mr. Wesley a slave deprives him of his liberty.

As this doctrine of power, so far as power is exercised in subordina tion to God's supreme dominion, is agreeable to reason, so is it to Scripture. Search the sacred records, sir, and you will see that "they who resist the" above-described "power, resist" not the ordinances of the people, but "the ordinances of God" himself, Rom. xiii, 2. Kings, in the sacred pages, are said to be "the Lord's anointed," and not the anointed of the people; and the men of God inform us, that "God removeth kings, and setteth up kings" in his own right, Dan. ii, 21.

I grant, that when the Lord designs to punish a nation, or a tyrant, he often suffers the people, or some ambitious man from among the peo ple, to usurp his right, and to procure an unlawful coronation. Nor do I deny, that, in lawful coronations, the Lord invites the people to fall in with his providential choice; and that, sometimes, he brings his choice about by means of the people. But the fullest concurrence of the people does not deprive him of his Divine prerogative. Hence it is, that the psalmist says, "Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south. And why? God is the [supreme] Judge: he putteth down one and setteth up another," Psalm xxv, 7, 8. This is his incontestable right. If the people therefore stand in need of a rod of iron, to bruise their stubborn backs; he may "give them a [cruel] king in his anger," Hos. xiii, 11. Or, what is still worse, he may suffer them to set over themselves a tyrant, whose name is "Legion, for they are many." And "Legion" will drive them into a sea of trouble, as fiercely and as arbitrarily as a certain legion formerly drove a herd of unruly, obstinate animals into the sea of Galilee. May our American brethren never be given over to so dreadful a delusion!

If legislative, royal power ascended from the people, the Lord would not have elected Moses to be the lawgiver, and Joshua to be the leader of Israel, without first consulting the twelve tribes. Nor would he have raised them judges afterward, without previously asking their consent. Much less would he have anointed Saul, David, Jehu, and others to be kings over Israel, in so arbitrary a manner as he did. To prove your doctrine, therefore, you must appeal to the right exercised by some lawless citizens, mentioned by our Lord, who unjustly hated their sovereign, and said, "We will not have this man to reign over us,"

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Luke xix, 14. And if you please, to this precedent you may add the example of those Pharisaic, fickle patriots, who once insisted upon making Christ their king, and afterward cried, "We will have no king but Cesar; let Jesus be crucified." From the designs of such uneasy religionists, such makers and killers of kings, may God deliver the king and his dominions! Let a Theudas, a Barabbas, a Caiaphas, make insurrections against Cesar, and raise mobs against Christ himself; but let not pious Christians who dissent from the Church of England, dissent from the prophets and apostles, when they say, "My son, fear thou the Lord, and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change," Prov. xxiv, 21. "Submit to the king as supreme. Fear God. Honour the king. Yea, honour him with thy substance, by paying tribute, or taxes, not only for wrath, but for conscience' sake," 1 Peter ii, 3, &c; Rom. xiii, 5, 6; Prov. iii, 9.

The levelling scheme, on which you found your doctrine of a right to equal representation, is the rock upon which rigid republicans perpetually run. Against this very rock many of the first overdoing Protestants steered their course, and dashed their ark in pieces. They had long groaned under popish tyranny; and when the yoke which had galled them for ages was broken, they did not know how to contain themselves. Like a high-spirited horse, which takes to a mad gallop, and furiously leaps over the bounds of the pasture into which it is turned after a long confinement, they disdained all restraint. Nothing short of lawless proceedings seemed to them to deserve the name of liberty. Because they had shaken off the antichristian yoke of ecclesiastical tyrants, they concluded that they had a right to shake off the Christian yoke of civil governors. They paid an unjust tribute to the pope no more; and, therefore, they would pay just taxes to their sovereign no longer. In short, they asserted that they had as much right in the legislature as their legislators. They brought on a general election, at which they elected themselves lawgivers; and as you may easily conceive, one of their first laws was, that goods should be common; thus they began, facere rem-publicam, to make a republic, a commonwealth, in the strictest sense of the word. All things were theirs. They were to call no man master upon earth, They were all to be literally kings with Christ, and they anointed themselves to "reign with him a thousand years.' This scheme could not fail to please the pot boilers in Germany, who had nothing to lose; and it was highly applauded by those who hoped to get more than they had. They rose therefore in riotous mobs to "proclaim liberty to the captives," and "to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." They were to "undo all heavy burdens," to "break off every yoke," to "bind kings with chains," and "nobles with fetters of iron." They actually began their levelling march, headed by some well-meaning enthusiasts, and by some designing men, who, like Cromwell, made their way to supreme authority, by striking dreadful blows at all authority. And under pretence of asserting "the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free," they committed all the outrages which can be expected from a lawless populace, who mistake licentiousness for freedom.

This mischief had begun in the Church. Some of the German reformers had, at times, spoken so unguardedly of the ceremonial law of Moses, which St. Paul absolutely discards, as to pour contempt upon the

moral law of Christ, which the apostle strongly enforces. Luther him. self, in his zeal for salvation without works, had been ready to burn the epistle of St. James, because it speaks honourably of Christ's royal law, by which Christians shall stand or fall when they shall be "judged [that is, justified or condemned] according to their works." When warm men had been taught to bid defiance to God's law, as well as to iniquity and Satan; what wonder was it if some of them went beyond their teachers, and began to infer, that as they were made free from the law of God, so they were made free from the law of the land! The transition from ecclesiastical to civil Antinomianism is easy and obvious; for as he that reverences the law of God will naturally reverence the just commands of the king; so he that thinks himself free from the law of the Lord, will hardly think himself bound by the statutes of his sovereign.

This republican, mobbing spirit, after having tossed Germany, began to agitate England. Permit me, sir, to transcribe some passages from Bishop Burnet's History of the Reformation. They refer to my subject, and will throw much light upon it: "At this time there were many Ana. baptists* in several parts of England. They were generally Germans, whom the revolutions there had forced to change their seats. Upon Luther's first preaching in Germany, there arose many, who, building on some of his principles, carried things much farther than he did." Here the historian candidly observes that, although these men were called Anabaptists because they agreed to explode the baptism of infants, they were not all of the same temper. "Some," says he, "were called the gentle or moderate Anabaptists. But others denied almost all the principles of the Christian doctrine, and were men of fierce and barbarous tempers. They had broke out into a general revolt over Germany, and raised the war called The Rustic War: and possessing themselves of Munster, made one of their teachers, John of Leyden, their king, under the title of King of the New Jerusalem.

"There was another sort of people, of whom all the good men in that age made great complaints. Some there were called Gospellers, or readers of the Gospel, who were a scandal to the doctrine they professed, &c. I do not find any thing objected to them as to their belief, save only that the doctrine of predestination having been generally taught by the reformers, many of this sect began to make strange inferences from it, reckoning that since every thing was decreed, and the decrees of God could not be frustrated, therefore men were to leave themselves to be carried by the decrees. This drew some into great impiety of life, &c. One of the ill effects of the dissoluteness of people's manners broke out

*This word, according to its Greek etymology, means Rebaptizers. Mr. Evans, and the Protestants of his denomination, are called by this name, because their grand peculiarity is to rebaptize those who were baptized in their infancy. No Church-of-England man can enter their Church, but at the door of rebaptization. Nor can he go through that door without renouncing his former baptism and all his communions. Dreadful abjuration! Hence it is that too many of those who have taken that rash step, are as zealous for rebaptization as the Christians who have renounced their baptism for Turkish ablutions, are zealous for their new washings. They exceed all others in zeal for making proselytes. I do not say this to prejudice the reader against the Anabaptists: on the contrary, I would have him think, as I do, that many of them are very good people, and that most of them mean well; and I believe this is the case with my opponent.

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er violently this summer, (1549,) occasioned by the enclosing of lands. While the monasteries stood, there were great numbers of people mainaltained about these houses, &c. But now the number of the people increased much; marriage being universally allowed. They had also more time than formerly by the abrogation of many holidays, and the itputting down of processions and pilgrimages; so that as the numbers increased, they had more time than they knew how to bestow."

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The historian tells us next how the popish priests availed themselves of these favourable circumstances to raise a dreadful rebellion in Devonshire; and then he goes on thus: "When this commotion was grown to a head, the men of Norfolk rose; being led by one Ket, a tanner. These pretended nothing of religion, but only to suppress and destroy the gentry, to raise the commons, and to put new counsellors about the her king. They increased mightily, and became twenty thousand strong, but had no order or discipline, and committed many horrid outrages. Ket assumed to himself the power of judicature, and under an old oak, called from thence the oak of the reformation, did such justice as might be expected from such a judge in such a camp. When the news of this rising came into Yorkshire, the commons there rose also; being farther encouraged by a prophecy, that there should be no king nor nobility in England; that the kingdom was to be ruled by four governors, chosen by the commons, who should hold a parliament, in common, to begin at the south and north seas. They, at the first rising, fired beacons, and so gathered the country, as if it had been for the defence of the coast, and meeting with two gentlemen, with two others with them, they, without any provocation, inurdered them, and left their bodies unburied. At the same time that England was in this commotion, the news came that the French king had sent a great army into the territory of Boulogne; so that the government was put to most extraordinary straits. There was a fast proclaimed in and about London. Cranmer preached on the fast day at court. He chiefly lamented the scandal given by many who pretended a zeal for religion, but used that for a cloak to disguise their other vices. He set before them the fresh example of Germany, where people generally loved to hear the Gospel, but had not amended their lives upon it, for which God had now, after many years' forbearance, brought them under a severe scourge." (History of the Reformation, book i, part ii, ed. 2, pp. 110-118.)

From this quotation it appears that the wild, republican spirit which animated Ket and his army, worked, in those days, just as licentious patriotism works in ours. Ket, the great patriot, would redress grievances. He raised the commons under pretence of putting new counsellors about the king. He got the mob together, as if it were for the defence of the coast, or of public liberty. But his real design was probably to be one of the four governors chosen by the commons, who were to make an end of the king and nobility of England, and to turn the monarchy into a republic. As for modest John of Leyden, he got more than the name of protector; for he was actually proclaimed king. This sort of republican patriotism leads therefore to honour, though this honour, like that of the German and English levellers, frequently ends in shame.

The wildness of this high republican spirit having fixed a foul blot on
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