did prove so valiant, that, as far as I could learn, they never once ran away before an enemy. Hereupon he got a commission, and brought this troop into a double regiment of fourteen full troops; and all these as full of religious men as he could get. These having more than ordinary wit and resolution, had more than ordinary success. With their successes, the hearts both of captain and soldiers secretly rose both in pride and expectation; and the familiarity of many honest, erroneous men, Anabaptists, Antinomians, &c, began withal quickly to corrupt their judgments. Hereupon Cromwell's religious zeal gave way to the power of that ambition which still increased as his successes increased. Both piety and ambition concurred in his countenancing all that he thought godly. Piety pleadeth for them as godly, and ambition secretly told him what use he might make of them. He meant well in all this at the beginning, and thought that he did all for the safety of the godly, and the public good; but not without any eye to himself.”*

From this extract it appears that Cromwell, like Dr. Price, rode the great horse religion, as well as the great horse liberty; and that the best way to counterwork the enthusiasm of patriotic religionists, is to do constitutional liberty, and Scriptural religion full justice, by defending the former against the attacks of despotic monarchs on the right hand, and despotic mobs on the left, and by preserving the latter from the opposite onsets of profane infidels on the left hand, and enthusiastical religionists on the right. I humbly hope that our governors will always so avoid one extreme as not to run into the other; and that, at this time, they will so guard against the very appearances of irreligion and immorality,

No historian having had so good an opportunity of knowing Cromwell as judicious Mr. Baxter, who was personally acquainted with him, and served in his army as chaplain; some of my readers will be glad to see what he farther says of that extraordinary man.

"When successes had broken down all considerable opposition, he [Cromwell] was in the face of all temptations, which conquered him, when he had conquered others. He thought that he had hitherto done well; that none but God had made him great; that if the war was lawful, the victory was lawful; that if it was lawful to fight against the king and conquer him, it was lawful to use him as a conquered enemy; and that it would be a foolish thing to trust him, when they had so provoked him. Hereupon he joined with that party in the parliament who were for cutting off the king, and raised with them the Independents and sectaries in the army, city, and country, to make a faction. Accordingly he modelled the army, disbanded the forces which were like to have hindered his design, pulled down the Presbyterian majority in parliament-and then the parliament; being the more easily persuaded that all this was lawful, because he had a secret eye to his own exaltation; thinking that when the king was gone a government there must be, and that no man was so fit for it as himself. Having thus forced his conscience to justify all his cause, he thought that the end being good and necessary, the necessary means could not be bad. And accordingly he gave his interest leave to tell him how far promises and vows should be kept or broken. Hence he thought secrecy a virtue, dissimulating no vice, and a lie, or perfidiousness, tolerable in case of necessity. His name stands as a monitory monument to posterity, to tell them the instability of man in strong temptations; what great success can do to lift up the mind; what pride can do to make man selfish; what selfishness can do to bribe the conscience, corrupt the judgment, and make men justify the greatest sins; and what bloodshed and great enormities a deluded judgment may draw men into." Hence it appears candid Mr. Baxter believed that Cromwell was once a good and pious man, who fell from God's fear into complicated wickedness, through the external allurements of success and ambition, and through the internal snare of Antinomianism.

as to leave Dr. Price, so far as in them lies, no room to injure our cause by arguments taken from our want of devotion, and of a strict regard to sound morals. What we owe to God, to ourselves, and to the colonists, calls upon us to remove whatever may give any just offence to those who seek occasion to reflect upon us. The colonists narrowly watch us; let their keen inspection make us diligently watch ourselves.

Let us especially take care neither to embezzle nor misapply the national income. But, as faithful guardians and stewards of the money raised for the necessary expenses of the government, let us (as many as are entrusted with the collecting or expending of that consecrated treasure) show ourselves to be disinterested, thrifty, and invariably just. Nothing can render our doctrine of taxation odious to conscientious people, but a needless rigour in the collecting, and a wanton profusion in the spending of the public revenue. I know that uneasy men, intent upon sedition and revolt, are apt to say whatever can palliate their crime. The least misdemeanor of individuals, let it be ever so much hid from, or disapproved of by our governors, will always appear to such men a sufficient reason to pour floods of reproach upon the administration. Thus, if we may depend upon the St. James' Chronicle, "Doctor Franklin, a member of the American congress, insinuates that the government is made detestable by governors, who, when they have crammed their coffers, and made themselves so odious to the people, that they can no longer remain among them with safety to their persons, are recalled, and rewarded with pensions that the produce of the taxes is not applied to the defence of the provinces, and the better support of government; but bestowed where it is not necessary, in augmenting salaries or pensions; and that a board of officers composed of the most indiscreet, ill-bred, and insolent men that can be found, live in open, grating luxury upon the sweat and blood of the industrious, whom they worry with groundless and expensive prosecutions, before arbitrary revenue judges.' I hope, for the honour of the administration, that prejudice guided Dr. Franklin's pen when it dropped these invidious hints. Should we have given them any just ground of complaint, it becomes us to remove it with all speed: setting our seal to the noble maxim, which Dr. Price advances after Lord Chatham, Rectitude is dignity: oppression only is meanness; and justice, honour.

"Righteousness exalteth a nation," says the wise man, "but sin is a reproach to any people," and may prove the ruin of the most powerful empire. Violence brought on the deluge. Luxury overthrew Sodom. Cruel usage of the Israelites destroyed Egypt. Complete wickedness caused the extirpation of the Canaanites. Imperiousness, and an abuse of the power of taxation, rent ten tribes from the kingdom of Judah. Pride sunk Babylon. Nineveh and Jerusalem, by timely repentance, once reversed their awful doom; but returning to their former sins, they shared at last the fate of all the states which have filled up the measure of their iniquities. And have we taken so few strides toward that awful period, as to render national repentance needless in this day of trouble? By fomenting contentions and wars among the natives of Africa, in order to buy the prisoners whom they take from each other; have not some of our countrymen turned Africa into a field of blood? Do not the sighs of myriads of innocent negroes, unjustly transported from their native

country to the British dominions, call night and day for vengeance upon us; while their groans upbraid the hypocritical friends of liberty, who buy, and sell, and whip their fellow men as if they were brutes; and absurdly complain that they are enslaved, when it is they themselves who deal in the liberties and bodies of men, as graziers do in the liberties and bodies of oxen?

And is what I beg leave to call our nabob trade in the east more consistent with humanity than our slave trade in the south and west? Who can tell how many myriads of men have been cut off in the East Indies by famine or wars, which had their rise from the ambition, covetousness, and cruelty of some of our countrymen? And if no vindictive notice has been taken of these barbarous and bloody scenes, has not the nation made them in some degree her own? And does not that innocent blood, the price of which has been imported with impunity, and now circulates through the kingdom to feed our luxury-does not all that blood, I say, speak louder for vengeance against us than the blood of Abel did against his murderous brother? "The justice of the nation," says Doctor Price, "has slept over these enormities: will the justice of Heaven sleep?” No: but it still patiently waits for our reformation; nor will it, I hope, wait in vain; but if it does, the suspended blow will in the end descend with redoubled force, and strike us with aggravated ruin. For God will be avenged on all impenitent nations: he has one rule for them and for individuals: "Except they repent," says Christ himself, "they shall all likewise perish."

Let our devotion be improved by the American controversy as well as our morals. Instead of "scoffing at religion," as Doctor Price says we do, let us honour the piety of the colonists. So far, at least, as their religious professions are consistent, sincere, and Scriptural, let them provoke us to a rational concern for the glory of God, and our eternal interests. Were we to contend with our American colonies for supremacy in virtue and devotion, how noble would be the strife! How worthy of a Protestant kingdom, and a mother country! And does not political wisdom, as well as brotherly love, require us to do something in order to root up their inveterate prejudices against us and our Church? Have we forgotten that many of the first colonists crossed the Atlantic for conscience' sake: seeking in the woods of America, some a shelter against our once persecuting hierarchy; and others a refuge from our epidemical profaneness? And does not their offspring look upon us in the same odious light in which Doctor Price places us? Do they not abhor or despise us as impious, immoral men, "enervated by luxury;" men with whom it is dangerous to be connected, and who " may expect calamities, that shall recover to reflection [perhaps to devotion] libertines and Atheists" themselves?

And is it only for God's sake, for the sake of our own souls, and for the sake of the colonists, that we should look to our conduct and Christian profession? Are there not multitudes of rash religionists in the kingdom, who suppose that all the praying people in England are for the Americans, and who warmly espouse their part, merely because they are told that the colonists "fast and pray," while "we forget every thing serious and decent," and because prejudiced teachers confidently ask, with Dr. Price, «Which side is Providence likely to favour?" Would to

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God that all our legislators felt the weight of this objection which can as easily mislead moral and religious people in the present age, as it did in the last! Would to God they would exert themselves in such a manner, that all unprejudiced men might see the king and parliament have "the better men," as well as "the better cause!" Would to God that by timely reformation, and solemn addresses to the throne of grace, we might convince Dr. Price, and all the Americans, that in submitting to the British legislature, they will not submit to libertinism and Atheism, but to a venerable body of virtuous and godly senators, who know that the first care of God's representatives on earth-the principal study of political gods, should be to promote God's fear, by setting a good example before the people committed to their charge, and by steadily enforcing the observance of the moral law!

I need not tell you, sir, what effect this would have on our pious American brethren. You feel it in your own breast. The bare idea of such a reformation softens your prejudices. Were it to take place, it would overcome Dr. Price himself. Pious joy would set him upon writing as warmly for the government, as he had done against it; and in the midst of his deep repentance for the dangerous errors he has published, he would have the consolation to think that one of his observations has done more good than all his sophisms have done mischief. These are some of the reflections which Dr. Price's religious argument has drawn from my pen, and which I doubt not but some of our governors have already made by the help of that wisdom which prompts them to improve our former calamities, and to study what may promote our happiness in Church and state. I am, &c,

J. FLETCHER.

LETTER V.

A Scriptural plea for the revolted colonies, with some hints concerning a Christian method of bringing about a lasting reconciliation between them and the mother country-The king and parliament humbly addressed on the subject.

REVEREND SIR,-Christians are, in a special manner, debtors to all mankind. I owe love to all my fellow subjects, as well as loyalty to the king, and duty to the parliament; and my love to our American colonies, as well as my regard for equity, obliges me to say what can reasonably be said on their behalf; that prejudice on both sides may give place to Christian forbearance and conciliatory kindness.

I hope, sir, you are by this time convinced that the American revolt is absolutely unjustifiable; and that the king and parliament have an indubitable right proportionably to tax the colonists, as well as the English; although the colonists are not directly and adequately represented in parliament, any more than multitudes of Britons who live abroad, and millions who reside in Great Britain. And now, sir, I candidly allow, that although the colonists cannot without absurdity insist on an equal representation, yet they may humbly request to be particularly represented in the British legislature; and that, although strict justice does not oblige Great Britain to grant them such a request, yet parental wis

dom and brotherly condescension require her to grant something to the notion, that a direct representation in parliament is inseparably connected with civil liberty. This notion, I confess, is irrational, unscriptural, and unconstitutional. But it is a prevailing notion, and if we look at it in one point of view, it seems to wear the badge of British liberty, and therefore has some claim to the indulgence of Britons.

Permit me to illustrate my meaning by a Scriptural simile. Through a strong national prejudice, the Jews, who had embraced Christianity, fancied that no man could be a true Christian without being circumcised; and they supported their assertion by God's positive command to the father of the faithful; a command this which Christ had not expressly repealed, and to which he and his disciples had religiously submitted.-The apostles saw that the Christianized Jews were under a capital mistake. Nevertheless, in condescension to human weakness and national prejudice, they allowed them to circumcise their children: and Paul himself, though he detested their error, yielded to them so far as to have his convert Timothy circumcised. I grant that a direct and adequate representation in parliament is no more essential to British liberty, than circumcision to true Christianity. But, as the governors of the Christian Church made some concessions to Jewish weakness, might not also the governors of the British empire make some to American prejudice; especially considering that it will be as difficult for them peaceably to rule the Americans without such an act of condescension, as it would have been for the apostles to govern the Jews, without the above-mentioned complaisance?

Beside, in some cases, constitutional and unconstitutional taxation may border so nearly upon each other, that the most judicious politicians will be as much at a loss to draw the line between them, as the most skilful painter would be to draw the line between the primitive colours of the rainbow. This bordering of a faint constitutional privilege, upon an unconstitutional, absolute want of privilege, has deceived the colonists. As a man who is passionately fond of flaming crimson, takes a faint red to be no red at all; they have pronounced that to be no representation, which is an indirect representation discernible to all but the prejudiced. In their patriotic fright they have fancied that the ship of constitutional liberty struck on a rock, because it did not carry so many sails as they imagined it should. You may compare their mistake to that of impatient, suspicious passengers, who, when they have all their fortune on board a ship, are apt to think that she does not move at all, because her motion is not so rapid as they could wish; and because their anxious fears turn every sail they see into a privateer in chase of their property. Their error deserves then compassion, as well as blame; and will appear excusable to those who know the immense value of liberty.

Our lawgivers, who are peculiarly acquainted with the worth of this jewel, can above all men put a favourable construction upon the panic of a people afraid of being enslaved. Depending, therefore, on their condescension, I shall presume to ask, if now that the government has plainly asserted and powerfully supported the just claims of Great Britain, it might not safely relax a little the reins of authority, and kindly condescend to the fears of the colonists. And should the Americans show themselves just in indemnifying our injured merchants, penitent in laying VOL. IV.

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