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LETTER III.

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 connexion 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 equalizing 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 be, under God, the monarch of all the earth; and all kings would be 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 familygovernment 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 testament. It appears to me, therefore, as irrational to say, that the power of sovereigns comes originally from the people, as to say, that the sanction 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 subordination to God's supreme dominion, is agreeable to reason, so it is to scripture. Search the sacred records, sir, and you will see, that they who resist the abovedescribed power, resist not the ordinance of the people, but the ordinance 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. Daniel 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 people, 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 lxxv. 6, 7. 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." Hosea 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 an 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 afterwards, 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." 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 afterwards cried, "We will have no king but Cæsar; 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 Cæsar, 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." Proverbs 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. 13, &c.; Romans xiii. 5, 6; Proverbs 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 over-doing 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 sovereigns 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 rempublicam, "to make a republic," a "commonwealth," in the strictest

They were all to be anointed themselves This scheme could

sense of the word. All things were theirs. They were to call no man "master" upon earth. literally kings with Christ, and they to reign with him a thousand years. 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.

Some of the

This mischief had begun in the church. 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 himself, 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.

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