see him here. I must confefs I am no great artist ; but fign-poft painting will serve the turn to remember a friend by; efpecially when better is not to be had. Yet for your comfort the linea

ments are true

and though he fat not five times to me, as he did to B. yet I have confulted hiftory; as the Italian painters do, when they would draw a Nero or a Caligula; though they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the coloring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have fpared one fide of your Medal: the head would be feen to more advantage if it were placed on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to the fun; which would then break out to better purpose.

You tell us in your preface to the No-proteftant Plót, that you fhall be forced hereafter to leave off your modefty: I suppose you mean that little which is left you; for it was worn to rags when you put out this Medal. Never was there practised such a piece of notorious impudence in the face of an established government. I believe when he is dead you will wear him in thumbrings, as the Turks did Scanderbeg; as if there

were virtue in his bones to preserve you against monarchy. Yet all this while you pretend not only zeal for the public good, but a due veneration for the person of the king. who can see an inch before them,

But all men may easily de

tect those grofs falacies. That it is neceffary for men in your circumstances to pretend both, is granted you; for without them there could be no ground to raise a faction. But I would ask you one civil question, what right has any man among you, or any affociation of men, to come nearer to you, who, out of parliament, cannot be confidered in a public capacity, to meet as you daily do in factious clubs, to vilify the government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? Or how is it confiftent with your zeal for the public welfare, to promote fedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to ferve the king according to the laws, allow you the licence of traducing the executive power with which you own he is invested? You complain that his majesty has loft the love and confidence of his people; and by your very urging it, you endeavour what you lies to make him lose them. All good

in

fubjects abhor the thought of arbitrary power, whether it be in one or many: if you were the patriots you would feem, you would not at this rate incenfe the multitude to affume it; for no fober man can fear it, either from the king's dispofition or his practice; or even where you would odiously lay it, from his minifters. Give us leave to enjoy the government and benefit of laws under which we were born, and which we defire to transmit to our pofterity. You are not the trustees of the public liberty and if you have not right to petition in a crowd, much lefs have you to intermeddle in the management of affairs; or to arraign what you do not like; which in effect is every thing that is done by the king and council. Can you imagine that reafonable man will believe you refpect the person of his majesty, when 'tis apparent that your feditious pamphlets are stuffed with particular reflections on him? If have the confidence to deny this, it is easy to be evinced from a thousand paffages, which I only forbear to quote, because I defire they should die and be forgotten. I have perufed many of your papers; and to fhow you that I have, the third part of your No-proteftant Plot is much of it

you

any

stolen from your dead author's pamphlet, called the Growth of Popery; as manifeftly as Milton's Defence of the English People is from Buchanan De jure regni apud Scotos: or your first Covenant and new Affociation from the holy league of the French Guifards. Any one who reads Davila, may trace your practices all along. There were the fame pretences for reformation and loyalty, the fame afperfions of the king, and the fame grounds of a rebellion. I know not whether you will take the hiftorian's word, who fays it was reported, that Poltrot a Hugonot murdered Francis duke of Guife, by the inftigations of Theodore Beza, or that it was a Hugonot minister, otherwife called a Presbyterian, for our church abhors fo devilish a tenet, who firft writ a treatise of the lawfulness of depofing and murdering kings of a different perfuafion in religion : but I am able to prove, from the doctrine of Calvin, and principles of Buchanan, that they set the people above the magistrate; which, if I mistake no is your own fundamental, and which carries your loyalty no farther than your liking. When a vote of the house of commons goes on your fide, you are as ready to obferve it as if it were paffed into a law;

but when you are pinched with any former, and yet unrepealed act of parliament, you declare that in fome cafes you will not be obliged by it. The paffage is in the fame third part of the No-protestant Plot; and is too plain to be denied. The late copy of your intended afsociation, you neither wholly justify nor condemn; but as the papists, when they are unoppos'd, fly out into all the pageantries of worship; but in times of war, when they are hard preffed by arguments, lie close intrench'd behind the Council of Trent: fo now, when your affairs are in a low condition, you dare -not pretend that to be a legal combination, but whenfoever you are afloat, I doubt not but it will be maintained and juftified to purpose. For indeed there is nothing to defend it but the fword: 'tis the proper time to say any thing when men have all things in their power.

In the mean time, you would fain be nibbling at a parallel betwixt this affociation, and that in the time of queen Elizabeth. But there is this fmall difference betwixt them, that the ends of the one are directly oppofite to the other one with the queen's approbation and conjunction, as head of it; the other without either the consent