chosen; but there are so very few, that I am sure in a thousand there is hardly one real instance; for if a woman does but know that her husband can spare about three or six shillings a week extraordinary, although this is but seldom considered, she certainly, with the assistance of her gossips, will soon persuade the good man to send the child to nurse, and easily impose upon him by pretended indisposition. Thus cruelty is supported by fashion, and nature gives place to custom. T. WILLIAM III. Immortale odium et nunquam sanabile vulnus, JUV. A grutch, time out of mind, begun, TATE. OF all the monstrous passions and opinions which have crept into the world, there is none so wonderful as that those who profess the common name of Christians, should pursue each other with raucour and atred for differences in their way of following the example of their Saviour. It seems so natural that all who pursue the steps of any leader should form them. elves after his manners, that it is impossible to account or effects so different from what we might expect om those who profess themselves followers of the ighest pattern of meekness and charity, but by ascribg such effects to the ambition and corruption of those ho are so audacious, with souls full of fury, to serve the altars of the God of Peace. The massacres to which the Church of Rome has animated the ordinary people, are dreadful instances of the truth of this observation; and whoever reads the history of the Irish rebellion, and the cruelties which ensued thereupon, will be sufficiently convinced to what rage poor ignorants may be worked up by those who profess holiness, and become incendiaries, and, under the dispensation of grace, promote evils abhorrent to nature. This subject and catastrophe, which deserve so well to be remarked by the Protestant world, I will transcribe out of a little tract, called, The Christian Hero, published in 1701, what I find there in honour of the renowned hero William III. who rescued that nation from the repetition of the same disasters. His late Majesty, of glorious memory, and the most Christian King, are considered at the conclusion of that treatise as heads of the Protestant and Roman Catholic world in the following manner : "There were not ever, before the entrance of the Christian name into the world, men who have maintained a more renowned carriage, than the two great rivals who possess the full fame of the present age, and will be the theme and examination of the future. They are exactly formed by nature for those ends to which Heaven seems to have sent them amongst us: both animated with a restless desire of glory, but par. sue it by different means, and with different motives. To one it consists in an extensive undisputed empire over his subjects, to the other in their rational and vo Juntary obedience: one's happiness is founded in their want of power, the other's in their want of desire to oppose him. The one enjoys the summit of fortune with the luxury of a Persian, the other with the mode ration of a Spartan: one is made to oppress, the other to relieve the oppressed: the one is satisfied with the pomp and ostentation of power to prefer and debase his inferiors, the other delighted only with the cause and foundation of it to cherish and protect them. To, one therefore religion is but a convenient disguise, to the other a vigorous motive of action. "For without such ties of real and solid honour, there is no way of forming a monarch, but after the Machiavelian scheme, by which a prince must ever seem to have all virtues, but really to be master of none; he is to be liberal, merciful, and just, only as they serve his interests; while, with the noble art of hypocrisy, empire would be to be extended, and new conquests be made by new devices, by which prompt address his creatures might insensibly give law in the business of life, by leading men in the entertainment of it. "Thus when words and show are apt to pass for the substantial things they are only to express, there would need no more to enslave a country but to adorn a court; for while every man's vanity makes him believe himself capable of becoming luxury, enjoy. ments are a ready bait for sufferings, and the hopes of preferment invitations to servitude, which slavery would be coloured with all the agreements, as they call it, imaginable. The noblest arts and artists, the finest pens and most elegant minds jointly employed to set it off, with the various embellishments of sump. tuous entertainments, charming assemblies, and polish. ed discourses; and those apostate abilities of men, the adored monarch might profusely and skilfully encou rage, while they flatter his virtue, and gild his vice at so high a rate, that he, without scorn of the one, or love of the other, would alternately and occasionally use both so that his bounty should support him in his rapines, his mercy in his cruelties. "Nor is it to give things a more severe look than is natural, to suppose such must be the consequences of a prince's having no other pursuit than that of his own glory; for if we consider an infant boru into the world, and beholding itself the mightiest thing in it, itself the present admiration and future prospect of a fawning people, who profess themselves great or mean, accord. ing to the figure he is to make amongst them, what fancy would not be debauched to believe they were but what they professed themselves, his mere creatures, and use them as such by purchasing with their lives a boundless renown, which he, for want of a more just prospect, would place in the number of his slaves, and the extent of his territories? Such undoubtedly would be the tragical effects of a prince's living with no religion, which are not to be surpassed but by his having a false one. "If ambition were spirited with zeal, what would follow, but that his people should be converted into an army, whose swords can make right in power, and solve controversy in belief? And if men should be stiff-necked to the doctrine of that visible church, let them be contented with an oar and a chain, in the midst of stripes and anguish, to contemplate on him 'whose yoke is easy, and whose burden is light.' "With a tyranny begun on his own subjects, and indignation that others draw their breath independent of his frown or smile, why should he not proceed to the seizure of the world? And if nothing but the thirst of sway were the motive of his actions, why should treaties be other than mere words, or solemn national compacts be any thing else but an halt in the march of that army, who are never to lay down their arms, till all men are reduced to the necessity of hanging their lives on his wayward will; who might supinely, and at leisure, expiate his own sins by other men's suffer. ings, while he daily meditates new slaughter, and new conquests? "For mere man, when giddy with unbridled power, is an insatiate idol, not to be appeased with myriads offered to his pride, which may be puffed up by the adulation of a base and prostrate world, into an opi nion that he is something more than human, by being something less: And, alas, what is there that mortal man will not believe of himself, when complimented with the attributes of God? He can then conceive thoughts of a power as omnipresent as his. But, should there be such a foe of mankind now upon earth, have our sins so far provoked Heaven, that we are left utterly naked to his fury? Is there no power, no leader, no genius, that can conduct and animate us to our death or our defence? Yes; our great God never gave one to reign by his permission, but he gave to another also to reign by his grace. "All the circumstances of the illustrious life of our prince, seein to have conspired to make him the check and bridle of tyranny; for his mind has been strengthened and confirmed by one continual struggle, and Heaven has educated him by adversity to a quick sense of the distresses and miseries of mankind, which he was born to redress. In just scorn of the trivial glories and light ostenstations of power, that glorious instrument of Providence moves, like that, in a steady, calm, and silent course, independent either of applause or calumny; which renders him, if not in a political, yet in a moral, a philosophic, an heroic, and a christian sense, an absolute monarch; who satisfied with this unchangeable, just, and ample glory, must needs turn all his regards from himself to the service of others; for he begins his enterprises with his own share in the success of them; for integrity bears in itself its reward, nor can that which depends not on event ever know disappoint ment. "With the undoubted character of a glorious captain, and (what he much more values than the most splendid titles) that of a sincere and honest man, he is the hope and stay of Europe, an universal good not to be engrossed by us only, for distant potentates implore bis friendship, and injured empires court his assistance. He rules the world, not by an invasion of the people of the earth, but the address of its princes: and if that world should be again roused from the repose which his prevailing arms had given it, why should we not hope that there is an Almighty, by whose influence the serrible enemy that thinks himself prepared for battle, |