Letter 3.

LETTER 3.

Observations on the origin of power - on 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 consequences 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 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 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 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 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, Romans 13:2. 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 2:21.

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 25:7, 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,” Hosea 13:11. 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,” Luke 19:14. 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,” Proverbs 24:21. “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 2:3, &c; Romans 13:5, 6; Proverbs 3:9.

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 oft 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.” whey 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 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.

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 Anabaptists f31 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 Gospe], 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 violently this summer, (1549,) occasioned by the enclosing of lands. While the monasteries stood, there were great numbers of people maintained 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 putting down of processions and pilgrimages; so that as the numbers increased, they had more time than they knew how to bestow.”

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 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, with out any provocation, murdered 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 1. part 2. 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 the reformation in Germany, the latter reformers, to throw off the shame, and to obviate the mischief of this delusion, took particular notice of it in their confessions of faith. Though you dissent from the Church of England, sir, yet as it is presumed you pay a deference to what are called her doctrinal articles, permit me to transcribe a part of the thirty - eighth, which is levelled at the levelling pot boilers of Germany. and at the dupes of Ket, who had taken upon him to dispose of property under the oak of reformation in England. “The riches and goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same; as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast.”

Calvin himself, though a strong republican, was frightened at the rapid progress of this civil enthusiasm. Hence it is, that when he drew up a confession of faith for the Reformed Churches of France and Geneva, he bestowed the two last articles of it upon the error which our American brethren, and you, sir, are running headlong into. As you are probably a perfect stranger to these articles, I shall faithfully translate them from my French Common Prayer Book.

“ART. XXXIX. We believe that God will have the world to be governed by laws and civil powers, that the lawless inclinations of men may be curbed. And therefore he has established kingdoms and republics, and other sorts of governments, [some hereditary and some otherwise] together with whatsoever belongs to judicature. And he will be acknowledged the author of government. To this end he has put the sword in the hands of rulers to punish, not only the sins which are committed against the commandments of the second table, but also those which are committed against the precepts of the first table. We ought, then, not only to bear for his sake, that rulers should have dominion over us, but it is also our bounden duty to honour them, and to esteem them worthy of all reverence; considering them as God’s lieutenants and officers, which he has commissioned to execute a lawful and holy commission.

“ART. XL. We maintain, therefore, that we are bound to obey their laws and statutes, to pay tribute, taxes, and other duties, and to bear the yoke of subjection freely, and with good will, though they should be unbelievers: provided the supreme dominion of God be preserved in its full extent. And therefore we detest the men [he means republican levellers] who reject superiorities, introduce community and confusion of property, and overthrow the order of justice.”

Sir, you are a Calvinist. You follow the French reformer when he teaches the absolute reprobation and the unavoidable damnation of myriads of poor creatures yet unborn. O! forsake him not when he follows Christ, and teaches God (and not the people) is to be acknowledged the author of power and government, and that we are bound to bear cheerfully, for his sake, the yoke of Scriptural subjection to our governors. Represent no more this honourable, this Divine yoke, as abject slavery. And, instead of insinuating that the king and parliament are robbers, because they lay a moderate tax upon their American subjects, help Mr. W. to undeceive those whom the uneasy levellers of the day work up to almost as high a degree of republican wildness, as John of Leyden and Ket worked up the German and English mobs two or three hundred years ago. So will you show yourself a true minister of the Prince of Peace, and a wise Protestant, who, like Cranmer and Calvin, ought equally to level his doctrine at a tyrant and a mob: and to pour like contempt upon the republican vanity of a tanner, who assumes the dignity of lawgiver under the oak of reformation, and upon the imperial pride of a monk, who, from St. Peter’s humble chair, pompously holds out his foot to meet the adoration of prostrate princes.

Be entreated, sir, to rectify your false notions of liberty. The liberty of Christians and Britons does not consist in bearing no yoke; but in beating a yoke made easy by a gracious Saviour and a gracious sovereign. A John of Leyden may promise to make us first lawless, then legislators, and kings; and by his delusive promises he may raise us to - a fool’s paradise, if not to - the gallows. But a true deliverer and a good governor says to our restless Antinomian spirits, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” We can have no rest in the Church but under Christ’s easy yoke: no rest in the state, but under the easy yoke of our rightful sovereign. To aim at breaking this yoke, because we have some objection to the minister or the king, is as great a piece of folly as for the crew of a ship to aim at cutting the rigging, and destroying the rudder of the ship in which they sail, because they have a pique against the pilot or captain. Suppose they should be so unhappily fortunate as to succeed, what will they gain by their success? Will they be better able to bear the tossings of the next storm? Will they not be at the mercy of every wave - the sport of every blast - ready to be dashed against every rock?

I am so fully convinced of the truth and importance of Calvin’s two last articles of religion, that, though I have for years checked his errors, if I had the wings of lightning, and a voice like thunder, I would, this instant, shoot myself across the Atlantic, and preach his loyal doctrine to our deluded brethren.

A seed of the error of the republican Anabaptists has remained in England ever since the reformation; and the fiery zeal of some Independents and later Anabaptists, was the chief ladder by which the artful Cromwell climbed to the height of supreme power, under pretence of forming a commonwealth. That you may not charge me with misrepresentation, I shall draw my proof from the Rev. Mr. R. Baxter’s Life, written by himself His testimony is worth that of twenty others, because he had few equals in his time, for piety, wisdom, moderation, abundant labours, and ministerial success; and because he was an eye witness of many things which he relates, having been chaplain to a regiment of horse in Cromwell’s army; a place, this, which he accepted chiefly with an intention to oppose, by his preaching, the headstrong republican spirit of those men who, after having taken up arms with a design to redress grievances, and oppose arbitrary power, bore them with an intention of putting down hierarchy and monarchy together. Baxter failed in his attempt, partly through the forbidding coldness with which Cromwell looked upon him, and partly by a severe fit of sickness, which obliged him to leave the army when his moderation was most wanting there. The following extract is taken from a folio volume printed in London, 1696, entitled, “Reliquiae Baxterianae, or, Mr. Baxter’s Narrative of the most memorable Passages of his Life and Times.”

Page 26. Having told us that what hastened on the war, on the side of the parliament, was, “(1.) The people’s indiscretion that adhered to them; (2.) The imprudence and violence of some members in the house, who went too high,” &c; he explains what he means by the people’s indiscretion thus: - “Some were yet more indiscreet; the remnant of the old Separatists and Anabaptists in London was then very small, and scarce considerable; but they were enough to stir up the younger sort of religious people to speak too vehemently - against the bishops and the Church - and all that was against their minds. These stirred up the apprentices to join with them in petitions, and to go in great numbers to present them: as they went, they met with some of the bishops in their coaches going to the house, and (as is usual with the passionate and indiscreet when they are in great companies) they too much forgot civility, and cried, No bishops!” Page 27: “When at last the king forsook the city, these tumults were the principal cause alleged by him, as if he himself had not been safe [in the midst of these mobbing petitioners.] Thus rash attempts of headstrong people do work against the good ends which they themselves intend. Overdoing is the ordinary way of undoing. And some members of the house did cherish these disorders: and because the subjects have liberty to petition, they made use of this liberty in a disorderly way. Some particular members concurred with the desires of the imprudent reformers, who were for no less than the utter extirpation of the bishops and liturgy. Those members, &c, did much encourage the petitioners, who, in a disorderly manner, laboured to effect it.”

Page 39. “I make no doubt that the headiness and rashness of the younger inexperienced sort of religious people, made many parliament men and ministers overgo themselves to keep pace with those hot spurs; no doubt but much indiscretion appeared, and worse than indiscretion, in the tumultuous petitioners, and much sin was committed in the dishonouring of the king, and provocation of him. But these things came principally from the sectarian spirit, which blew the coals among foolish apprentices: and as the sectaries increased, so did this insolence increase.”

Pages 50, 51. “When the Court Newsbook told the world of the swarms of Anabaptists in our armies, we thought it had been a mere lie, because it was not so with us. But when I came to the army among Cromwell’s soldiers, I found a new face of things, which I never dreamt of: I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to subvert both Church and state. Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent. A few proud, self conceited, hot - headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell’s chief favourites; and by their very heat and activity, bore down the rest, or carried them along with them, and were the soul of the army, though much fewer in number than the rest; being, indeed, not one in twenty throughout the army; their strength being in the generals, &c. I perceived that they took the king for a tyrant and an enemy, and really intended absolutely to master him, or to ruin him. They said, What were the lords of England, but William the conqueror’s colonels? Or the barons, but his majors? Or the knights, but his captains? Per fas aut nefas, by law, or without it, they were resolved to take down all that did withstand their way. They most honoured the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians; but Cromwell and his party took on them to join themselves to no party, but to be for the liberty of all.” Page 53. “My life among them [Cromwell’s soldiers] was a daily contending against seducers. I found that many honest men, of weak judgments, &c, had been seduced into a disputing vein, and made it too much of their religion to talk for this opinion, or for that; sometimes for state democracy, and sometimes for Church democracy. I was almost always, when I had opportunity, disputing with one or another of them; sometimes for our civil government, and sometimes for Church government; sometimes for infant baptism, and often against Antinomianism, and the contrary extreme. But their most frequent and vehement disputes were for liberty of conscience, as they called it; that is, that every man might not only hold, but preach and do in matters of religion what he pleased, &c. Because I perceived that it was a few men that bore the bell that did all the hurt among them, I acquainted myself with those men, and I found that they were men that had been in London, hatched up among the old Separatists,” &c.

Pages 56, 57. “I found that if the army had but had ministers enough that would have done but such a little as I did, all their plot might have been broken, and king, parliament, and religion, might have been preserved. Therefore I sent abroad to get some more ministers among them, but I could get none. Saltmarsh and Dell were the two great preachers at the head quarters. When any troop or company was to be disposed of, he [Cromwell] was sure to put a sectary in the place; and when the brunt of the war was over, he looked not so much at their valour as at their opinions: so that by degrees he had headed the greatest part of his army with Anabaptists, Antinomians, &c, and all these he tied together by the point of liberty of conscience, which was the common interest in which they did unite. Yet did he not openly profess what opinion he was of himself; but the most that he said for any, was for Anabaptism and Antinomianism, which he usually seemed to own. He would not dispute [with me] at all, but he would in good discourse very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of free grace.”

Page 58. “I called the ministers again together who had voted me into the army: I told them that the forsaking of the army by old ministers, and the neglect of supplying their places by others, had undone us; that the active sectaries were the smallest part of the army among the common soldiers but Cromwell had lately put so many of them into superior command, and their industry was so much greater than that of others, that they were like to have their will: that whatever obedience they pretended, I doubted not but they would pull down all that stood in their way in state and Church, both king, parliament, and ministers, and set up themselves. I told them that for this little that I have done, [in opposing the high republican spirit,] I have ventured my life. The wars being now ended, I was confident they would shortly show their purposes, and set up for themselves.”

Page 59, &c. Baxter tells us that when the royalists were all killed or scattered, and the king himself taken prisoner, Cromwell began to serve the parliament as he had done the king; availing himself of the absolute power he had over the army, by the influence of the hot - headed sectaries whom he had promoted, some of whom were called agitators; and as they now stood in his way to the supreme power, he began to serve them in their turn, as he had served the king and parliament. Take Baxter’s own words: “When Cromwell had taught his agitators to govern, and could not easily unteach them again, there arose a party who adhered to the principles of their agreement of the people, [upon the high republican plan,] which suited not with his designs: and to make them odious, he denominated them levellers, as if they intended to f32 level men of all qualities and estates. At last they rendezvous at Burford to make head against him. But Cromwell had presently his brother Desborough, and some other regiments, ready to surprise them there in their quarters, before they could get their numbers together; so that above fifteen hundred being scattered and taken, and some slain, the levellers’ war was crushed in the egg.” Page 64. “The king being thus taken out of the way, Cromwell takes on him to be for a commonwealth, (put all in order to the security of the good people,) till he had removed the other impediments which were yet to be removed; so that the rump [that is, the rest of the house of commons, whom Cromwell still allowed to sit, after he had turned out the members who displeased him most] presently drew up a form of engagement to be put upon all men, viz. ‘I do promise to be true and faithful to the commonwealth, as it is now established without a fling or house of lords.’ So we must take the rump for an established commonwealth, and promise fidelity to them.”

In the following pages Baxter tells us how Cromwell put down the rump at last, and, page 74, he gives this account of the manner in which he farther laid aside his trusty friends, the Anabaptists, who had done him so much service. “The sectarian party in his army and elsewhere he [Cromwell] chiefly trusted to and pleased, till, by the people’s submission and quietness, he thought himself well settled; and then he began to undermine, and by degrees to work them out: and though he had so often spoken for the Anabaptists, now he findeth them so heady, and so much against any settled government, and so set upon the promoting of their way and party, that he does not only begin to blame their unruliness, but also designeth to settle himself in the people’s favour by suppressing them. In Ireland they were grown so high, that the soldiers were, many of them, rebaptized as the way to preferment: and those that opposed them they crushed with much uncharitable fierceness. To suppress these, he sent thither his son, Henry Cromwell, who so discountenanced the Anabaptists, as yet to deal civilly by them, repressing their insolencies: and Major - general Ludlow, who headed the Anabaptists in Ireland, was fain to draw in his head. In England, Cromwell connived at his old friend Harrison, while he made himself the head of the Anabaptists and fanatics here, till he saw it would be an acceptable thing to the nation to suppress him, and then he does it easily in a trice, and maketh him contemptible who but yesterday thought himself not much below him.”

From this short account of the reign of the rump, and the craft of Cromwell, it is evident that the high republican spirit, and the injudicious zeal of sectaries, especially of the Anabaptists and Antinomians, were the chief means by which that ambitious man ascended the seat of supreme power. And I wish, sir, that your injudicious, well - meant zeal, may not prove a spur, or a saddle, to some ambitious, false patriots, who, under pretence of mounting the great horse liberty, to fight our battles, and to deliver us from what you call “abject slavery,” will ride over us with as little ceremony as Cromwell did over King Charles, the parliament, and the rump.

Before I take my leave of Baxter, permit me to transcribe what he says concerning the origin of power; I accidentally found it in turning over his book for the preceding quotations; and his judgment, which exactly coincides with mine, confirms me in the sentiments which I have expressed in the beginning of this letter.

Page 41. “For the parliament’s cause, the principal writing was, Observations written by Mr. Parker, a lawyer: but I remember some principles, which, I think, he misapplied, viz. that the king is singulis major, but universis minor; (superior to every one of his subjects, but inferior to the collective body of all;) that he receiveth his power from the people, &c. For I doubt not to prove that his power is so immediately from God, as that there is no recipient between God and him, to convey it to him; only, as the king by (his charter) maketh him a mayor or bailiff whom the corporation chooses; so God (by his law, as an instrument) conveyeth power to that person, or family, whom the people consent to; and their consent is but a conditio sine qua non; and not any proof that they are the fountain of power, or that ever the governing power was in them; and, therefore, for my part, I am satisfied, that all politics err, who tell us of a majestas realis in the people, as distinct from the majestas personalis in the governors. And though it be true, that quoad naturalem bonitatem, &c, (with respect to natural goodness, &c,) the king is universis minor (inferior to the whole body of his subjects) - yet as to governing power (which is the thing in question) the king is, as to the people, universis major, as well as singulis, (superior to the whole body of his subjects, as well as to every one of them.) For if the parliament have any legislative power, it cannot be as they are the body of the people, &c, but it is as the constitution twisteth them into the government. For if once legislation (the chief act of government) be denied to be any part of government at all, and affirmed to belong to the people as such, who are no governors, all government will thereby be overthrown.” If Baxter be right here, (and I believe you cannot prove him to be wrong,) is it not evident, sir, that when you insinuate, “Every one, who is a free agent, or has a will of his own, or boils a pot, ought to have a place in the legislature, before he can be properly subjected to taxation, and, of consequence, to the laws,” you countenance one of the most dangerous principles of the levelling Anabaptists? A principle whereby all government may be overthrown by those who know how to draw just consequences from false premises.

To return: -

You say, sir, that your opponent is a slave because he cheerfully submits to taxation without having a direct representative in parliament. But who is the greatest slave, Mr. Wesley or the tools of lawless patriotism? Have we not seen these dupes turned by their error, not only into despicable slaves, but into a new species of domestic animals? Have we not seen them worked up to such a pitch of delusion, as to refuse, with leonine fierceness, the easy, honourable yoke of their sovereign’s authority, and to count it an honour to take the place of coach horses, and to draw, with asinine meanness, the chariots of their new triumphers?

What ranks have they regarded, when they have poured themselves along by thousands in our streets? Have they paid any respect to our noblemen? Have they reverenced the king himself? Nay, have they not gloried in their tyrannical contempt of his sceptre and person? Have they not treated him as a well - bred gentleman would be ashamed to treat his groom? Have they not followed him with scurrilous hissings, when he rode with a pomp becoming the first legislator in the kingdom? And, to add the poignancy of contrast to their serpentine sport, have they not filled the sky with shouts of applause, when they have graced the popular triumphs of his avowed opposers? What press has not groaned under the invectives which their imperious tribunes cast upon the legislative power? What periodical paper has not been soiled with the unjust sarcastic blots, which these plebeian dictators have fixed upon the minister who pilots us through the rocks which they throw in the way of our peace and prosperity? Because the parliament would not be carried away by the torrent of their boisterous oratory, has not that venerable body seen insulted, hectored, bullied? Have they not attempted to lord it over the king himself? Have they not insisted on his sitting on the throne, that when he appeared in the greatest height of royal dignity, they might appear his superiors, and pour upon his anointed head the indecent floods of their lordly remonstrances? Have they not sharpened their tongues like swords, and their pens like spears, sportively to wound him through the side of his minister? And have not those who have done it with the greatest boldness been preposterously cried up as the greatest patriots? In short, has not taxing subjects, vindicating the legislative power, protecting our merchants, and making a stand against the impetuous overflowings of popular rage in St. George’s fields, and in Boston: has not, I say, this commendable holding of the reins of government been represented as tyranny, felony, robbery, murder? If these men dare to take such astonishing liberties with their sovereign, how will they treat their fellow subjects? How will they handle you and me, should they be suffered to step into the sovereign’s place? If the king, in the midst of his guards, can but just keep them from treading his honour in the dust, what will they not be able to do to us, who refuse to “go with them to the same excess of riot?” How shall we escape, if we fall into the power of their guards their armies of pot boilers? Those Tritons, who have turtled themselves into “beasts,” f33 to draw the chariots of their semi - gods, will probably endeavour to turn us into birds, to make us adorn the triumphs of their goddesses, licentiousness and Antinomian liberty; and we shall possibly think ourselves well off, if we come out of their bands stript of our money, watches, and clothes, and covered with tar, feathers, and infamy.

They have already given us tokens of what we may expect from their lawless patriotism, should it prevail every where as it has in some places. Not to mention the king’s officers, who have escaped with the utmost danger of their lives in Boston: not to dwell upon the case of Mr. Christie, a rich British merchant, whom the provincial congress of Maryland is reported to have fined and banished for ever, for writing a confidential, guarded letter to a friend, which contained nothing improper: not to mention, I say, these, and the like tyrannical proceedings in America; have not those who live under the immediate protection of the sovereign in London felt the iron sceptre of king mob? Has not that tyrant, who, with his hundred arms, threw our goods into the sea, in sight of Boston - has not that many - headed tyrant, I say, destroyed that part of our houses in London, which the missile implements of impotent rage could break in pieces? And, as if it had not been enough to attack and injure us in our ships and houses, f34 have they not deprived us of our locomotive liberty? Have they not insolently stopped us in the streets, and on the highway? Have they not taken a temporary possession of our coaches and doors, to mark them with their insulting numbers, and with the names of their principal agents? Have they not wantonly stigmatized our backs, and chalked us out for laughing stocks? Have they not lifted their hands against the peers of the realm? Have they not, without judge or jury, burned one of them in sarcastic effigy? Have they not insulted the prime minister in sight of the senate house? Have they not mobbed the first magistrate of the city of London, in the mansion house? And almost mobbed the king himself in his own palace? And all this under pretence of liberty! O sir, if this be the beginning of liberty, how dreadful will be the end! Is not the tyrannical Scylla, upon whom you so eagerly push us, more dreadful than even the Charybdis, from which you fancy we are in so great danger? What unprejudiced citizen would not prefer the light yoke of the present government, to the ponderous yoke of such anarchy? And what undesigning Briton will not (upon second thoughts) choose to honour King George, rather than to tremble and fall down before king mob? Should you do these observations justice, I hope, sir, you will see, that to overdo, in constitutional doctrines, is as dangerous to the state, as to overdo, in evangelical doctrines, is perilous to the Church. If we miss the medium of wisdom and moderation, it little matters whether we miss it, by going out of the way on the right hand, or on the left; it does not signify which of the two we countenance in the Church; - Pharisaism, or Antinomianism: it is indifferent which of the two we set up in the state - an arbitrary king, or an arbitrary mob. Nay, I repeat it; of the two political extremes, the latter is so much worse than the former, as it is more dreadful to be under the dominion of millions of lawless tyrants, whom you may meet every where, and who inflame, screen, and hide one another; than to be under the dominion of one lawless tyrant, who can be but in one place at once, and who stands so exposed to public view, that he cannot, without folly, hope to conceal his enormities.

But thanks be to Divine Providence, and to the wisdom of our ancestors, our constitution (defective as you represent it) displays the happy medium between the high monarchical extreme, and the high republican extreme: it equally guards against the opposite errors of Dr. Sacheverel and Oliver Cromwell. For the liberties of mankind are alternately struck at; on the right hand by lawless kings, and on the left by lawless mobs: but the balance is wisely kept by our two houses of parliament, whose most important and delicate business is (if I mistake it not) to hinder the scale of the king from unconstitutionally outweighing that of the people, as arbitrary monarchs could wish: and to prevent the scale of the people from making that of the king kick the beam, as tyrannical mobs desire. The present king follows the laws, as his royal ancestors have done before him. He takes no capital step without his parliament; and therefore, at present, we are under no danger on his side. But I cannot say this of the people; they are inflamed by designing or enthusiastical republicans; they avowedly break the laws; they glory in doing it; they take up arms against the king and parliament; they commit outrages. Therefore all our danger is, at present, from king mob; and this danger is so much the greater, as some dissenters among us, who were quiet in the late reign, and thought themselves happy under the protection of the toleration act, grow restless, begin openly to countenance their dissatisfied brethren in America, and make it a point of conscience to foment divisions in the kingdom. Whether they do it merely from a brotherly regard to the colonists, who chiefly worship God according to the dissenting plan, or whether they hope that a revolution on the continent would be naturally productive of a revolution in England; that a revolution in the state here. would draw after it a revolution in the Church; and that, if the Church of England were once shaken, the dissenting Churches among us might raise themselves upon her ruins; whether, I say, there is something of this under the cry of slavery and robbery, which you set up, is a question, which, I said, in the preceding editions, you could determine far better than I: but now I recall it; because, though I may consider that part of the controversy in that unfavourable light as a politician; yet, as a Christian, I ought to think and hope the best. It is the custom of most controvertists to raise a variety of objections against the system of their opponents, while they overlook the greatest difficulties which attend their own system. Lest you should think, sir, that I follow this disingenuous method, I will now answer the grand question which you propose to Mr. Wesley: “If every man who is taxed without his consent is not a slave, wherein consists the difference between slavery and liberty?”

If you mean by a slave one who is bought with money, as the negroes are by the colonists, your question is unwise; for every body knows that such slaves, having nothing at all, can never be taxed. When they work, their masters receive the wages; when they bear children, they bear them for their masters: their own body is the property of another. - Since, therefore, they have no property, to talk of their being taxed with, or without their consent, is absurd.

But if, by a slave, you mean a subject oppressed by a tyrannical sovereign: I reply, that the difference between such slaves and the subjects of Great Britain, who have no share in the legislature, is prodigious. A slave, in this sense of the word, is not only taxed as happy subjects are, but he is taxed without proportion, without judgment, and without mercy. The taxes laid on him are so many, and so heavy, that he can hardly bear the burden, supposing he does not quite sink under it. If he dissent from the established mode of worship, he cannot serve God according to his conscience, without being disturbed and insulted by a profane populace, who are countenanced and encouraged by persecuting magistrates. Nay, it is well if he be not prosecuted, fined, imprisoned, or put to death. If he be committed to jail, he can never be bailed out on any occasion. If he be sent to prison ever so unjustly, he can recover no damages for false imprisonment; if he be wronged of his property, in a variety of cases, at the peril of his life, he dares not complain. If he be maliciously robbed of his good name, he cannot recover it by law, together with suitable damages. If his bed be defiled, he can get no satisfaction for that capital injury. His house can be forcibly entered into at any time; he is obliged to work so long for the sovereign gratis, that he cannot mind his own business; if he be wantonly struck by a great man, there is no law for him, and the wisest thing which he can do is to say nothing; if he be murdered, little or no notice is taken of it; a plebeian assassin can easily make his escape, and nobody dares prosecute a noble murderer. If he freely speak his mind, either upon religious subjects, or political affairs, he is summoned before an ecclesiastical and civil inquisitor; and it is well if he escape with the reprimand, which a chief magistrate in a mild republic gave to a gentleman of my acquaintance, who modestly hinted at a method of redressing an avowed grievance: “Who has appointed you, sir, a teacher of your sovereigns? They know their business: learn to know your own.” But what is worst of all, if he be capitally accused, his accusers are perhaps his judge and jury. He is put in a dungeon, without knowing why; his witnesses are not suffered to speak for him; he is kept so long on the rack, that he is perhaps obliged to turn false accuser against himself. - He is tried secretly. His fortune and life lie, possibly, at the mercy of two or three judges only. Nay, he may fall a sacrifice to the prejudice, caprice, envy, hatred, or hurry of one single man. Being tried by his peers, or by twelve of his fellow citizens, is an invaluable blessing, of which he has not the least idea. Not so the happy subjects of Great Britain. Whether they have a freehold or not, they all enjoy this advantage: and, if the law be put in force, they are partakers of all the branches of civil and religious liberty, which are opposed to the above described branches of hard vassalage. - And (what is most wonderful) the poor enjoy these blessings as well as the rich - the plebeian shares them with the nobleman. Hence it is, that the subjects of Great Britain are the freest of all the men who live under any civil government in the world. And hence it appears, that when you assert there is no difference between having no share in legislation, and being an absolute slave, you display an amazing unacquaintedness with the civil governments of Europe; you betray an astonishing want of gratitude to God and the sovereign, for the civil and religious liberty which we enjoy; and you verify the observation of an ingenious foreigner, who has lately written upon the British constitution, and who intimates, the blessings of liberty are so familiar to the English, that they neither relish nor know them. They may, in this respect, be compared to the children of princes, who, being born and educated in a palace, are so accustomed to its elegance and grandeur, and so unacquainted with the sordidness of cottages, and the gloominess of dungeons, that they never heighten their happiness, and excite their gratitude, by comparing the blessings they enjoy with the hardships that others endure.

Just as this comparison may be with respect to you, sir, it can however hardly suit the case of many of the colonists. Some of them, alas! know too well what tyranny and cruel servitude are. When poor, naked, bleeding slaves, ready to expire under the repeated strokes of a cutting whip, are obliged to keep their groans, and stifle their sighs, for fear of raising the cruelty of their tyrants to a higher pitch of fierceness; - when this is the case, I say, of all the men upon earth, it least becomes the hard masters - the domestic sovereigns of these poor creatures, to complain of the mild government they are under, and to scream Tyranny! slavery! robbery! murder! And why? Truly because some of them are enjoined to pay taxes, about thirty times lighter than those which millions of their fellow subjects, who have no votes, cheerfully pay in England: because the parliament will not suffer them to destroy, with impunity, the property of our merchants; and because the king will not have the collectors of the public revenue to be in continual danger of being murdered among them. O partiality, how high is thy glaring throne; and how many are thy warm votaries in America, and thy sanguine advocates in England!

I shall esteem myself happy, sir, if this check to licentiousness recommend itself to your conscience as a Protestant, and to your candour as a well wisher to the cause of true liberty. Think not the plainness, with which I have addressed you, springs from malice or disrespect. Though I have bluntly attacked your errors, I sincerely love and honour you as an enemy to tyranny, and a (mistaken) asserter of British liberty. - Therefore, while I blame your dangerous performance, I gladly do justice to your good meaning; and I cordially join you, where you express a loyal, ardent wish, that a speedy reconciliation may take place between us and our colonies, upon an honourable, constitutional basis, and that our beloved sovereign may long live to sway the sceptre over a free people; provided you do not mean by a “free people,” a tumultuous, mobbing people, making liberty to consist in refusing to pay taxes, and in giving to the Scriptural yoke of civil government the opprobrious name of “abject slavery.”

Should you accuse me, sir, as you do Mr. Wesley, of “inflaming the minds of the people here against our American brethren;” you will do me as much injustice as you do to my friend. Our only design is to promote a proper obedience to those parts of the Gospel of peace, which enjoin us a due subjection to our superiors; and to enforce the articles of religion which the last reformers drew up, to keep overdoing Protestants from the enthusiasm of wild republicans. Far from being prejudiced against the colonists, I feel a deep concern for their spiritual and temporal welfare. Yea, such is my partiality to them, and my fear of a greater effusion of the blood of Britons, and sons of Britons, that I even wish the government would make the easy yoke of which they causelessly complain easier still, by granting them some privileges, denied not only to millions of Britons here, but also to the members of parliament, and to the king’s own brothers, who, while they are out of England, are all taxed without being consulted. I humbly wish that our legislators would condescend to talk with the colonists about the taxes which suit their country and circumstances best. And as British senators know how to pity the prejudices of mankind, especially the prejudices of sons of Britons, with respect to the precious blessing of liberty; I wish that the king and parliament would extend their greatest mercy to subjects who have been hurried out of the way of loyalty chiefly by their inattention to the blessings which they enjoy, and by the delusive hopes, with which, it is to be feared, some of our own countrymen have rashly flattered, and artfully seduced them. In a word, I ardently wish that, upon the return of the colonists to their duty, the government would bind them to their mother country, both by the silken cords of pardoning love, and by the silver bands of some prerogatives, which may convince them that Great Britain considers them not only as subjects, but also as younger brothers.

Such kindness, together with the scourge of a civil war, which they so severely feel already, would probably attach them to the parent state for ever. Should this be the case, how great will be the joy of those who properly value the blessings of peace and order! And how full the disappointment of the demon of discord, who envies us the singular blessings which we enjoy! Great Britain and America will then become the fixed, the unrivalled seats of truth, arts, sciences, and commerce. They will collect the treasures of the old and new world. They will play into each others hands the wealth of the universe. And, joined together, they will be more than a match for their combined enemies. So shall genuine Protestantism, sober liberty, uninterrupted peace, and growing prosperity, conspire to crown the richest island, and finest continent in the world. Happy, for ever happy will they be, if their riches and grandeur do not corrupt and intoxicate them: and if civil and religious phrenzy never hinder them more from paying an humble regard to our Lord’s important precept, “Render to Cesar the things which are Cesar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s.” That you, sir, I, and all our fellow labourers in the Gospel, may faithfully practise, and zealously preach this neglected part of the doctrine of Christ; that our most sanguine patriotism may always be tempered by a due sense of what we owe to our governors; and that our warmest loyalty may always be attended with a proper consciousness of what we owe to God, to our fellow citizens, and to posterity, are the Christian, constitutional prayers which I ardently offer to the King of kings, and in which I invite you to join, reverend sir, your affectionate brother, and obedient servant,

J. F