Letter 4.

LETTER 4.

Observations on Mr. Price’s awful arguments taken from our immorality - What great share our national profaneness had in the ruin of the king, and in the subversion of the Church and state in the days of Cromwell - It becomes us to obviate the dangerous argument by which thousands of rash religionists are seduced into wild patriotism.

REVEREND SIR, - I should be inexcusable if I concluded my refutation of Dr. Price’s antichristian politics without doing him the justice to confess. that he has advanced a Christian argument, which I cannot properly answer, and which is so awful, that it highly deserves the attention of all who wish well to Church and state: take it in his own words: “In this hour of tremendous danger, it would become us to turn our thoughts to heaven. This is what our brethren in the colonies are doing! From one end of North America to the other they are fasting and praying. But what are we doing? Shocking thought! we are ridiculing them as fanatics, and scoffing at religion. We are running wild after pleasure, and forgetting every thing serious and decent at masquerades. We are gambling in gaming houses; trafficking for boroughs; perjuring ourselves at elections; and selling ourselves for places. Which side then is Providence likely to favour? In America we see a number of rising states in the vigour of youth, &c, and animated by piety. Here we see an old state, &c, inflated and irreligious, enervated by luxury, &c, and hanging by a thread. Can we look without pain on the issue?”

There is more solidity in this argument, than in all that Dr. Price has advanced. If the colonists throng the houses of God, while we throng play houses or houses of ill fame; if they crowd their communion tables while we crowd the gaming table or festal board; if they pray while we curse; if they fast while we get drunk; and keep the Sabbath while we pollute it; if they take shelter under the protection of Heaven, while our chief attention is turned to our hired troops; we are in danger - in great danger. Be our cause ever so good, and our force ever so formidable, our case is bad, and our success doubtful. Nay, the Lord of hosts, who of old sold his disobedient people into the hands of their unrighteous enemies to chastise and humble them - this righteous Lord may give success to the arms of the colonies, to punish them for their revolt, and us for our profaneness. A youth that believes and prays as David, is a match for a giant that swaggers and curses as Goliath. And they that, in the name of the Lord, enthusiastically encounter their enemies in a bad cause, bid fairer for success than they that, in a good cause, profanely go into the field, trusting only in the apparent strength of an arm of flesh. To disregard the king’s righteous commands, as the colonists do, is bad; but to despise the first table commandments of the King of kings as we do, is still worse. Nor do I see how we can answer it, either to reason or our own consciences, to be so intent on enforcing British laws, and so remiss in yielding obedience to the laws of God. If the capital command, “Fear God and honour the king,” could be properly parted, should not every Christian prefer the former part to the latter? Will our honouring the king alone for our dishonouring God? And can we expect that our loyalty shall make amends for our impiety or lukewarmness?

Is it not surprising, that amidst all the preparations which have been made to subdue the revolted colonies, none should have been made to check our open rebellion against God; and that in all national applications to foreign princes for help, we should have forgotten a public application to the Prince of the kings of the earth? Many well wishers to their country flattered themselves, that at a time when the British empire stands, as Dr. Price justly observes, “on an edge so perilous,” our superiors would have appointed a day of humiliation and prayer; a day to confess the national sins which have provoked God to let loose a spirit of political enthusiasm and revolt upon us; a day to implore pardon for our past transgressions, and to resolve upon a more religious and loyal course of life; a day to beseech the Father of lights and mercies to teach, at this important juncture, our senators wisdom in a peculiar manner, and to inspire them with such steadiness and mildness, that by their prudence, courage, and condescension, the war may be ended with little effusion of blood, and, if possible, without shedding any more blood at all. Thousands expected to see such a day; thinking that it becomes us, as reformed Christians, nationally to address the throne of grace, and intreat God to turn the hearts of the colonists toward us, and ours toward them, that we may speedily bury our mutual animosities in the grave of our common Saviour. And not a few supposed that humanity bids us feel for the myriads of our fellow creatures who are going to offer up their lives in the field of battle; and that charity and piety require us to pray that they may penitently part with their sins, and solemnly prepare themselves for a safe passage, I shall not say from Britain to America, but, if they are called to it, from time into eternity. Such, I say, were the expectations of thousands, but hitherto their hopes and wishes have been disappointed.

Dr. Price knows how to avail himself of our omission or delay in this respect, to strengthen the hands of the American patriots, by insinuating that Heaven will not be propitious to us, and that “our cause is such as gives us [no] reason to ask God to bless it.” None can tell what fuel this plausible observation of his will add to the wild fire of political enthusiasm which burns already too fiercely in the breasts of thousands of injudicious religionists. I therefore humbly hope that our governors will consider Dr. Price’s objection, taken from our immorality and profaneness, and that they will let the world see we are neither ashamed nor afraid to spread the justice of our cause before the Lord of hosts, and to implore his blessing upon the army going to America, to enforce gracious offers of mercy, and reasonable terms of reconciliation.

And who, after all, should we be ashamed of asking help of God, as well as of German princes? Have we never read such awful scriptures as these? “Save us, O King of heaven, when we call upon thee. Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. Blessed be my strong helper, who subdueth the people unto me, and setteth me above mine adversaries. Through thee will we overthrow our enemies, and in thy name will we tread them under that rise against us. For I will not trust in my bow. It is not my sword that shall [comparatively] help me. Be not afraid of this f39 great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s. All the assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with the sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord’s.”

Our own history, as well as the Scripture, confirms Dr. Price’s objections, taken from our neglect of the religious means of success in the present contest. It is well known to many, that in the civil wars of the last age, a national disregard of the Lord’s day, and the avowed contempt of God’s name, which prevailed in the king’s party, did him unspeakable injury. For multitudes of men who feared God, seeing profaneness reign in the army of the royalists, while religious duty was solemnly performed by the forces of the parliament, and being unable to enter into the political questions whence the quarrel arose, judged of the cause according to religious appearances, and sided against the king, merely because they fancied they sided against God. Nor were there wanting men of the greatest candour and penetration, who thought that this was one of the principal causes of the overthrow of our Church and state; Cromwell then availing himself of this appearance, as Dr. Price does now, to persuade religious people that he was fighting the Lord’s battles, and that opposing the king and the bishops was only opposing tyranny and a profane hierarchy. To show you how much our want of religious decency contributed toward the overthrow of our Church and government in the last century, I shall produce another extract from the Rev. Mr. Baxter’s Narrative of his Life and Times. That candid divine and judicious politician, after mentioning the unhappy differences between those who conform to the Church of England, and those who do not, says: -

Page 32, &c. “When they [the Nonconformists] had been for a while called by that name, [Puritans,] the vicious multitude of the ungodly, called all Puritans, that were strict and serious, were they ever so conformable; so that the same name in a bishop’s mouth? signified a Nonconformist, and in an ignorant drunkard’s or swearer’s mouth, a godly Christian. But the people being the greater number, became among themselves masters of the sense. The ignorant rabble, hearing that the bishops were against the Puritans, (not having wit to know whom they meant,) were emboldened the more against all those whom they called Puritans themselves; their rage against the godly was increased; and they cried up the bishops, &c, because they were against the Puritans. Thus the interests of the Diocesans, and of the profane sort of people, were unhappily twisted.

“As all the Nonconformists were against the prelates, [whose interest was closely connected with the king’s,] so others of the most godly people were alienated from the bishops; because the malignant sort were permitted to make religious persons their common scorn; because they saw so many vicious men among the conformable clergy; because fasting and praying, &c, were so strictly looked after, that the bishops’ courts did make it much more perilous than common swearing and drunkenness proved to the ungodly; because the book that was published for recreations on the Lord’s day, made them think that the bishops concurred with the profane; because so great a number of conformable ministers were suspended or punished for not reading the book of sports on Sundays, and so many thousand families and many worthy ministers driven out of the land, &c; all these, upon my own knowledge were the true causes why so great a number of those persons who were counted most religious, fell in with the parliament; insomuch that the generality of the stricter sort of preachers joined with them. Very few of all that learned and pious synod at Westminster were Nonconformists before, and yet were for the parliament; supposing that the interest of religion lay on that side.

“Upon my knowledge, many that were not wise enough to understand the truth about the cause of the king and parliament, did yet run into the parliament’s armies, or take their part, as sheep do together for company; being moved by this argument, ‘Surely God will not suffer almost all his most religious servants to err in so great a matter. If these should perish, what will become of religion?’ But these were insufficient grounds to go upon. And abundance of the ignorant sort of the country, who were civil, did flock into the parliament, and filled up their armies afterward, merely because they heard men swear that were for the common prayers and bishops, and heard others pray that were against them; and because they heard the king’s soldiers with horrid oaths abuse the name of God, and saw them live in debauchery, and the parliament’s soldiers flock to sermons, talk of religion, and pray and sing psalms together on their guards. All the sober men that I was acquainted with, who were against the parliament, were wont to say, The king has the better cause, but the parliament has the better men. And indeed this unhappy complication of the interest of prelacy and profaneness, and this opposition, of the interest of prelacy to the temper of the generality of the religious party, was the visible cause of the overthrow of the king in the eye of all the understanding world.”

Page 31. “Though it must be confessed that the public safety and liberty wrought very much with most, especially the nobility and gentry, who adhered to the parliament; yet was it principally the differences about religious matters that filled up the parliament’s armies, and put into their soldiers the resolution and valour which carried them on in another manner than mercenary soldiers are carried on. Not that the matter of bishops, or no bishops, was the main thing, though many called it Bellum Episcopate: for thousands that wished for good bishops were on the parliament’s side. But the generality of the people (I say not all) who used to talk of God and heaven, and Scripture and holiness, and read books of devotion, and pray in their families, and spend the Lord’s day in religious exercises, and speak against swearing, cursing, drunkenness, profaneness, &c; I say the main body of this sort of men adhered to the parliament. And on the other side, the gentry that were not so precise and strict against an oath, or gaming, or plays, or drinking, nor troubled themselves so much about God and the world to come, and the ministers and people that were for the king’s book, for dancing and recreation on the Lord’s days, and those that made not so great a matter of every sin but were glad to hear a sermon which lashed the Puritans, &c, the main body of these were against the parliament.”

Page 44. “And here I must repeat the great cause of the parliament’s strength? and the king’s ruin; and that was, that the debauched rabble through the land, emboldened by his gentry, and seconded by the common soldiers of his army, took all that were called Puritans for their enemies. And though some of the king’s gentry and superior officers were so civil that they would do no such thing, yet that was no security to the country while the multitude did what they list. So that if any one was noted for a strict preacher, or for a man of a pious life, he was plundered or abused, and in danger of his life. And if a man did but pray in his family, or were but heard to repeat a sermon, or sing a psalm, they cried out, Rebels! round heads! and all their goods that were portable proved guilty, how innocent soever they were themselves. I suppose this was kept from the knowledge of the king, and perhaps of many sober lords of the council; for few could come near them, and it is the fate of such not to believe evil of those that they think are for them, nor good of those that they think are against them. But, upon my certain knowledge, this was it that filled the armies and garrisons of the parliament with sober, pious men. Thousands had no mind to meddle with the wars, but greatly desired to live peaceably at home, when the rage of soldiers and drunkards would not let them. Some stayed till they had been plundered, perhaps twice or thrice over; but most were afraid of their lives, and oft they sought refuge in the parliament’s garrisons, and were fain to take up arms, and be soldiers, to get bread.” Mr. Baxter’s account of Cromwell’s character, and of his religious troop, is too remarkable not to deserve a place in this extract. Page 98, “No mere man was better and worse spoken of than he [Cromwell] according as men’s interests led their judgments. The soldiers and sectaries most idly magnified him till he began to seek the crown; and then there were so many that would be half kings themselves, that a king did seem intolerable to them. The royalists abhorred him as a most perfidious hypocrite, and the Presbyterians thought him little better. If, after so many others, I speak my own opinion of him, I think, that having been a prodigal in his youth, and afterward changed into a zealous religionist, he meant honestly in the main course of his life, till prosperity and success corrupted him. At his first entrance into the wars, being but a captain of horse, he had special care to get religious men into his troop. These men were of greater understanding than common soldiers, and therefore were more apprehensive of the importance of the war; and making not money, but that which they took to be the public felicity, to be their end, they were the more engaged to be valiant. For he that makes money his end, esteems his life above his pay, and therefore is likely enough to save it by flight when danger comes. But he that maketh the felicity of Church and state his end, esteemeth it above his life, and therefore will the sooner lay down his life for it. This Cromwell understood, and that none would be such valiant men as the religious. I conjecture, that at his first choosing such men into his troop, it was the very esteem and love of religious men that principally moved him; by this means he sped better than he expected. That troop 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.” f40 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, 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 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.